the goal of any economy should be to sustainably improve human well-being and quality of life and that material consumption and GDP are merely means to that end.

THE MODERN ECONOMY GROWS THANKS to our trust in the future and to the willingness of capitalists to reinvest their profits in production. Yet that does not suffice. Economic growth also requires energy and raw materials, and these are finite. When and if they run out, the entire system will collapse.

This example shows us that limited growth is a quality of sustainable abundance, whereas attempting unlimited growth can threaten the very survival of an entire eco-system.

The alternative to managerial fascism is a political process by which people decide how much of any scarce resource is the most any member of society can claim; a process in which they agree to keep limits relatively stationary over a long time, and by which they set a premium on the constant search for new ways to have an ever larger percentage of

Similarly, at an economic and sociological level, when you push human beings to desire to consume more than they can reasonably use at a cost that is faster than they are capable of earning, you create a socioeconomic system that will collapse.