Pigs Get Fat, Hogs Get Slaughtered: The Consumption Over Production Model in Our Neighborhoods
From this point on, growth was not just good, but the primary aim of political and social systems. We all know now where that has taken us, but some saw it early, including the economist and retail analyst Victor Lebow in 1955: Our enormously productive economy demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of
... See moreJon Alexander • Citizens: Why the Key to Fixing Everything is All of Us
Malthusians, modern and classical, the reason we’re headed to hell in a handbasket is that people are rapacious and untamable, creatures of passion and impulse. Those drives will lead us inexorably to consume endlessly, but we’ve seen that people aren’t always like that, while corporations are always like that—the profit motive makes them so—which
... See moreRaj Patel • The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy
Consider this: if high-income nations were to consume at the average level of the rest of the world, we would not be overshooting the safe boundary at all. We’d be operating roughly within the planet’s biocapacity, rather than staring down the barrel of an ecological emergency. By contrast, if everyone in the world were to consume at the level of
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