This book immediately grabbed my attention. Whether it’s a publisher asking how we can double our sales for next year or a general expectation that one bookshop is not enough and a chain or at least several others should be opened to mark a real sign of success, I’ve often wondered why “more” is the immediate instinct. Given the current state of ecological breakdown and inequality, this book reveals the absurdity of our current system. Should corporations and governments really be pursuing endless growth? Is the answer really to increase extraction of the earth’s limited resources?
"Dominant belief in economics holds that no matter how rich a country has become, their GDP should keep rising…with no identifiable end point. It is the definition of absurdity…cancer cells are programmed to replicate for the sake of replicating, but the result is deadly to living systems.”
From historical economic analysis to the most recent of sociological studies and views from indigenous communities, Hickel considers ways to “organise the economy around the needs of humans and ecology, rather than the other way around.
