He is known for his books The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions (2017) and Less Is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World (2020).A critic of capitalism, he argues that degrowth is the solution to human impact on the environment. In addition to the “crisis of elite disaccumulation,” Europe’s capitalists had created a system of mass production and needed somewhere to sell it. Enclosures and colonization became the solution (also acting as a source of primitive accumulation): ii) “Overpopulation”: I don't think we can stress enough how important the unequal distribution of per capita ecological footprint is here (see Too Many People?: Population, Immigration, and the Environmental Crisis and video); only after this is made clear should we then add that population growth is the one growth curve we know how to flatten in a socially-just manner, i.e. infant/women's health, reproductive rights, education, and of course overall improved living standards. But, this uncompromising and urgent approach is wholly warranted giving the scale of the challenge, to counter a narrative that perpetual growth is good. An idea which is so deeply ingrained in society few of us ever question it (even though, as we learn, this idea is based on questionable evidence). A powerfully disruptive book for disrupted times ... If you're looking for transformative ideas, this book is for you.' KATE RAWORTH, economist and author of Doughnut Economics

This book has some excellent criticisms of modern capitalist systems and proposes some practical methods that could be used to reduce our obsession with and dependence on economic growth.Stop Planned Obsolescence – Companies selling gadgets and stuff include lower product as part of product design. A product can have twice or three times the product life with marginal incremental cost or at times at a tad lower cost in fact. Companies build obsolescence as a product feature to generate future demand and protect itself from degrowth. This step can reduce stuff needed to build products by a third in US alone. Entire developed world can cut down on product consumption with extended warranties and field repair enablement built into products as part of regulation (!!) One of the most important books I have read. Less is Morecalmly dismantles the central myths of capitalism, exposing its destructive madness for all to see. It then does something extremely rare: it outlines a clear path to a sustainable future for all. A manifesto for movements and a manual for policymakers, everyone needs to understand its urgent message.” The issue of how to divide labour in a green economy and ensure good wages looms large for degrowth advocates. But, c ontrary to objections that degrowth amounts to austerity or a formula for economic blight, it can complement demands of the labour movement. At the individual state level, a proper degrowth policy would reassert the importance of labour’ s de-commodification through a strong, universal welfare state, and ensure full employment through a shorter work week, allowing more time for family and leisure. By greatly reducing carbon-intensive industries, public policy could strengthen local industry, sustainable agriculture, and care work, granting some expansion in other sectors while advancing wage compression across society. In an ideal world this would facilitate an economic transition that a majority of people could adapt to and embrace.

The world has finally awoken to the reality of climate breakdown and ecological collapse. Now we must face up to its primary cause. Capitalism demands perpetual expansion, which is devastating the living world. There is only one solution that will lead to meaningful and immediate change: DEGROWTH. A groundbreaking exploration of the best possible solution to the climate crisis: a new economic model, and a new way of viewing our relationship with the natural world.

Through a brisk but vivid history of the transition from feudalism to capitalism, Less Is More sketches the concepts and practices that, over time, equated growth with progress, and thus made it a precondition of public policy on a global scale. A slow but critical turning point arrived in Europe during the early modern period, when the gains of successive peasant rebellions were reversed through the enclosure of the commons under the emergent capitalist theory of “improvement.” This practice justified the dispossession of land if it could be put to more productive use under private ownership, thereby prioritizing exchange-value over use-value and extending the commodification of agriculture, petty manufacture, and human labour throughout society. The embryonic nation-state and capitalist class created artificial scarcity for the now propertyless, wage-dependent masses, while extending the logic of improvement to distant colonies that would supply, often through slavery or other comparably brutal methods, many of the raw materials fuelling industrialization. The books biggest weakness for me is that it reminds me of the "hippie dippyism" of the late '60's and early 70's. I knew some lovely people that fit in that category at the time, but their ability to effect any real social change was very small.

Verder is niet alleen het overheersende economische systeem dringend aan vervanging toe. Het dominante wereld- en mensbeeld – waarin de menselijke geest geacht wordt de natuur en ook het lichaam te onderwerpen en exploiteren – dient plaats te maken voor een alternatieve filosofie, die je als lezer graag in de plaats wil laten komen eens je weet dat het mogelijk is: een filosofie gebaseerd op wederzijdse afhankelijkheid, evenwicht en respect, die stelt dat alles met elkaar verbonden is en men niet meer mag nemen dan men kan teruggeven.a) The Enclosures: The elite enclosed the commons, a violent process known as the Enclosures. The Enclosures destroyed self-sufficient economies, which created a mass supply of workers and a mass supply of consumers. The window for countries to alter earth ’s frightening ecological trajectory is rapidly passing. As climate change has morphed into a climate crisis over the past twenty years, the proposed solutions that would reshape economic life have become more urgent and bold. Especially since legislation for a Green New Deal in the United States was introduced by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Senator Ed Markey in 2019, progressives have made climate justice focal to how we approach employment and innovation, living standards, and social equity. The core principle is that without climate justice, policies to create a more egalitarian society will fall terribly short—and might have no lasting impact at all. Yet as potent as the concept of a green economy is, the radical requirements that climate justice entails expose a rift between reformers and those seeking systemic change, one that has implications for how activists articulate what’s at stake in the crucial decade ahead. b) Colonization: Similarly, colonization broke up sufficient Asian trade networks and destroyed global South Industries through asymmetric trade policies. This forced them to serve as a source for raw materials and an important market for mass-produced goods. Jason is able to personalise the global and swarm the mind with ideas ... Heed his beautifully rendered warning. Russell Brand Author argues that GDP is not multidimensional enough. He mentions on multiple occasions, that GDP’s creator Simon Kuznets, himself warned against its limited usage when he introduced it to US Congress in 1930s and famously said “The welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from measure of national income”.