There’s lots of talk recently about the wealth of Jeff Bezos. There are maps comparing his wealth to entire countries, a “You are Jeff Bezos” game where you can spend his money on different things - like paying their fair-share of taxes, and a graphic that puts his wealth in perspective. A recurring point is that most people simply cannot fathom the amount of money he has. The number is $150 billion. My favorite attempt to bring the number into human terms is Quartz’s article, “The average US worker would need 10 times the length of all human history to earn as much as Jeff Bezos”. This beautifully captures the point that someone does not simply earn or work for such an amount of money, but rather captures it. We, at degrowth.info, thought a similar calculation would be interesting. We wanted to know how many humble (but hopefully useful) projects like ours Jeff Bezos’ wealth could pay for. In case you haven’t heard already, degrowth.info is improving its site to better support the degrowth community and improve the usability of the platform – this will cost 7,500€.
When it comes to technological development, I often hear the words: What can be done will be done – sooner or later. Many people think that technological development follows a path directed by quasi-natural laws that head into one and only one direction – called “progress” – which is: to use more technology, more complex technology, more expensive technology, more powerful technology. Now, if t...
This Article was written by Jennifer Hinton and Donnie Maclurcan of the Post Growth Institute for the postconference “Stream towards Degrowth”. An annual event, Free Money Day, was created in 2011 and is run by the Post Growth Institute. Each September 15th, people all over the world hand out their own money to complete strangers, two [...]
By Christiane Kliemann When listening to all the keynotes, panels and sessions, or simply joining the lively discussions between conference participants, there is the notion of an overall agreement that a broader new vision for society and the economy is most urgently needed. However, the elephant in the room is that such vision is almost impossible to shape, if it is to represent the diversi...
