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€.
We all use models in daily life to explain our environment. An example: I assume that a tree will grow provided it has sufficient water, nutrients and sun. I am using a simple model here, without understanding the nitty-gritty – what exactly happens in the roots, stem, leaves and cells. Thinking in models is not only useful to understand our world, but also to solve problems. Let’s assum...
By Jamey Ellis Each of us has given without the expectation of receiving. Each of us knows the rewards of doing so. Sometimes the joy felt by those giving can even seem to outweigh that of the ones receiving. We’ve all taken part in a gift exchange, be it birthdays, holidays or anniversaries. But do we actually need to wait until a specific moment to find that joy of giving? Could such giving...
This article is written by Claudia Gómez-Portugal in the scope of the Stream towards Degrowth. As a Mexican activist and promoter of social change she founded the organization SAKBE – Commons for Social Change and the Free Learning Communities for Life Initiative – and commits herself to developing communication strategies for social change, effective participation, [...]
