Logo degrowth

Blog

What if Jeff Bezos funded Degrowth.info?

By: Nathan Barlow

15.02.2020

Money 2082383 1920

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€.

So, how many awesome projects like degrowth.info could ol’ Bezos fund? 18,215,179 !

Over 18 million, another massive number. Our site is one of a few that provides numerous resources, tools, and acts as an outlet for the degrowth community. In the same way that our little project touches so many people, imagine how many people would be impacted if 18 million similar movements could be funded without having to grovel for donations. Unfortunately we cannot (yet) expropriate Jeff Bezos’ wealth, so until then we have to continue to ask you, the degrowth community (and its friend and families), to support our webportal via our crowdfunding page. So, for now, please be our Bezos :) And also, you can read more about this topic on our website, check out this nice article about degrowth and wealth/income caps. Plus see the great efforts across Europe, but especially in France, to push back against Amazon on Black Friday. You can get involved with your local Attac network to organize against Amazon and it’s socially as well ecologically unsustainable practices. One last time – please help this website continue its work for the degrowth community! In solidarity, The degrowth webportal team  

About the author

Nathan Barlow

Nathan is currently a PhD candidate at the WU in Vienna. His research focuses on degrowth and strategies for social ecological transformation. He is an active member of Degrowth Vienna, and recently edited a collected volume titled "Degrowth & Strategy: how to bring about social ecological transformation". He enjoys working with well-organized groups to realize collective goals.

More from this author

Share on the corporate technosphere


Our republication policy

Support us

Blog

Rojava: building an ecological society

By: Make Rojava Green Again group

In Rojava (Northern Syria), in the midst of a raging war, a society based on the values of women's liberation, radical democracy, and ecology is being built. In early 2018, we, people from across the world, launched the campaign 'Make Rojava Green Again' in co-operation with the newly-established local autonomies to help find solutions to the vast destruction of nature that has resulted from de...

Blog

46.000 Euros debt and other strokes of luck

What's harder? Raising 46.000 Euros in short time or at last starting a big debate about the future of a fossil fuel-dependent region? For the organizing team of the Degrowth Summer School, both were great challenges... Christopher Laumanns reports. With a little help from our friends: how we filled a financial open cast mine... Ten days before the start of the Summer School, which took place...

Blog

2015 – The Year for Climate Justice and Degrowth

Scales 620x260

… and the contribution of the "Degrowth in Action – Climate Justice Summer School 2015" By Elena Hofferberth With the 21st Conference of the Parties taking place at the end of this year, the United Nations climate process is heading towards another climax. The aim is nothing less than the adoption of an international legally binding agreement limiting atmospheric warming to a maximum of 2 deg...