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

The alternative to the G20 Summit in Hamburg – Global Solidarity Summit

Global summit 1

By: Global Solidarity Summit

Call for participation On 7 and 8 July 2017, the Leaders of the Group of 20 (G20) will meet in Hamburg. This self-styled club of 19 of the most powerful economies in the world and the EU claims to fight global crises. However, reality reveals a different picture: The G20 defends a system that exacerbates social disparities instead of leading policies against deprivation and hunger and...

Blog

A hitch for degrowth

Christopher boyce

By Christopher Boyce I write this sitting in a service station on the M11 in the UK travelling back from Leipzig after what was an inspiring conference on degrowth. I’ve been hitching for only a couple of years now, but as soon as my talk on money and happiness was accepted for the conference in Leipzig, [...]

Blog

Getting to Postgrowth: The Transformative Power of Mind- and Paradigm Shifts

Before an individual chooses to act, he or she requires a story or mindset to make sense of what the situation is about. Acting rationally in this sense means to act with reason, in congruence with one’s worldview and the individual interpretation of the “rules of the game.” Individual mindsets, however, are not fixed [...]