Executive Summary

• Why we can cut energy consumption by 50% and still function
• Why new systems of work, income & resource distribution are needed
• The need for a new type of currency that can't be manipulated by the elites
• The need for de-centralized governance & processes

If you have not yet read Part 1: The Inevitability Of DeGrowth available free to all readers, please click here to read it first.

In Part 1, we surveyed the fundamental dynamic of the present-day status quo, which is fatally dependent on expanding debt, energy consumption per capita, income and consumption of goods and services. Once debt and/or energy expansion stalls, the status quo collapses.

Which brings us to the question: what sort of economy could we have that consumes less energy every year and distributes resources to the populace in some sort of stable, reasonably just arrangement?

We can imagine a variety of unjust repressive regimes that hoard whatever energy and goodies are available for the ruling elites, and there are any number of dystopian films depicting a chaotic endless-war-anarchy scenario of ruthlessly Darwinian distribution systems ( “my lead takes your gold,” etc.).

But neither of these possibilities are set in stone. We could consciously choose to pursue DeGrowth, a set of guiding principles orbiting one basic idea: using less is not a bad thing, it’s a good thing, and it could be coupled with improvements in our quality of life.

Here in Part 2, we provide the blueprint for a DeGrowth Economy.

What Is DeGrowth?

These are the basic concepts of DeGrowth:

1. Consumerism is psychological/ spiritual junk food (French: malbouffe) that actively reduces well-being (bien-etre) rather than increases it.