See the paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2452292924000493 “How much growth is required to achieve good lives for all?”; by Jason Hickel.
Comments from the author:
“I’m excited to share this new paper: ‘How much growth is required to achieve good lives for all?’
“The good news: if we organized production around well-being, we could immediately end poverty and ensure good living standards for 8.5 billion people.
“Modern housing, universal healthcare, education, transit, heating/cooling, induction stoves, fridge-freezers, washing machines, internet, computers, mobile phones etc — all of this can be provided for 8.5 billion people with only 30% of current productive capacity.
My comments:
I’m looking forward to reading this new paper. Jason Hickel is a leading thinker of a Degrowth way of looking at things. His books The Divide and Less Is More are great Degrowth reading.
I would even say that the universal good standard of living he’s talking about might be even more easily attainable, given that so-called “modern housing” isn’t necessarily needed.
Some “modern” housing simply creates the need for air-conditioning and industrially produced building materials (transported from far away). Indigenous styles of housing, which people have uniquely evolved & adapted in all different environments from desert to swamp to actually floating on water, have great value for their natural cooling & heating properties, accessibility of local building materials, and so on.
Washing machines aren’t needed either. And, I personally would like to see community refrigeration and freezers, as opposed to each household needing to own one. Actually, if each neighborhood has a store, that’s community refrigeration and freezing. Some thing that’s largely disappeared in the USA, the neighborhood market. But I would like to bring it back.
My focus is always on how we in the global rich countries can reduce our consumption while still maintaining a high standard of living. By demonstrating ways to live happily and comfortably without — for example — private automobile ownership, electric clothes-washer, individual household freezer.
I know it’s very radical from a USA middle-class standpoint but billions of people all over the world are already living this way. As more of us in the “rich” countries start doing it voluntarily, we’ll be setting a valuable precedent. Resetting the norm of what is a good standard of living.