Jason Hickel is an economic anthropologist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and *Less Is More* is the most accessible argument for degrowth economics currently available. Where *Doughnut Economics* is agnostic about growth, Hickel is not: he argues that rich countries must actively reduce their economies' throughput — use fewer resources, produce fewer goods, consume less energy — and that any alternative path to ecological sustainability is a fantasy.
The Green Growth Illusion
Hickel’s first and most important argument is against “green growth” — the idea that technological efficiency gains can allow economies to grow indefinitely while reducing absolute resource use and emissions. He reviews the empirical literature on this “decoupling” hypothesis and concludes that it doesn’t hold: efficiency gains are consistently overwhelmed by the volume effects of economic growth, and absolute resource use and emissions continue to rise in growing economies regardless of efficiency improvements.
If this analysis is correct — and Hickel documents the case carefully — then the entire political programme of solving ecological problems through technological innovation while maintaining growth is false hope.
What Degrowth Looks Like
Hickel is careful to distinguish degrowth from austerity. The goal is not GDP reduction across the board but the targeted reduction of ecologically destructive and socially unnecessary production — planned obsolescence, advertising, fast fashion, SUVs, private jets — while maintaining or improving the provision of things that actually support human wellbeing: healthcare, education, housing, food, culture.
His vision of a degrowth economy is not one of scarcity but of different abundance: more time, more community, more nature, less stuff.
The problem is not capitalism's failure to grow — it is capitalism's need to grow. An economy that requires constant expansion to avoid crisis cannot be sustainable on a finite planet, regardless of how efficiently it grows.
— Jason Hickel, Less Is More
6 Key Ideas From This Book
The evidence for absolute decoupling — economies growing while absolutely reducing resource use and emissions — is absent. Relative decoupling (doing more per unit of resource) occurs; absolute decoupling (using fewer resources in total) does not happen in growing economies. Efficiency gains are overwhelmed by growth effects.
Capitalism is not just an economy that grows — it is an economy that must grow to avoid crisis. A capitalist economy operating at zero growth generates unemployment and under-investment; below-zero growth generates financial crisis. Growth is a structural requirement, not an optional feature, of the current economic system.
Hickel traces the origins of the growth imperative to the historical enclosures of common land that created landless labourers who had no choice but to sell their labour. The original accumulation of capitalism required both the dispossession of subsistence farmers and the extraction of colonial resources — a historical perspective that contextualises current ecological extraction.
Hickel identifies planned obsolescence — the deliberate design of products to fail and require replacement — as an ideal early target for degrowth policy. Banning planned obsolescence, requiring repairability, and mandating product longevity would reduce material throughput without reducing wellbeing.
Degrowth is not about making people poorer — it is about defining prosperity differently. A four-day working week, universal basic services, and the time freed from unnecessary production could deliver higher wellbeing with lower ecological impact than the current high-throughput model.
Hickel's degrowth prescription is explicitly for rich countries — those whose ecological footprints far exceed sustainable levels. He argues that genuine global equity requires rich countries to reduce their resource use to create ecological space for poorer countries to meet basic human needs.
Any Weaknesses?
Hickel’s argument against green growth is powerful but the degrowth alternative is underdeveloped in political economy terms. How do you transition a capitalist economy that requires growth to a postgrowth economy without causing the very crisis that growth is required to prevent? The book raises the question more persuasively than it answers it.
The book’s analysis of capitalism’s historical origins in enclosure and colonialism, while valid, occasionally reads as a rehearsal of familiar left-academic positions rather than a direct development of the degrowth argument.
Readers who accept the reality of ecological limits but find themselves unconvinced by green growth solutions — and want a rigorous account of why efficiency and technology cannot solve the throughput problem, and what an alternative would look like.
Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth for a more agnostic economic framework that shares Hickel's planetary boundary concerns, and Small Is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher for the foundational economic philosophy that degrowth builds on.
Climate activists and environmental campaigners who have been operating within a green growth framework. Hickel's critique of that framework — that it is internally contradictory — is directly relevant to movement strategy.
The book's political economy sections are more academic in tone than the ecological analysis sections. The argument is rigorous and worth following, but readers primarily interested in the practical dimensions of simple living may find the theoretical chapters demanding.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Less Is More worth reading?
Less Is More is the most rigorous accessible argument for degrowth economics currently available — a book that takes the ecological evidence seriously enough to follow it to its logical conclusion rather than stopping short at politically convenient halfway positions. Essential for anyone who takes ecological limits seriously.
Who should read Less Is More?
Readers who accept the reality of ecological limits but find themselves unconvinced by green growth solutions — and want a rigorous account of why efficiency and technology cannot solve the throughput problem, and what an alternative would look like.
What is Less Is More about in one sentence?
Jason Hickel is an economic anthropologist at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and Less Is More is the most accessible argument for degrowth economics currently available.
The Verdict
*Less Is More* is the most rigorous accessible argument for degrowth economics currently available — a book that takes the ecological evidence seriously enough to follow it to its logical conclusion rather than stopping short at politically convenient halfway positions. Essential for anyone who takes ecological limits seriously.
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