Slow Down Quotes

“The highest-paying jobs right now are in industries like marketing, advertising, consulting, finance, and insurance, which makes these industries appear to be very important despite being almost entirely inessential to the reproduction of society.”
― Kōhei Saitō, Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto

“No matter how much the economy might grow, if the resulting wealth is monopolized by one part of the population and never redistributed, large numbers of people will live in comparative misery, unable to realize their potential.”
― Kōhei Saitō, Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto

“TECHNO-OPTIMISM IS NOT THE SOLUTION On top of this, there is yet another inconvenient truth we must confront. The effectiveness of the green policies put into effect in some developed countries is doubtful. In places where households typically possess multiple cars and trucks, the result would still be unsustainable even if every single one were replaced by an electric vehicle. Furthermore, the planned rollout by Ford and Tesla of SUV-style electric vehicles signals nothing more than the continued strengthening of our present culture of consumption, which will only lead to an increased waste of resources. It is, when all is said and done, simply another classic example of greenwashing.”
― Kōhei Saitō, Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto

“Of course, the hard-to-hear truth outlined above has been pointed out many times before. But as soon as we throw a little money at it via charitable donations, we forget about it again. This forgetting is possible because the incidents in question are rendered invisible in our daily lives.”
― Kōhei Saitō, Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto

“Antes del derrumbe del capitalismo, la Tierra habrá dejado de ser un lugar habitable para el ser humano.”
― Kōhei Saitō, El capital en la era del Antropoceno

“La ignorancia termina por interiorizar en su mente que el modo de vida imperial, que colma su vida de riquezas, es loable y deseable. Finalmente, se termina deseando permanecer en la ignorancia y temiendo conocer la verdad. «No saber» se va transformando en «no querer saber».”
― Kōhei Saitō, El capital en la era del Antropoceno

“Si esta clase de sistema social persigue un crecimiento económico infinito, la caída del medio ambiente planetario en una situación crítica es, sencillamente, una consecuencia lógica.”
― Kōhei Saitō, El capital en la era del Antropoceno

“This differs greatly from the present system by which the decision-making process within industry reflects, above all else, the wishes of a small group of majority shareholders. The reason why major industry can respond quickly and decisively to moment-by-moment changes in the business environment is the undemocratic nature of the decision-making process, which is based solely on the wishes of management. This is what Marx calls the “tyranny of capital.”
― Kōhei Saitō, Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto

“We once worked for a few hours a day and then, once our needs were met, spent the rest of the day at leisure. We napped, played, talked to each other.128 These days, though, we are forced to work long hours at the behest of another just to receive a little money. Time has become money. Which means time has become scarce—we cannot afford to waste even a minute of it, not even a second.”
― Kōhei Saitō, Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto

“Stiglitz, in short, poses his vision for a just future as “true capitalism” and the present arrangement as “phony capitalism,” but this overlooks the following possibility: that the “golden age” of capitalism—from the end of World War II until the 1970s—to which he so longs to return was in fact the aberration, the “phony” version of capitalism. That would mean the present “phony” system that Stiglitz so abhors is, in fact, capitalism’s true face.”
― Kōhei Saitō, Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto

“When O’Neill examined quality of life relative to environmental damage, his research proved that the more stable a nation’s social foundation was, the greater the tendency for that nation to overshoot planetary boundaries. Almost every nation satisfied social demands by sacrificing sustainability. This is an incredibly inconvenient truth to uncover. It means that using developed nations as models when helping emerging countries raise their living standards to attain the minimum social foundation will inevitably, when seen from a planetary point of view, lead us down the path to total destruction.”
― Kōhei Saitō, Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto

“For example, while leisure is not itself material, the carbon footprint of leisure activities makes up 25 percent of the overall total.52”
― Kōhei Saitō, Slow Down: The Degrowth Manifesto