Post-growth Common sense: Political Communications for the Future

This report is taken from chapter 8 of Green House's book The Post-Growth Project: How the End of Economic Growth Could Bring a Fairer and Happier Society published in 2014.

This report is written to represent and evoke a journey, a ‘therapeutic’ voyage through and to (a new) common sense. It is as much a reflective essay as a report. Rupert Read can only ask the reader to read it, and to think as they go. There are however Recommendations’ at the end, which the highly-time stressed reader could try skipping straight to.

We need to transform the economy, and to talk about doing so: but the primary way to do that is (ironically) precisely not by talking about 'the economy'. It is by talking about an actually-better quality of life: it is about talking about what an economy is FOR rather than talking about 'the economy'. It is also about placing ecological limits up front: and about the beautiful coincidence between the need to reduce material throughput, the ending of growth, redistribution making us all happier, localization, and better quality of life being aimed at rather than quantity of stuff.