Book Review: Less is More

There is something wrong here.

For years, I (and many others, I suspect) have been feeling this small tug in my head - a slight force that would pull me out of reality for a second. Seemingly anything could trigger this derealization, a billionaire buying a yacht, my boss saying “you have to be a hustler to work here”, Christmas gifts, ticket resellers, me throwing out a food processor because I couldn’t find a cheap plastic part, the homeless woman I see sitting outside the pharmacy building on campus, the fact that I want a Tesla so badly , paying rent to corporations, corporate green initiatives, trying to figure out how best to spend my two weeks of vacation, etc. etc. etc.

For years, I (and many others, I suspect) have been reacting to this tug the same way: Saying Yeah, something is wrong here and then continuing to go about my day. I can’t do that anymore. I can’t. The way that everyone interacts with the world is a product of a system that is fundamentally flawed. A system that has taught us to assign value to a thing not based on utility, but based on how hard it is to get, on scarcity, on how it makes people look at us, and on how much we can get for it when we sell it. Capitalism. We are fleas on the back of this system and it is carrying us into oblivion. We are hurtling towards destruction in every direction - wealth inequality, the environment, healthcare, security - and the only people who have any control over The System are the people that have learned how to manipulate it to accumulate astronomically unequal levels of wealth.

If I sound unhinged, it’s because I am (slightly).This book ripped the door right off my temple and has brought into full view the grinding paradox that I have been blithely skipping around on my way through the rat race. Thankfully, this violent breach has also exposed a revolutionary fervor that I didn’t know I possessed. Never before have I been so motivated to find a way to fix the problems I see.

I am aware that this book has its problems (cherry-picked data, details conveniently missing for the sake of a stronger argument, a cover that forces me to tell everyone “this isn’t a book about minimalism”) but it did what it set out to do. If you read one environmental economics book in your life, this should be it.