Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

by Jason Hickel

‘Public wealth,’ Maitland wrote, ‘may be accurately defined to consist of all that man desires, as useful or delightful to him.’ In other words, it has to do with goods that have an intrinsic use value even when they are abundant, including air, water and food. Private riches, on the other hand, consist ‘of all that man desires as useful or delightful to him; which exists in a degree of scarcity.’ The scarcer something is, the more money you can extort from people who need it. For instance, if you enclose an abundant resource like water and establish a monopoly over it, you can charge people to access it and therefore increase your private riches. This would also increase what Maitland called the ‘sum-total of individual riches’ – what today we might call GDP. But this can be accomplished only by curtailing people’s access to what was once abundant and free. Private riches go up, but public wealth goes down. This became known as the ‘Lauderdale Paradox’.