Less is More: How Degrowth Will Save the World

by Jason Hickel

Up to the 1920s, consumption was a relatively perfunctory act: people just bought what they needed. Advertisements did little more than inform customers of the useful qualities of a product. But this system posed an obstacle to growth, because once people’s needs were satisfied, purchases slowed down. Companies seeking a ‘fix’ – a way to surmount the limits of human need – found it in the new theories of advertising being developed at the time by Edward Bernays, the nephew of psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. Bernays pointed out that you can provoke people to consume far beyond their needs simply by manipulating their psychology. You can seed anxiety in people’s minds, and then present your product as a solution to that anxiety. Or you can sell things on the promise that they will provide social acceptance, or class distinction, or sexual prowess. This kind of advertising quickly became indispensable to American companies desperate to generate growing demand.