Sublime

The design presented in the rest of the book rests on three pillars. First, reduce waste and increase efficiency. It's possible to live with the same benefits as the rest of society for one quarter of what the average consumer spends. Many of these

contemporary compulsion to produce robs things of their endurance [Haltbarkeit]: it intentionally erodes duration in order to increase production, to force more consumption.

As economist Tim Jackson deftly put it, we are ‘persuaded to spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to make impressions that won’t last on people we don’t care about’.45

Or to take another example, what is to be gained by asking the New York Philharmonic to play Beethoven’s 9th Symphony faster and faster each year?

Rather than increasing the amount of work to acquire more stuff, reducing this superficial need reduces the amount of necessary work.