Everyone seems to have ideas and theories about the state of the world economy. Most of the discussions revolve around this notion of a downward spiral of decreasing spending—people are spending less, decreasing businesses’ revenue; in order to stay profitable, the businesses lay off employees, which makes people even more reluctant to spend.

The implicit goal is always increasing economic activity. It’s not that people argue that living with less is bad. The question never even comes up.

Leo Babauta of the exhilirating Zen Habits wrote an excellent article which is the first that I’ve seen to actually ask what would happen if we learned to consume less, and to point out that decreasing consumption is only a problem in a society rooted in the value of stuff.