Every society clings to a myth by which it lives. Ours is the myth of economic growth...

The default assumption is that - financial crises aside - growth will continue indefinitely. Not just for the poorest countries, where a better quality of life is undeniably needed, but even for the richest nations where the cornucopia of material wealth adds little to happiness and is beginning to threaten the foundations of our wellbeing.

For at the end of the day, prosperity goes beyond material pleasures.

[We are] persuaded to spend money we don't have on things we don't need to create impressions that won't last on people we don't care about.

Productivity-the amount of output delivered per hour of work in the economy-is often viewed as the engine of progress in modern capitalist economies. Output is everything. Time is money. The quest for increased productivity occupies reams of academic literature and haunts the waking hours of C.E.O.s and finance ministers.

If pornographers are among the early adopters of the new technology, then it has definite commercial possibilities.

Questioning growth is deemed to be the act of lunatics, idealists and revolutionaries. But question it we must.