Tech Legal Brief #3 – Three Essays from Late 2024 & One Must-Read Book
Highlighting important work from 2024
Introduction
I call these editions of my newsletter “Tech Legal Brief” but as I have said earlier in:
I am not trying to track all relevant developments in the space of tech and legal. There is far too much going on for that, and obediently running after all the frisbees and balls in the park is exhausting and does not make anyone happy. Information fatigue is a legitimate concern in this hyper-information age we live in, and too little information is often preferable to too much.
Therefore, I only highlight material in my Tech Legal Briefs which I think is absolutely worth sharing. Typically, it didn’t get enough press coverage, and it often relates to a topic I have written about before.
Today’s installment will be sparse, simply a recommendation of three essays from late 2024 that speak to something substantial about the Tech Legal space and the society we live in - one essay from October, one from November, and one from December.
First, I will share my pick for the most important book published in English in 2024. It’s a must-read by my standards which are very high - extremely few posts and books make it into that category. This particular book succeeds in fulfilling my definition of a “must-read book” because it points towards a revolutionary shift that needs to happen in how society functions. It’s by no means a convenient shift but a strictly necessary one for the sake of future human survival.
Must-read book from 2024
Here’s my pick for the most important book of 2024:
Slow Down - The Degrowth Manifesto by Kohei Saito
(it was published in English in January 2024, but in Japanese in 2020 under a different name)
A few years back, I swore that technology was the only answer to fix the climate change crisis. I even wrote my Master's thesis about the topic, specifically about how IP rights could affect the transfer of climate-friendly technologies from developed to developing countries. I now realize that this strong belief I held, which carried me through my thesis dissertation to great success, was wrong. Technology is not the answer to fixing the climate change crisis. The answer is degrowth. This is the worst nightmare for capitalists but it’s also an “inconvenient truth” as former US Vice President Al Gore wisely phrased it.
In “Slow Down – The Degrowth Manifesto – Japanese philosopher Kohei Saito convincingly explains why capitalism is coming to an end, whether we like it or not, and why “degrowth communism” as a new form of governance is needed. The book is partly based on unpublished notes by Karl Marx which he wrote years after his centerpiece "Das Kapital", as an older and wiser man, close to the end of his life.
The most important takeaways from the book are that “green growth” is an illusion and that “left-accelerationism” – the idea that we can innovate ourselves out of nature’s restraints - is an illusion too. The only way to effectively curb the most existential threat to humanity is to cut down on our consumption. Cutting down on consumption would inhibit financial growth and thus spell the end of capitalism. What comes next? That is the question Saito is opening up and attempts to answer.
Dealing with climate change is not a matter of politics or belief but of survival. That may be a hard truth to accept for older generations, who became rich from the fossil fuel economy. It’s even harder to accept, for the ultra-rich who feel entitled to a luxurious lifestyle paid for by exploitation and environmental crime. Chances are, however, that new generations will perceive our role in the grand scheme of nature in a different light.
A reviewer from Berliner Morgenpost calls Kohei Saito the new Piketty, which I think is a spot-on description. "Slow Down" is easier to read than Piketty’s work but is one of those rare books that feels like it's glancing a few years or decades into the future based on a sound and comprehensive understanding of the past and the present. In a few words, it’s a must-read.
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