But if we truly wish to challenge capitalism, we must redefine abundance in such a way that it cannot be confused with capitalistic consumerism. We should stop betting our future on the possibility that exponential growth in technological development will take care of things for us, exempting us from the need to modify our mode of living. Rather, we must change our mode of living so we can discover new forms of abundance. In short, we must break the link between economic growth and abundance and think seriously about how abundance can be linked to degrowth. We must face reality in our call for a new abundance. If we do, we'll notice something right away. The world undergoes 'structural reforms' over and over to foster growth, and yet the results are always the same: gaps widen between the rich and poor, and rates of both poverty and austerity increase. The fact is, the wealth held by the twenty-six richest capitalists in the world is equivalent to the total assets belonging to the world's poorest 3.8 billion people (nearly half the world's population). Can this be a coincidence? Surely not - we should think of it the following way. We usually think of capitalism as something that provides wealth and abundance, but the truth is quite the opposite. Capitalism is a system that functions by producing scarcity.

— Slow Down by Kōhei Saitō (Page 148)