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Robert Skidelsky's 'How Much is Enough?'

I just finished ‘How Much is Enough?’ by RobertSkidelsky. I certainly do not agree with many of the explanations provided in the book and many of the suggestions made. Yet, it is a thought-provoking book, no doubt about that! Skidelsky has shown courage to develop suggestions, based on explanations, with acknowledged religious overtone. He does now thump the chest while arguing that government policy should cease to be the value-neutral or liberal or efficiency based and it should explicitly move away from mad pursuit of growth. Clearly, his explanation lacks sophistication and is more of a persuasive nature, the style which we miss in the days of semi-formal books published by Economists about everything under the sky.  But he takes on an interesting journey to establish that there is more to life, more to policy-making than some digits.
I have always though that Religion was a way, at least theoretically, to tap the consumption. Why any ancient civilization would have thought to tap off the consumption? Obvious answer is ‘the resource constraint’. But there is more to consumption control than sustainability. There is good moral argument of why any society, whether resource abundant or scarce, needs to promote values different that consumption maximization.
I understand that there is always some totalitarian agenda lurking in moral and non-liberal sounding arguments. But, we must ask that is being liberal is all about following our senses or being free to discover the basis for all our actions, even an action of denying or accepting liberal point of views.

                 
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