Of watermelons and apples: climate breakdown, growth, trade, state and money (an open letter to George Monbiot)
Dear George, Congratulations on your contribution to the Moral Maze last week – I switched on the radio just as your volley articulating the ideological differentiation between fiscal and legal rationing fairly seared the waves. Read more
Are you ‘radical’, and if not, why not?
I’m using the original definition of the word, not its bastardisation that over the years has come to be used as a kind of insult in some circles. I’ve been called ‘too radical’, and I want to show why that’s an absurdity. Read more
Gross Domestic Problem on World Animal Day with Brian Czech
Thursday 4th October marked World Animal Day 2018. Here, Brian Czech challenges us to face up to the big-picture, systematic erosion of wild animal welfare in the face of a seemingly continual quest for economic growth. Read more
How the corporate banking system transfers wealth from the poor to the wealthy, without anyone noticing
Herman Daly has been one of my heroes since I read Steady State Economics as a young man. I’m re-posting a blog article of his, originally posted on the website of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE) in the US, because it’s a simple description of how it concentrates wealth… Continue reading How the corporate banking system transfers wealth from the poor to the wealthy, without anyone noticing Read more
Public debate on capitalism: what happened and what I learnt
You may remember that I was invited to take part in a public debate in London recently (see here) about whether capitalism is ‘the best system for a sustainable future’. I was asked to deliver the ‘no’ position. Read more
Campaign launched to build a ‘new economy’ through a practical programme of workshops, mentoring, and live crowdfunding
We talk about making ‘communities stronger’ and creating a ‘fairer economy.’ But these approaches are still struggling to significantly impact our society and economy Read more
Public debate featuring yours truly: is capitalism the best system for a sustainable future?
If you’re in London on April 18th, there’s a public debate you might be interested in, upstairs in a pub in Tooting. I’ve been asked to put the case against capitalism. There will be initial presentations, rebuttals, questions from the audience, and then a summing up. Read more
Democrats, Donald Trump and the dark underbelly of economic growth
Where is real ‘opposition’ in the West when all major parties support cancerous, perpetual growth? Surely it’s time for major political figures to stand up and say that the quest for perpetual economic growth is the engine behind the destruction of the biosphere, and will eventually kill us unless we stop. Read more
Joy in enough: awakening to a new economics
On 18th November last year there was a one-day workshop in Sheffield called “Joy in Enough – Awakening to a New Economics”. It was delivered by Green Christian who are a multi-denominational charity that have been operating for over thirty years. Read more
It’s worse than you think: review of Douglas Rushkoff’s ‘Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus’
Here’s an article that’s part review of the latest book by Douglas Rushkoff (buy it – it’s excellent), part ramble about twenty-first century capitalism. Read more
What’s the most environmentally-damaging thing that a human can do?
This question is really important for us at Lowimpact.org, because we’re all about providing information and other resources on ways that people can live in a less environmentally-damaging way. So I was very interested to see that researchers at Lund University in Sweden recently put the hours in Read more
B-corporations – yes or no?
What do you consider the correct approach towards multinational corporations – tame them, or start to get rid of them? And what do we mean by ‘tame’ exactly? And what are the problems with multinational corporations in the first place? Read more
In a perpetually-growing economy, what will limit the number of cars in the world?
I come back to the subject of economic growth reasonably regularly, or to be more specific, the concept of perpetual, constant, infinite growth. And I’ll keep doing it until this absurd idea is consigned to the same historical category as phlogiston or a geocentric universe. Read more
How money causes poverty (plus war and ecological destruction), and what could replace it
Exchange has always been part of the human story, whether between individuals, tribes or nations. Some people have what others don’t, due to geography or skill, and exchange is a means of getting what you don’t have, and giving what you have a surplus of. Read more
Is democracy obsolete, and can we ever achieve it as long as we have to keep feeding ‘the beast’?
In the West, there’s a word that usually accompanies ‘democracy’, and that word is ‘liberal’. Liberal democracies – that’s what we have in the West. That’s liberal, as in liberty / freedom; and that’s certainly what classical liberalism stood for in its infancy. Read more
How to misrepresent Adam Smith: review of P. J. O’Rourke’s ‘On the Wealth of Nations’
I don’t know if you’re familiar with P. J., but he’s an excellent writer, and he’s extremely, acerbically funny. With this book, as with his Give War a Chance, several times he made me spit my tea out and have to stop to wipe tea off the page. Read more
Is the quest for perpetual economic growth the witch-burning of our times, and could this be the year we start to challenge it?
Johannes Kepler was one of the major figures in the 17th century Scientific Revolution. In his day, people were grappling with the question of whether the earth was the centre of the universe, as the Church said it was, or whether it was just another planet, revolving around the Sun Read more
David Fleming’s ‘Lean Logic’ and ‘Surviving the Future’, and why they’re important
I attended the launch of two books at Daunt Bookshop in Chelsea on Wednesday evening. David Fleming died in 2010, and now his friend Shaun Chamberlin has edited his magnum opus, Lean Logic, and Chelsea Green have published it. Read more
Revisiting my old university economics textbook – how did I ever fall for this nonsense?
I haven’t opened my old university economics textbook (Economics, by David Begg, Stanley Fischer and Rudiger Dornbusch) since the 1980s, so I was curious to see how I would respond to what I was taught 30 years ago. Read more
Moving forward without the EU: clouds & silver linings
I think we all have stories about mad conversations we’ve had about Brexit since the referendum (or is it just me?). I was called a racist, for example, for suggesting that the UK is nowhere near the top of the league of ‘most xenophobic countries’, and I’ve been amazed by the vitriol this has stirred… Continue reading Moving forward without the EU: clouds & silver linings Read more