REFERENCES AND QUOTES Philosophy 2021 Understand that we are the governments and make them work for us - References and quotes PROSPERITY WITHOUT GROWTH Prosperity is not economic growth. 3 reason against economic growth 1. Creates inequality, trickled to the few, inequality causes problems 2. We are not happier 3. Is impossible on a finite planet. Traditional wisdom of well-being. Buen vivir and indigenous sumak kawsay in Ecuador. Finite planet, “Any credible vision of prosperity must hold a defensible position on the question of limits. This is particularly true of a vision based on growth. How – and for how long – is continued growth possible without coming up against ecological and resource constraints?” 41 The task of the economy is to deliver and to enable prosperity. But prosperity is not synonymous with material wealth and its requirements go beyond material sustenance. Rather, prosperity has to do with our ability to flourish: physically, psychologically and socially. Beyond sheer subsistence or survival, prosperity hangs on our ability to participate meaningfully in the life of society.” “But the appealing idea that after our material needs are satisfied we could do away with material things altogether flounders on a simple and powerful fact: material goods provide a vital language through which we communicate with each other about the things that really matter: family, identity, friendship, community, purpose in life. Stuff and story turn out to be intimately entangled with each other. There is clearly a paradox here. If participation is really what matters, and material goods provide a language to facilitate that, then richer societies ought to show more evidence of it. But the very opposite appears to be the case, and has been for some time.” Social recession in “wealthy” countries 142 Damaging signals from society – valuing private before public sector See Common cause on policy feedback 12, THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER, SOME COSTS OF AMERICAN CORPORATE CAPITALISM: A PSYCHOLOGICAL EXPLORATION OF VALUE AND GOAL CONFLICTS 148 “the balance of behaviours in a society depends on how that society is structured. When technologies, infrastructures, institutions and social norms all reward self-enhancement and novelty, then selfish sensation-seeking behaviours prevail over more conservative, altruistic ones.” “Each society strikes this balance between altruism and selfishness (and between novelty and tradition) in different places. And where this balance is struck depends crucially on social structure. Social structures can change and can be changed. They are amenable to policy. And all the evidence suggests that the time is ripe for such changes, because the existing structures are poorly aligned with human interests and values.” 157 Economy is not and end in itself but a mean to prosperity. 173 “The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government 198 Policy feedback and co-creating the social world, social contract, hyberbolic discounting and commitment devices See Common cause 12, 23 203 Erosion of commitment devices. Foucault, governmentality and how “governments find themselves drawn into specific ways of behaving, in part as a result of their own policies.” Growth calls us human to “be myopic, individualistic, novelty seekers” because that is what is needed for the stability of the economic, thus supported by governments. 206 Institutional schizophrenia that “arises directly from the governmentality of the growth-based society. With a vital responsibility to protect jobs and to ensure stability, the state is bound (under current macroeconomic understandings) to prioritise economic growth. And it is locked into this task, even as it seeks to promote sustainability and the common good. Government itself, in other words, is caught in the dilemma of growth.” See THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER, “The role of government is to provide the capabilities for its citizens to flourish – within ecological limits. The analysis here suggests that, at this point in time, that responsibility entails shifting the balance of existing institutions and structures away from materialistic individualism and providing instead real opportunities for people to pursue intrinsic goals of family, friendship, community, participation, creativity.” 209 governments can establishing limits, countering consumerism, tackling inequality and fixing economics 212 I ARBETSSAMHÄLLET – HUR ARBETET ÖVERLEVDE TEKNOLOGIN Consumerism and commercial interest joining hands with the government to save the working society and the structures of power 99 The emergence of PR and fiscal stimulus policy is no coincidence since the overproduction needed to be dealt with. The idea of economy as allocating scarce resources is abandoned. 106 I A BLUEPRINT FOR SURVIVAL Government incentive to growth increase the need for more growth in 6 ways. “Firstly, the introduction of technological devices, i.e. the growth of the technosphere, can only occur to the detriment of the ecosphere, which means that it leads to the destruction of natural controls which must then be replaced by further technological ones. It is in this way that pesticides and artificial fertilisers create the need for yet more pesticides and artificial fertilisers.
Secondly, for various reasons, industrial growth, particularly in its earlier phases, promotes population growth. Even in its later phases , this can still occur at a high rate (0.5 per cent in the UK). Job s must constantly be created for the additional people—not just any job, but those that are judged acceptable in terms of current values. This basically means that the capital outlay per person employed must b e maintained, otherwise the level of "productivity" per man will fall, which is a determinant of both the "viability" of economic enterprise and of the "standard of living".
Thirdly, no government can hope to survive widespread and protracted unemployment, and without changing the basis of our industrial society, the only way government can prevent it is by stimulating economic growth.
Fourthly, business enterprises, whether state-owned or privately owned, tend to become self-perpetuating, which means that they require surpluses for further investment. This favours continued growth.
Fifthly, the success of a government and its ability to obtain support is to a large extent assessed in terms of its ability to increase the "standard of living" as measured by per capita gross national product (GNP). Finally, confidence in the economy, which i s basically a function of its ability to grow, must be maintained to ensure a health y state of the stock market. Were confidence to fall, stock values would crash, drastically reducing the availability of capital for investment and hence further growth, which would lead to further unemployment . This would result in a further fall in stockmarket values and hence give rise to a positive-feedback chain-reaction , which under the existing order might well lead to social collapse.” 5 I DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST Growth looked as a panacea for social, economic ailments. 36, 37 governance must be able to deal with scale and complexity 54 Cocreating reality 86 Putting a price ignites a spark. Sandel, “markets are not mere mechanisms, they embody certain values. And sometimes, market values crowd out nonmarket norms worth caring about” 102 Working together, different elements of society 235 Remaking our reality everyday. Experiment! 238 I THINKING IN SYSTEMS – A PRIMER rich variability for resilience, single species forests losing resilience 77 Ecological disasters as a result of lost resilience. To big to get information. System balancing on a knife edge. 78 self-organizing, evolving from ovum to person, evolving societies, making own structure more complex. Often sacrificed for short-term productivity and stability. 79 Self-organizing requires freedom, experimentation and a certain amount of disorder See MEASURING REGENERATIVE ECONOMICS: 10 PRINCIPLES AND MEASURES UNDERGIRDING SYSTEMIC ECONOMIC HEALTH, DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST, Dynamics of self-renewal. Fractals 80 “The most stunning thing living systems and some social systems can do is to change themselves utterly by creating whole new structures and behaviors. In biological systems that power is called evolution. In human economies it’s called technical advance or social revolution. In systems lingo it’s called self-organization.” “The ability to self-organize is the strongest form of system resilience.” SeeTHE DYNAMICS OF SELF-RENEWAL: A SYSTEMS-THINKNING TO UNDERSTANDING ORGANIZAITIONAL CHALLENGES IN DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENTS 6 159 “Self-organization is basically a matter of an evolutionary raw material—a highly variable stock of information from which to select possible patterns—and a means for experimentation, for selecting and testing new patterns.”. We should worship biodiversity, diversity is source of evolutionary protentional just as knowledge is to technology potential, in the same way should we celebrate cultural diversity as source of social evolution. “Insistence on a single culture shuts down learning and cuts back resilience. Any system, biological, economic, or social, that gets so encrusted that it cannot self-evolve, a system that systematically scorns experimentation and wipes out the raw material of innovation, is doomed over the long term on this highly variable planet.” Encourage variability, experimentation and diversity even if it means losing control. “Let a thousand flower bloom and anything could happen!” SeeTHE DYNAMICS OF SELF-RENEWAL: A SYSTEMS-THINKNING TO UNDERSTANDING ORGANIZAITIONAL CHALLENGES IN DYNAMIC ENVIRONMENTS 6 160 experimenting 181 Experimenting and error-embracing. “Let’s face it, the universe is messy. It is nonlinear, turbulent, and dynamic.” 181 To encouragement Next encouragement