384 pages
Published July 25, 2017 by Random House Business Books.
When "renegade" economy ideas can be used in modern capitalist states? Only when it doesn't interfere with state power and capital profit.
This book was truly mind blowing. It is one I will return to and I hope spreads around.
Raworth is a marvelous communicator, and makes it easy to understand what is fundamentally wrong with the way our society approaches economics. She highlights the problems with this approach that threatens to kill us, while also making us sick and unhappy and keeping resources scarce and unevenly distributed.
She sets out to re write the rules of economics, starting out by the way we illustrate them and reassessing the goals of our economic models.
She suggests abandoning our obsessions with GDP, growth and ever increasing profits, and seeking a growth-agnostic economics, that centers on sustainability and well being. She encourages system-based thinking and urges us to consider the health of our environment as well as our own, and designing a new set of rules to adapt our economies and hopefully thrive into …
This book was truly mind blowing. It is one I will return to and I hope spreads around.
Raworth is a marvelous communicator, and makes it easy to understand what is fundamentally wrong with the way our society approaches economics. She highlights the problems with this approach that threatens to kill us, while also making us sick and unhappy and keeping resources scarce and unevenly distributed.
She sets out to re write the rules of economics, starting out by the way we illustrate them and reassessing the goals of our economic models.
She suggests abandoning our obsessions with GDP, growth and ever increasing profits, and seeking a growth-agnostic economics, that centers on sustainability and well being. She encourages system-based thinking and urges us to consider the health of our environment as well as our own, and designing a new set of rules to adapt our economies and hopefully thrive into the 21st century... moving past the insatiable greed of capitalism up until this point.
This is one of those books I wish everyone,but particularly people in power and in decision making positions would read.
Demands a reprioritization of our economic models to improve on climate change, quality of life, and general survival. It’s both a simple concept and an incredibly difficult arena to make headway in—mainly because of the uphill battle against greed and gluttony. To have a chance, Raworth thinks that a "mix of risk-savvy heuristics and behavioural nudges” will be key. I liked that her distributive and regenerative economy models regard inequality "as a failure of economic design”.
Some of the heuristics discussed are open source software for circular manufacturing, local complimentary currencies, an oath of ethics for economists, and live sustainability stats (she cites Oberlin College’s live energy stats of their community). This is an important book to bring necessary ideas and action to the forefront of discussion.
Easy reading critique of economics field and policy for what it needlessly simplifies and ignores in 19thC pursuit of hard science appearance vs a view that it can tell more broadly useful stories to organize our society and economy. Seven pictures tell the new story she synthesizes about supporting social and human needs without blowing past ecological limits (living within the donut of the title), but boils down to giving up on Growth (certainly of GDP, maybe more broadly) as the only economic goal.
