The following are supplementary reading materials for Lance Bennett’s lecture series the American Global Challenge: Aligning Economy, Democracy & Environment in the 21st Century. For more information on the lecture series, click here.
January 17: System Breakdown: Economy and Democracy in Crisis
- Enough is Enough
- Prosperity Without Growth
- The Strange Non-Death of Neoliberalism
- Beyond Consumer Capitalism
- Post-Democracy
- The Sixth Extinction
January 31: Can Capitalism Be Fixed?
- Does Capitalism Have a Future
- Making Capitalism Fit For Society
- How Will Capitalism End
- The Rise and Fall of American Growth
- Capital in the Twenty-First Century
- The Spirit Level
- The Price of Inequality
- Beyond Consumer Capitalism
- My Year of Nothing New
February 7: The Best Democracy that Money Can Buy
- Dark money : the hidden history of the billionaires behind the rise of the radical right
- Extortion : how politicians extract your money, buy votes, and line their own pockets
- Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens
- Fixed Fortunes: Biggest corporate political interests spend billions, get trillions
- Feeding America: Child Hunger Facts
- The Heritage Foundation, Budget Book
February 21: Environment vs. Economy
- Silent spring
- The limits to growth : the 30-year update
- A Steady State Economy
- Eaarth : making a life on a tough new planet
- Deep economy : the wealth of communities and the durable future
- This changes everything : capitalism vs. the climate
- Our common future
- The strange non–death of neoliberalism
- A Brief History of Neoliberalism
March 7: Building the Next System: Solutions for Government, Business, and Citizens
Series reading materials, available for free download:
Prosperity without growth?
Author: Tim Jackson Date: Mar 30 2009
Institution: UK Sustainable Development Commission (closed March 31 2011)
Annotation: “Prosperity without Growth? analyses the complex relationships between growth, environmental crises and social recession. In the last quarter of a century, as the global economy has doubled in size, increases in consumption have caused the degradation of an estimated 60% of the world’s ecosystems. The benefits of growth have been distributed unevenly, with a fifth of the world’s population sharing just 2% of global income. Even in developed countries, huge gaps in wealth and wellbeing remain between rich and poor. This report proposes a twelve step route to a sustainable economy, and argues for a redefinition of “prosperity” in light of our evidence on what really contributes to people’s wellbeing.”
Keywords: sustainability, ecological limits, prosperity, growth, decoupling, consumption, inequality, reform
URL: http://www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications.php?id=914
You may also enjoy his TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/tim_jackson_s_economic_reality_check
Systemic Crises and Systemic Change in the United States in the 21st Century
Author: Gar Alperovitz, James Gustave Speth, Ted Howard, and Joe Guinan Date: Sep 29 2016
Institution: The Next System Project (thenextsystem.org)
Annotation: In their new working paper, Next System Project co-chairs Gar Alperovitz and James Gustave Speth, NSP Executive Director Joe Guinan, and Democracy Collaborative President Ted Howard explore the mounting pressures on current American economic, political, and environmental systems. With the understanding that our current system is incompatible with a sustainable future, they identify 5 key catalysts behind our climate crisis: 1) the growth imperative, 2) consumerism, 3) extractivism, 4) corporate power, and 5) political control. A future that is “ecologically sustainable, equitable, and socially responsible” is possible only through a separation from the traditional American values of corporate capitalism. In this new system, we must place an emphasis on human and environmental well-being, along with a politically engaged citizen body if we are to reverse (or even slow) the existential threat of climate change.
Keywords: consumerism, climate change, growth
URL: http://thenextsystem.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/NSPOberlin-final.pdf
Building a Sustainable and Desirable Economy-in-Society-in-Nature
Author: Robert Costanza, Gar Alperovitz, Herman E. Daly, Joshua Farley, Carol Franco, Tim Jackson, Ida Kubiszewski, Juliet Schor, and Peter Victor Date: 2012
Institution: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA)
Annotation: “This report is a synthesis of ideas about what a new economy-in-society-in-nature might look and how we might get there. The report argues that now is the right time for the transition to a new economic paradigm. It lays out a vision, objectives and concrete policies that could underpin a new model of the economy based on the worldview and principles of “ecological economics,” including sustainable scale, equitable distribution, and efficient allocation – a model where GDP growth is not the ultimate goal. The report makes a case for a greatly expanded commons sector of the economy and new common asset institutions to adequately deal with natural and social capital assets.”
Keywords: ecological limits, growth, transition, sustainability, GDP, capital, consumption
URL: http://press.anu.edu.au/publications/building-sustainable-and-desirable-economy-society-nature
Limits Revisited
Author: Tim Jackson, Robin Wesbter Date: April 2016
Institution: All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) (contact: appg@cusp.ac.uk)
Annotation: “Four and a half decades after the Club of Rome published its landmark report on Limits to
Growth, the study remains critical to our understanding of economic prosperity. This new review of the Limits debate has been written to mark the launch of the UK All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on the Limits to Growth. It outlines the contents of the Club of Rome’s report, traces the history of responses to it and dispels some of the myths surrounding it. As Prof Tim Jackson summarises the report in his recent CUSP blog, if the Club of Rome is right, the next few decades are decisive: One of the most important lessons from the study is that early responses are absolutely vital as limits are approached. Faced with these challenges, there is also clearly a premium on creating political space for change and developing positive narratives of progress.”
Keywords: growth, consumption, resources, climate change, planetary boundaries
URL: http://limits2growth.org.uk/revisited/
Green Economy at Community Scale
Author: Tim Jackson, Peter A. Victor Date: Nov 2013
Institution: Metcalf Foundation (contact: info@metcalffoundation.com)
Annotation: Greening the economy at the local level will bring jobs, prosperity, and help us address the environmental challenges we’re facing. A green economy is not business as usual — with some clean technology added in. The transition is more fundamental and more exciting. It requires rethinking work and productivity, and developing a new vision of enterprise, investment, and a money economy that can support a shared and lasting prosperity. For Jackson and Victor, prosperity is more than producing and consuming material stuff. It’s about providing the capabilities for people to flourish in their community — socially and psychologically — without destroying the ecological assets on which our future prosperity depends. Green Economy at Community Scale is one of the first research-based explorations of the green economy at the local level. The report is drawn from the authors’ original analysis of the flow of natural and financial assets at the national level. It analyses conceptual foundations, and provides empirical evidence, for more sustainable community-based economic activities. The final section of the report draws together findings and identifies positive steps towards the creation of green local economies.
Keywords: prosperity
URL: http://metcalffoundation.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/GreenEconomy.pdf
Post Growth Economics: A Paradigm Shift in Progress
Author: Samuel Alexander Date: March 2014
Institution: The Simplicity Collective (simplicitycollective.com)
Annotation: “As the global economy slowly emerges, at least superficially, from the global financial crisis — a crisis in which many economies around the world suffered recession — the imperative of all governments around the world to maximize growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has never seemed stronger. The underlying economic assumption is that growth in GDP is the most direct path to national prosperity, and this vision of progress is widely embraced across the political spectrum, where growth is used as the touchstone of policy and institutional success. Despite the dominance of this growth model of progress around the world, it has never been without its critics, and as this paper will outline, there are reasons to think that grounds for opposition are growing in number, strength, and sophistication.”
Keywords: growth, limits to growth, degrowth, sustainable economy
URL: http://simplicitycollective.com/post-growth-economics-a-paradigm-shift-in-progress
Populism and Digital Democracy
Author: Craig Calhoun Date: October 2016
Institution: Berggruen Insights (http://insights.berggruen.org/)
Annotation: “New technologies offer the reality of much wider access to political information and conversation, and the potential for greater governmental transparency and citizen participation. They also enable money to buy attention, simplistic messages to displace more sophisticated information and debate, and demagogues to broaden their reach.”
Keywords: social change, populism, digital media, information quality
URL: http://insights.berggruen.org/issues/issue-6/institute_posts/156
Republic Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress and a Plan to Stop It
Author: Lawrence Lessig Date: 2011
Institution: Roy L. Furman Professor of Law, Harvard
Annotation: “In an era when special interests funnel huge amounts of money into our government— driven by shifts in campaign-finance rules and brought to new levels by the Supreme Court in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission—trust in our government has reached an all-time low. More than ever before, Americans believe that money buys results in Congress, and that business interests wield control over our legislature…. While America may be divided, Lessig vividly champions the idea that we can succeed if we accept that corruption is our common enemy and that we must find a way to fight against it. In REPUBLIC, LOST, he not only makes this need palpable and clear—he gives us the practical and intellectual tools to do something about it.” (There is also a more recent version 2.0, but I find the first edition to be better)
Keywords: political corruption, democratic reform
URL: http://republic.lessig.org/
You may also enjoy his TED talk: https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim