This is an incredible book, but what is most incredible of all is that after ten months of availability it currently ranks 40k+ in Amazon’s sales ranking and has only 40 reviews. That still puts it in the top tier of books, mind you, but this book should be in a tier by itself. It is truly transformative. (I only discovered it due to a comment written in response to the review of another book.)
Kate Raworth, who trained in economics at Oxford, has never quite felt comfortable in her chosen field of study. And for good reason. The neoliberal economic model that has guided us for the last three or four decades, based on fundamental assumptions that pre-date us all by several generations, are not so much flawed as they are misaligned, to the point of actual destruction, to the social, economic, political, and environmental world in which we live the 21st Century.
As an economics major myself back in the 1970s, and a corporate warrior who lived, breathed, and trusted the neoliberal creed for four subsequent decades, I am both an unlikely and uber-supporter of Raworth’s perspective and ideas.
The markets and the consumer are decidedly not efficient; as every leading economist has assumed but every businessperson knows is bullocks. If they were, strategic planning would be a lot more straightforward and companies would be a lot more consistently successful. Companies would not have to constantly reinvent themselves, the turnaround experts and bankruptcy attorneys would have little to do, and investors could take long holidays on the private islands they could easily afford.
The resources we rely on are not unlimited. Why are we arguing about the science of climate change? Look around, and if you still don’t see it, sit down and take an inventory of the resources you personally consume and plot it against whatever happiness index you like. The imbalance, you will quickly conclude, is absurd.
I lived as an ex-patriate industrialist in a part of the world where you could not drink the water or, on many days, breathe the air. On both counts I am being quite literal. And I can tell you that on both counts nothing else matters. Now back in the US Midwest I can tell you both that I continue to pay the price and that our collective attitude here in the developed world toward these issues is conscious but dismissive. In short, we have been spared true understanding in the same way the blind are spared having to look at the ubiquitous “comparative selfie” that seems to be the single most transformative accomplishment of social media at the moment.
We do not assign value to the economic inputs and the assets that really matter. There is no place on the balance sheet for engagement or innovation, and nowhere is there an accounting for shared (what Raworth calls common) assets, like safety, education, infrastructure, the country’s defenses, etc. We’re measuring well-being by the quality of the creases in our trousers.
I could go on, but there is no need. Raworth has already completed that task. Which is why this book should be required reading for every adolescent in every corner of the world. The universe is interconnected in ways that we have known, but largely ignored, since the beginning of time. We see the world in a linear framework that reflects and reinforces our deductive worldview in which logic and reason progress from left to right and down to up. Our top is where our smarts reside. Our backs contain the backbone that carries the weight of our ever-extending bellies (mine at least).
Nowhere in economics has this been more obvious or more damaging to our long-term interests than our pre-occupation with economic growth. It’s not an assumption, really. It’s a necessity. As we’re reminded daily, we need economic growth to keep people employed and wages rising. Without new air going in each and every moment, the balloon deflates. Doesn’t that mean, however, that at some point the balloon reaches its innate capacity and ultimately bursts?
Raworth’s perspective is spot on and the writing is excellent. She has an obvious knack of distilling what may at first seem complex down to the simple and straightforward without losing anything in the translation.
I think of the debate in more personal terms. We currently see our world through a very individual-centric lens. In economics, as Raworth covers here, the macro exists to serve the micro. In politics we are motivated by individual rights and freedoms. In medicine we focus on individual health and well-being. Even in psychology we are absorbed with personal happiness and personal measures of purpose and contentment.
The result is that our political, social, economic, and even religious spheres of influence operate in independent isolation. And that was okay in the past since there were far fewer of us, resources were in abundance, and we lived and acquired information and knowledge in a largely local ecosystem.
But technology, population growth, and constant advances in science have changed all that. Those spheres are now completely inter-connected. Social media drives politics. Politics drives social identity. Economics drives social injustice. The need for security impinges religious freedom.
Raworth’s donut is the perfect visual analogy for the need to think less in terms of absolutes and more in terms of balance. I also think of it in terms of balancing the deductive Western worldview with the more inductive Eastern worldview. Most importantly, we must learn to think in terms of “we” rather than “I.”
All of our systems of influence, from the political to the economic, must be transformed to promote collective balance rather than individual hegemony.
In the last sections of the book, Raworth addresses the question of the era: Can the plane of economic growth, as we currently define it, continue to soar ever upward; must it level out, and if so how do we fulfill our economic expectations; or is it time to land and make do?
As with the rest of the book Raworth does the conundrum justice and lays out all of the options thoroughly and with clarity. I think there is only one element that is not missing, but perhaps deserves more emphasis.
We continue to treat economics, politics, philosophy, sociology, psychology, and the hard sciences as distinct and discrete spheres of knowledge and influence. With advances in technology that have entirely transformed all aspects of our lives, that is simply no longer possible. We must take a page from our leaders in science who are quickly integrating all functional disciplines into, essentially, one. That is how the universe ultimately works.
One of the arguments for pushing the plane higher and higher is the recognition that democracy, as we have known it, will die if we don’t. It is, however, already dying, if not already dead. The democratic justification for growth, in other words, is a specious argument. We must redefine what it means to be free.
To borrow a page from Darwin, none of the current disciplines will give up its identity quietly (With perhaps the exception of philosophers, who have largely given up or gone into hiding. Sadly.). Each will fight to the death to preserve its own privilege.
It’s a bit like the game of Jenga. Who goes first?
I won’t say Raworth would endorse this priority but she certainly makes the case for it. I think the first to go has to be the notion of shareholder supremacy. It is an anachronism of the most abusive kind, positing, as Raworth notes, employees as the ultimate outsiders looking in. It’s an unsustainable model. And it’s pure fallacy. To say that today’s investors own our corporations is like saying that the gamblers own the casinos. (At least in the case of gambling, the gamblers at least set foot in the casino.) As in the case of poker, the gamblers may own the pot, but not the cards, the table, or the dealer.
And, as Raworth futher notes, changing the perspective will require a complete transformation of the process by which we currently manage our largest corporations. So be it. If it doesn’t start there, I don’t think any of the other transformative needs are feasible.
Beyond that I believe that the only viable option for transformative change is to address the problem from the consumption and expectation side of things. We just don’t need all of this “stuff” in order to live fulfilling lives. We can and should live much more locally. And technology has given us the perfect opportunity.
What really matters in life is to think and dream globally and the Internet has given us that opportunity at next to zero cost. The next step should be an easy one although no gambler ever got rich betting against the power and resilience of those entrenched interests who wish to protect the status quo. (Which is why our politics are such a mess.)
At any rate, this really is a great book and I do hope we can collectively push it to the top of the bestseller list where it belongs. It’s a discussion we need to have, not just with our economists, but with our children, our colleagues, and our loved ones. (Not to imply we don’t love our children.)
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Today we have economies that need to grow, whether or not they make us thrive: what we need are economies that make us thrive, whether or not they grow.Highlighted by 2,181 Kindle readers- First, rather than narrowly self-interested we are social and reciprocating. Second, in place of fixed preferences, we have fluid values. Third, instead of isolated we are interdependent. Fourth, rather than calculate, we usually approximate. And fifth, far from having dominion over nature, we are deeply embedded in the web of life.Highlighted by 1,825 Kindle readers
- Today’s economy is divisive and degenerative by default. Tomorrow’s economy must be distributive and regenerative by design.Highlighted by 1,402 Kindle readers
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Watch Before Buying - DoughnutEconomics.
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As Revolutionary as the Wheel
Not only has Kate Raworth come up with a revolutionary economic model to fit the needs of our times, she has made it comprehensible, and even entertainingly readable, for the lay reader.In 1979, I obtained a BS in Computer Science with a minor in economics. Out of all my economics classes, the phrase that stuck with me was, "cash is dearer than your mother." You're allowed to ask whether that is the root of all evil.Raworth has eleucidated how traditional Homo Oeconomicus has morphed from a model OF human behavior into a model FOR human behavior, and the damage that transformation has wrought. While narrow self-interest may have served a purpose in analyzing or attempting to predict market efficiency, it both fails to account for the effects of other human characteristics upon markets, and encourages narrow self-centric behavior.Doughnut economic thinking is not merely thinking outside the box. It is a redefinition of the box. In an age where negative externalities dominate the lived experience of hundreds of millions of people, relative to the influence of markets and material goods, the field of economics must extend beyond its traditional boundaries to incorporate phenomena considered external today into its internal model.Sandwiching the optimal range of human condition between the social foundation and the ecological ceiling neatly ties the two together. The doughnut analogy becomes a pun, as the region in between is literally the sweet spot. She names all her sources, and all have institutional credibility. They are easy to access for further research.Here, Raworth recasts economics from a science to an art. Traditional economists may recoil as they perceive this as a demotion. Perhaps a more fruitful term would be an engineering discipline. The predictive capacity of economics is limited by the boundaries of complexity theory, a relatively new and undeveloped field. Rather than seeking a static equilibrium in a field of known, quantifiable variables, economists need to seek robust, dynamic, adaptive strategies within a dancing landscape of local optima. This is clearly a more difficult task, and should be embraced as cutting edge technology rather than as a departure from the rigor of science.Neoliberals, if they care to read the book, are likely to object to the idea of an ecological ceiling. They prefer to cite Paul Ehrlich's failed population explosion prediction. Arguably, Ehrlich wasn't entirely wrong. He failed to foresee the so-called green revolution in the technology of food production. However, one could argue that the green revolution was a once in a geological era accomplishment that simply kicked the can down the road. Now with 9 categories of ecological boundaries, with human impact already beyond the range of uncertainty in two of them, in the zone of increasing risk in two more, and boundaries not yet established by science for two more, the fact of planetary overshoot is now indisputable.The book also makes it clear that markets are not efficient for the majority of humanity. Even if it were true that sufficient GDP growth would eventually reverse the worsening social condition and clean up the worst environmental excess, how much death and suffering should we tolerate while waiting for a reversal that might never come?An academic discipline that ignores catastrophic and possibly existential threat to all of humanity is no discipline at all. A new discipline is needed. To me, Raworth's doughnut looks more like a lifesaver, in the rising sea level of global climate change.
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As a trained economist, hardened corporate warrior, and a father, I say you can't NOT read this book
Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2017Reviewed in the United States on February 6, 2024
Reviewed in the United States on August 8, 2021
Reviewed in the United States on April 13, 2024
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