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Ecological economics interview: Jon Erickson (audio)
Jason Bradford, Reality Report via Global Public Media
Explanations of the economic downturn focus on greed, corruption, incompetence and inequality. But this isn’t the whole story. The Reality Report interviews Jon D. Erickson, Professor at the University of Vermont and Fellow of the Gund Institute of Ecological Economics.
Some key points that emerge from the show are: (1) the economic decline is a predicable consequence of a faulty set of theories and deliberate policies, (2) most economic growth nowadays is “uneconomic” because the costs exceed the benefits, both socially and via ecological debts (3) the biophysical basis for the economy is still ignored and therefore the ability to expand the economy to pay back debts may be limited, (4) recent U.S. and G20 responses to the crisis thus far are incomplete and therefore not likely to succeed, (5) several suggestions for reform are given, including: using green indicators, not GDP, to measure the macroeconomy, regional planning for relocalized economies, and a form of money backed by tangibles, not debt.
(8 April 2009)
Socialism has failed. Now capitalism is bankrupt. So what comes next?
Eric Hobsbawm, The Guardian
Whatever ideological logo we adopt, the shift from free market to public action needs to be bigger than politicians grasp
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The 20th century is well behind us, but we have not yet learned to live in the 21st, or at least to think in a way that fits it. That should not be as difficult as it seems, because the basic idea that dominated economics and politics in the last century has patently disappeared down the plughole of history. This was the way of thinking about modern industrial economies, or for that matter any economies, in terms of two mutually exclusive opposites: capitalism or socialism.
We have lived through two practical attempts to realise these in their pure form: the centrally state-planned economies of the Soviet type and the totally unrestricted and uncontrolled free-market capitalist economy. The first broke down in the 1980s, and the European communist political systems with it. The second is breaking down before our eyes in the greatest crisis of global capitalism since the 1930s.
… Public decisions aimed at collective social improvement from which all human lives should gain. That is the basis of progressive policy – not maximising economic growth and personal incomes. Nowhere will this be more important than in tackling the greatest problem facing us this century, the environmental crisis. Whatever ideological logo we choose for it, it will mean a major shift away from the free market and towards public action, a bigger shift than the British government has yet envisaged. And, given the acuteness of the economic crisis, probably a fairly rapid shift. Time is not on our side.
Eric Hobsbawm’s most recent publication is On Empire: America, War, and Global Supremacy
(10 April 2009)
Just 53% Say Capitalism Better Than Socialism
Rasmussen Reports
Only 53% of American adults believe capitalism is better than socialism.
The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that 20% disagree and say socialism is better. Twenty-seven percent (27%) are not sure which is better.
… It is interesting to compare the new results to an earlier survey in which 70% of Americans prefer a free-market economy. The fact that a “free-market economy” attracts substantially more support than “capitalism” may suggest some skepticism about whether capitalism in the United States today relies on free markets.
Other survey data supports that notion. Rather than seeing large corporations as committed to free markets, two-out-of-three Americans believe that big government and big business often work together in ways that hurt consumers and investors.
(9 April 2009)
At Washington Monthly, Steve Benen comments:
You just can’t have an effective red scare with numbers like these.
In terms of interpreting these results, the numbers certainly aren’t what I expected, and it’s hard to know why respondents answered as they did. Perhaps “capitalism” lost some of its appeal when our economy collapsed. Maybe a lot of people heard the media connect Obama and “socialism,” and since they like the president, they figure socialism can’t be that bad. …
But I was especially intrigued by the 27% who weren’t sure which was better. Talk about a sign of the times — more than one in four aren’t quite sure whether capitalism or socialism is the superior system.
UPDATE (April 11) NY Times blogger Tobin Harshaw discusses the ripples this article caused in the blogosphere: Weekend Opinionator: A Different Sort of Red America
