The Black Death Killed Feudalism. What Does COVID-19 Mean for Capitalism?
Are we now at just such a moment in world history? Will the coronavirus permanently transform the relationship between the state and the market?
Are we now at just such a moment in world history? Will the coronavirus permanently transform the relationship between the state and the market?
Last May, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern released a budget to improve the “wellbeing” of its citizens rather than focusing on productivity and GDP growth. And not so coincidentally, New Zealand has one of the best coronavirus outcomes of any democracy in the world.
Change needs to be systemic to match the scale of the emergency and the inequalities uncovered and reproduced by the pandemic. This crisis can and should be used as a collective learning point for a transformation towards an alternative feminist degrowth future.
Trained to see the dismemberment of complex production processes as efficient and natural, and its segregation from consumption as a core premise of “the economy,” economists tend to overlook a more elegant, practical approach to provisioning — commoning.
For those of us working for change at local, municipal and regional scales, this is the moment when many of the solutions we’ve been promoting are needed and the conditions for building the foundations for longer term change are favourable.
If we are to follow this path that sustains life rather than the one that is destroying it we need more than the collection of great ideas and projects being put forth by so many brilliant people. We need a comprehensive, holistic plan. This will not be easy but the alternative will be far more difficult.
Just as income inequalities and social class differences are divisive and give rise to opposed interests and perspectives, being in the same predicament creates unity and shared interests. Hence the pandemic has brought us together in the same way that research shows greater equality does. Both make us feel we have more in common.
This book is focused primarily on domestic climate policy, because neither we as individuals nor our government can, with a straight face, presume to advise the wider world on climate issues unless we ourselves have at least started the journey toward life within ecological boundaries.
Having been shaken to our collective core by the COVID19 pandemic, can we muster the will to make major changes in how we rebuild our systems, to truly transform how we function as a society for the betterment of Earth and her inhabitants? What cause is more just, fair, and wise?
This fundamental question is the one I ask myself in my research, as an ecological economist. What are the physical things (like energy, materials, infrastructure and so on) we need to live well? To answer it, we must understand what we truly need, and how satisfying our needs connects to well-being.
In The Green New Deal and Beyond: Ending the Climate Emergency While We Still Can, Stan Cox has a message for all who were counting on the Green New Deal to help save us from ecological and economic collapse: this legislation will not go far enough. C
Though many of our ideas may seem “impossible” now, history shows us again and again that today’s “what ifs” can become tomorrow’s “what is” during a time of crisis – but only if we take them seriously enough and put in the work that’s necessary to bring them to fruition.