In 1972 a groundbreaking assessment of the challenges we face to save Mother Earth
was made in the report The Limits to Growth for the Club of Rome. 50 years later in 2022 another report was presented to the Club of Rome, Earth for All, A SURVIVAL GUIDE for Humanity. During the intervening 50 years there has been no lack of schemes for making environmental and human alternatives a reality. Here is an action plan based on such proposals.
A decisive prerequisite for embracing the schemes presented here, is to change our
perception away from what today are the canons. Mary Midgley’s writings, particularly
her book Myths that we live by, offer helpful and inspiring reading. Her message is that
we live by myths, by which she means the world-picture on which we base our
concepts, images, metaphors and habits of thinking. Her use of these terms is in line
with Thomas Kuhn’s notion of a paradigm, but the added value of Midley’s approach is
that by using the word ‘myth’, she draws attention to the central role imagination plays in
our perception and to the wider role that myths play in human life (see David Midley Ed.
The Essential Mary Midgley, 2005).
David E Cooper may here illustrate the steering power of a paradigm that we need to
be attentive to when striving toward human- and nature-centred paradigms. “1,500
years divide Plotinus’ chapter on beauty from Hume’s essay on taste (1757), but it might
as well be 15,000, so different are the contexts assumed and the problems addressed.”
Before the enlightenment focus was placed on the value of art and beauty as
contributing to human life, whereas by the 18th century focus had become placed on
the status of judgments of aesthetic values such as ‘This design is beautiful’.
Where to direct focus
Through the lens of myth, I will here look at growth, the economy, work, and art with
focus on the perceptual changes that are needed to align with the Club of Rome’s
proposals. The authors of the report The Limits to Growth, Meadows, Donella H. et al., observe that one of the most commonly accepted myths today is the promise that a continuation of our present patterns of growth will lead to human equality. They demonstrate that present patterns of population and capital growth are actually increasing the gap between the rich and the poor on a worldwide basis, and that the ultimate result of a continued attempt to grow according to the present pattern will be a disastrous collapse.
Growth - a first challenge
It is through the gross domestic product, GDP, that we measure growth. Ever since the
GDP was introduced in the 1930s, its suitability for this purpose has been questioned.
Many alternative measurement models have since then been developed. A central one
is a proposal presented by the Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi Commission to measure economic
development and social progress. The Commission gave its report in 2009, Report on
the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress. There is solid
economic knowledge behind the report as it is headed by two Nobel laureates,
Professors Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen together with the French economist
Jean-Paul Fitoussi.
The report can be seen as a game changer. The Commission considered that if its
recommendations are followed, they can have a decisive influence on how
governments' policies are designed, implemented and evaluated. The Commission's
advice was simple, to change the focus of the statistics from economic production to
factors affecting the well-being of today's and future generations. This report has been
followed up by a High Level Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and
Social Progress (HLEG), hosted by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and
Development, OECD. The high level group was working further on the initial report of
2009 for more than five years (from 2013 to 2018). The latter report has the revealing
title Beyond GDP: Measuring What Counts for Economic and Social Performance,
OECD, 2018.
That the high level group was working for more than five years to further develop on the
proposals of the 2009 report indicates that the problems associated with GDP have
been a hard nut to crack. But the results are encouraging, as the report reveals how
misleading the simplistic calculations of GDP can be and the consequences they can
lead to. It shows the gap between the “experts” view of the economy and the citizens'
experiences. The growth mantra is being critically addressed, and growth has also been
one of the points on which GDP has been criticised, way back.
Questioning growth is thus an important first step for a changed paradigm that needs to
be taken seriously. The same goes for the myths about the economy.
A changed perception of the economy
If we were to start from scratch to arrange how money should be supplied to a
democratic society – "nobody in their right mind would dream of setting it up as it is
now." This is James Robertson's verdict in his book Future Money: Breakdown or
Breakthrough? (2012). The system as it now works is self-inflicted, he says. We have
allowed ourselves to become dependent on the commercial banks to provide our money
supply as interest-bearing debt. Once we have got rid of that burden a good deal more
than the present annual interest cost will become available for other public purposes.
With his economic model, Robertson wants to reduce the conflict between present
money values and universal values such as democracy, the rule of law and human
rights.
The gist of Robertson's proposals is that public agencies serving the common interest
should create the public money supply. People and businesses and other organisations,
both public service and non-profit organisations, should be taxed on the value they take
from common resources (emphasis added). Taxes thus accrued should, after
democratic decisions on what is needed to finance other public services, be equitably
shared among us all as a citizen's income.
James Robertson is by no means alone in his critique and proposals for changing the
economy. There are a great variety of proposals for remedying the broken economy. I
will here bring to the fore two scholars who argue along the same lines as Robertson.
They are Geoff Crocker in his book Basic Income and Sovereign Money: The
Alternative to Economic Crisis and Austerity Policy (2020) and Stephanie Kelton, in her
book The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and How to Build a Better Economy
(2020).
Geoff Crocker points out that the system as it now works generates seriously
dysfunctional outcomes and he stresses that his proposal requires a radical re-think and
economic system re-engineering. What is specific about my proposal, Crocker says, is
that it brings together two ideas, basic income and sovereign money. This combination
offers a radical alternative paradigm to contemporary economic thinking. It counteracts
crisis and austerity and offers an ecological advantage, while it, at the same time, lies
within the established thinking of Keynesian economics that aggregate demand is the
key policy target and tool in modern economic analysis and policy formulation.
The problem today is that consumer expenditure is consistently greater than labour
income, and the gap is increasing fast. From 1948 to 1995, we lived from earned
income, and labour income was more than sufficient to fund consumer expenditure. But
from 1995 on, the opposite is the case, Crocker says. Technology is one major factor
that has led to a decrease in real earnings as compared to work output. Crocker’s
solution is thus that debt-free sovereign money is required and justified (emphasis
added) to supplement consumer income and sustain public expenditure. Both basic
income and sovereign money proposals have a further crucial impact, namely, to reduce
debt in the economy.
The massive increase in consumer debt was a main factor triggering the 2007 economic
crisis. Crocker explains that replacing consumer debt with basic income will avoid such
a crisis. Equally, if governments issued direct sovereign money and defined this to be
debt-free, i.e. issued without the matching sale of government bonds, then the
government expenditure funded by this sovereign money would no longer be defined as
deficit spending. Thereby, public sector debt would not be incurred, and austerity policy
would then not be necessary to reduce government deficit. This would do away with
escalating debt that in some counties may equal, or in some cases even exceed, the
entire gross domestic product, GDP, Geoff Crocker contends.
Stephanie Kelton's message in her book The Deficit Myth: Modern Theory and How to
Build a Better Economy (2020) is that if we want to increase our public well-being, we
have far more options than we realise. What we desperately need, though, is to see
through the myths that have been holding us back. Kelton is a leading proponent of the
Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) research orientation that argues that we need a
Copernican shift in our understanding of the economy. Like Copernicus' revelation that
the earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around, Kelton's message is
that when it comes to deficits, in almost all instances deficits are good for the economy.
They are even necessary, she insists. The way we have thought about them and treated
them is often incomplete or inaccurate. Rather than chasing after the misguided goal of
a balanced budget we should be pursuing the promise of harnessing what MMT calls
our public money, or sovereign currency, to balance the economy so that prosperity is
broadly shared and not concentrated in fewer and fewer hands.
Mainstream economists see the budget deficit, but they're missing the matching surplus
on the other side, Stephanie Kelton asserts. And since many Americans are missing it,
too, they end up applauding efforts to balance the budget, even though it could mean
taking money out of their pockets.
As a share of the gross domestic product, GDP, the US national debt was at its
highest—120 percent—in the period immediately following the Second World War.
Yet, this was the period during which the middle class was built, real median family
income soared, and the next generation enjoyed a higher standard of living without the
added burden of higher taxes. Stephanie Kelton explains that increasing the deficit
doesn't make future generations poorer, and reducing deficits won't make them any
richer.
"With the great force of common sense, Stephanie Kelton and the MMT team have
broken through the closed circles of so-called sound finance, a stale orthodoxy that has
weakened and impoverished us all", says James K. Galbraith in praise of Kelton's book.
The same could be said about the thinking of James Robertson and Geoff Crocker.
A changed perception of work - breaking through the legacy of industrial work
With industrialisation, a blue-collar worker became the ideal type for the regulation of
working life. With the present transition from a predominantly industrial society to one
dominated by information and communication technology, ICT, and globalisation, we are
faced with the challenge to adapt both perception and legislation to these new
conditions. The challenge today is to differentiate work of different kinds, and remove
the shackles of labour law’s one size fits all logic and the mentality that goes along with
it.
The lack of adaptations to a changed working life is at the root of a growing precariat
and an increasing number of working poor, because of labour law's narrow premise,
which is full time long term employment. This narrow 'standard', has led to a situation
where the protection labour legislation is intended to provide, has come to cover an ever
decreasing number of working people. Those who work in formats deviating from 'the
standard' often face constant insecurity and low income. This constellation leaves much
to be desired from the central requisites of a legal order, such as predictability and legal certainty. Equally, central requisites of human rights, such as respect for human dignity,
are found wanting.
Cal Newport analyses the challenges facing knowledge workers in his book Slow
Productivity, The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout (2024). Knowledge
workers are one category of professionals whose work is at odds with the logic of
industrial production and the blue-collar worker as the ideal-type. Newport stresses that
the dynamics of cognitive labour are different from those of physical labour. In a factory,
pushing employees to work longer shifts might be directly more profitable. In knowledge
work, by contrast, pushing employees into larger workloads can decrease both the
quantity and quality of what they produce. Newport observes that if you toil at a
computer screen for a living, tasks are not necessarily directly assigned to you by a
stopwatch-wielding manager looking to hit a production target at all costs. Instead they
are often thrown in your direction more haphazardly, from all directions — colleagues,
the HR department, clients.
One characteristic that Newport attributes to knowledge workers, along with
small-business entrepreneurs and freelancers, is that most of them are fortunate
enough to exert some control over their efforts. Computers and networks opened many
new possibilities, Newport remarks, but with a price - burnout. When combined with
pseudo-productivity they end up supercharging our sense of overload and distraction,
pushing us onto a collision course with the burnout crisis that afflicts us today. A Gallup
poll has shown that American workers are among some of the most stressed in the
world. Cal Newport observes that we don’t need data to teach us what so many have
already encountered in their own lives.
Art - showing a way ahead
To consider the work of artists and cultural workers requires looking at work from a
perspective that is perhaps as far removed as can be from the ideal-type underpinning
labour law - a male blue-collar worker. Questions have to be put differently when art and
culture is involved than when the primary function of a job is to secure one’s material
subsistence. For artists and cultural workers the fundamental questions boil down to
being able to do one’s work and to be able to accrue an income from it.
The guiding principles for considerations about artists are to be found in the UNESCO
Recommendation concerning the Status of the Artist. The recommendation departs from the recognition that artists work under specific socio-economic conditions that differ
from the overall labour market. The recommendation calls for the right of artists to
proper remuneration for their professional activities free from discrimination in areas
such as taxation, social security or freedom of association. Regrettably, there has not
been much progress on this front since 1980, when the recommendation was adopted.
An EU Commission Staff Paper Culture, the Cultural Industries and Employment has
caught the nature of artistic work in a nutshell when noting that creation is the work of
gifted individuals. How this gift is used, that is, the possibilities there are for artists to
make a living from their work depend essentially on the value that society attaches to
artistic work.
The categories of workers that deviate from the ideal type of industrial work, all perform
activities that are in line with the suggestions made in the report to the Club of Rome
The Limits to Growth (1972). Technological advances would be both necessary and
welcome in the equilibrium state, which is the primary goal they advocate for in their
report. The authors remark that what better incentive could there be than the
knowledge that a new idea would be translated into a visible improvement in the quality
of life where the most desirable and satisfying activities of mankind could flourish:
education, art, music, religion, basic scientific research, athletics, and social
interactions.
Midgley’s World-vision
A central focus for Mary Midley’s world-vision is the fight between science and
philosophy. In her book Science as Salvation she observes that our concept of ‘how the
world fundamentally is’ has, historically, derived much more from poetry and religious
teaching than from science. The world-vision of classical science itself was, to a far
greater extent than most scientists today probably realise, drawn from such poetic and
mystical visions.
Midgley points out that with a scientific method a wrong toolkit is used when
approaching living systems, and this will land us in deep trouble. We need alternative
visions that can serve to illuminate the realm of living things, she says.
Midgley asserts that the impact of the technologies, ways of thinking and ways of life
that have grown out of the materialist conception of the world has had a cataclysmic
destructive effect on the world of living things, including the planetary ecosystem, as the
cosmos basically has been viewed as inanimate. Midgley insists that it is time to
reconsider the possibility, like other cultures do, to regard the world we live in as itself
alive, as James Lovelock has done. He formulated his Gaia hypothesis in the 1970s, as
a response to questions about the possibility of life on other planets, which had arisen
from out of space research. He answered these questions with the profound
observation that to continue in existence, life on Earth has to intervene actively to
maintain the physical conditions which are necessary for its preservation. In a sense,
one may say that life can't exist on a planet that is not itself alive, says Mary Midgely.
(The Essential Mary Midgley, 2005)
50 years later - Earth for All
The 2022 report to the Club of Rome, Earth for All is an impressive mapping of threats
and potential remedies. Here is the suggestion from Dixson-Decleve et al. for how the
economic gameboard might look like if we pull the following three levers:
The first lever adds a new money tree to the board: nature. Nature has always been
there as an invisible source of all wealth. But, they note, it wasn’t valued, which made it
easy to ignore, and to destroy. From this money tree a Citizens Fund should be
established to distribute universal basic dividends generated from fees on wealth
extraction and use of shared commons. Once the benefits from nature are shared with
citizens, as in the commons of old, wealth begins shifting back to workers, communities,
and households (emphasis added).
The second lever—regulating finance to invest in strategies that address inequality,
climate change, and other crises. This will shake the private money tree in new ways.
To make this happen the government takes a stronger role to encourage the shift, and
citizens start viewing themselves as a public whose future is worth investing in.
And here they join with James Robertson, Geoff Crocker and Stephanie Kelton in the
role sovereign money can play. To stimulate both these levers, governments with
sovereign currency can shake their public money tree and reap rewards that translate
into long-term environmental and human security (emphasis added). They can actually
spend money into existence, as long as there is unused real capacity in the economy,
without causing excessive inflation.
The third lever — the cancellation of unfair debt — upends the gameboard dramatically.
Here, governments step in to insist that debt held by creditors on unfair terms be
forgiven (emphasis added). Cancelling $900 billion in international debt burdening
low-income nations would affect almost a billion people.
With such changes, Dixson-Decleve et al. observe that economic growth, that holy grail
of the modern economy, takes on an entirely new character and purpose. Focus is
shifted away from measuring progress by the narrowly conceived annual flows of
consumption and production, and toward measuring growth in a broad, shared wealth.
In their report Earth for All, presented to the Club of Rome by Dixson-Decleve, Gaffney,
Ghosh, Randers, Rockstrom and Stoknes, they conclude that we also need a change in
the narrative throughout society, in every home, every school, every university, every
town and city on how to upgrade our economic system. We think this is possible. At the
end of the day, it is about defending our common sacred values, providing a home for
our families, our kids, our loved ones, ensuring the dignity of each human being, and
looking forward to the future on a livable planet.
Keywords: perception, myths, economy, work, art, basic income
Literature
Beyond GDP: Measuring What Counts for Economic and Social Performance OECD, 2018
Crocker, Geoff, Basic Income and Sovereign Money: The Alternative to Economic Crisis
and Austerity Policy, Springer 2020
Dixson-Decleve, Sandrine; Gaffney, Owen; Ghosh, Jayati; Randers, Jorgen; Rockstrom,
Johan; Stoknes, Per Espen, Earth for All - A SURVIVAL GUIDE for Humanity A Report
to the Club of Rome, 2022
Kelton, Stephanie, The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and How to Build a
Better Economy, 2020
Meadows, Donella H., Meadows, Dennis L., Randers, Jørgen, Behrens III, William, The
Limits to Growth - Club of Rome, Universe Books, 1972
Midley, David,Ed. The Essential Mary Midgley, Routledge, Taylor & Francis. Kindle
Edition, 2005
Newport, Cal. Slow Productivity The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout,
Penguin Books Ltd. Kindle Edition, 2024
Papakonstantinidis, Leonidas & Storlund, Vivan,
- A Social Contract with Humans and Nature Center Stage - Research leap in
International Journal of Management Science and Business Administration Volume 10,
Issue 2, January 2024, Pages 28-40
DOI:10.18775/ijmsba.1849-5664-5419.2014.102.1003
Robertson, James, Future money : breakdown or breakthrough?, Green Books, 2012
Stiglitz – Sen – Fitoussi, Report of the Commission on the Measurement of Economic
Performance and Social Progress, 2009
Storlund, Vivan
- To each one’s due at the borderline of work, Helsinki 2002
- Widening horizons by mining the wealth of creative thinkers to seize the empowering
potentials of the digital age with artists as precursors and basic income as the means,
Amazon, 2018
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OF THE NORDIC WELFARE STATE, Helsinki 2019
UNESCO Recommendation concerning the Status of the Artist, 1980
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