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Moonbeam Cafe

Moonbeam Cafe

Moonbeam Cafe: for the night owls. We are not afraid of the dark. Pour a drink and stay a while.

4339 members
Posted byMagessin/moonbeam_cafe-Mar 24 at 2:22 PM

Doughnut Economics

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Pedram Shojai

Live Podcast with Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics.

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Oxford economics scholar discusses a different paradigm for economics.

Comments4
  • zhemaoMar 24 at 6:32 PM

    There are some interesting ideas here. I definitely agree with her criticism of classical economics and its narrow focus on market activity. Economics definitely needs to change and consider empirical evidence alongside the mathematical models. There also definitely needs to be more of a focus on inequality and sustainability.

    I'm a bit more skeptical about the criticism of infinite growth, however. While I do think it's right to question whether continued growth in GDP is possible in the long-term, I think it's fairly obvious that lack of growth will have negative effects. To put it simply, if the economy is no longer growing, then it's no longer a positive sum game. If you can't get gain from the pie getting bigger (or helping to make the pie bigger), then the only way to gain is to take a slice of the pie from someone else. Throw tribalism, classism, and nationalism into the mix and that's a recipe for a much bleaker future. She sort of implies that growth only comes from increases in size or quantity and greater resource utilization. Or at least, that's what I'm getting from the Jimi Hendrix metaphor. But economic growth can also come from increases in quality or by using existing resources more efficiently. In which case Jimi Hendrix working magic on the six-string is still a form of growth.

    • zhemaoMar 24 at 6:35 PM

      Also, when she said that people who study more classical economics become more self-interested, I think that might be stretching the conclusions of the original study. If I recall correctly, that study found that higher-level econ students showed more self-interested behavior in a psychological game, which is a very different thing. If it's a game, then the objective is already to get a better result, and someone who has studied more econ just knows how to play the game better. I don't think that necessarily means they will show more narrow self-interest in real life decision-making.

    • MagessMar 24 at 8:07 PM

      I'm not sure that anyone recognizes "growth in terms of quality or efficiency" as a real thing. But even those have SOME limit. You can't get infinitely more efficient, just as you can't use infinitely more resources.

      • zhemaoMar 25 at 12:15 AM

        I'm not sure that anyone recognizes "growth in terms of quality or efficiency" as a real thing.

        What do you mean? I'd say the bulk of our GDP growth over the last 100 years has been attributable to that. What is technological change other than improvements in quality and efficiency?

        And yes there are definitely hard physical limits to efficiency gains, too. But I'm not sure we've quite reached that point yet or will reach that point anytime soon. It's definitely worth it to keep pushing at that boundary.

Moonbeam Cafe

Moonbeam Cafe

Moonbeam Cafe: for the night owls. We are not afraid of the dark. Pour a drink and stay a while.

4339 members
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