Seventy years ago this month – in April 1947 – economists Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises and friends met in the Swiss village of Mont Pelerin to write a new economic story, and they called it Neoliberalism. Their story was put on the international stage in the 1980s (thanks, Maggie, thanks Ronnie) and it has ruled us ever since.
Today I’m thrilled to launch a brand new Doughnut Economics animation that tells this story – and it’s been brilliantly animated by the fabulously talented Tom Lee at Rocket Visual.
It’s time for a new economic story that’s fit for the 21st century – but how should that story begin? That’s the question at the heart of Doughnut Economics.
Please share this video far and wide – we need the talent of many storytellers to write a new one fit for our times….
Kate, I’m half way through your great book and making lots of notes. It seems to me that an economic system capable of meeting the doughnut requirements would need a changed definition of wealth. In her 07 book, The Real Wealth of Nations, Riane Eisler suggested that, Real wealth is a measurement of a robust ecology and the general health and happiness of the people. With such a basis for the monetary economic system governments could adhere to the management golden rule that, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.
I absolutely agree, we need a new definition of wealth – I hope you discover the sections where I discuss that in the book. Eisler’s view sounds wise.
The problem is not to create a better story, but to make it sufficiently performative to make it build its own reality.
Interesting, I’ll muse on that!
Let me know the outcome, please, or when you need sparring.
I have written a few things that could help, but no final answer.
This -just launched- website will also interest you:
http://www.communicatingeconomics.com
I’d make it the story of Money. The story of how powerful interests have hidden the fact that banks create money.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1057521915001477
That loaning money to developing countries in foreign currency has been keeping them from developing. That even inside developed countries the only limit on money creation is inflation which won’t happen until there are resource shortages. That the current system of strangling people with debt benefits no one but the wealthy. Stiglitz has even admitted the basics of MMT.
http://www8.gsb.columbia.edu/faculty/jstiglitz/sites/jstiglitz/files/Agent%20Based-Stock%20Flow%20Consistent%20Macroeconomics-%20Towards%20a%20Benchmark%20Mode.pdf
The upcoming generation of debt slaves, of which I am a member, is incredibly willing to tear down the entire power structure and start anew.
Well done. As an eco-musician, I appreciate putting difficult topics in artistic format.
I have not yet read your book, but until now I have found Herman Daly, Tim Jackson, Rob Dietz, and Dan O’Neil and other steady-state or “degrowth” economists to be painting a picture of an economic system that adds up, albeit politically radical. (Steady state.org could be useful.)
Thank you for your amazing work!
An eco-musician – love it!
If you read Doughnut Economics, I’d love to know what you think its seven ways would sounds like as music…