I would like to do some word sketching today regarding economists who speak to me in language I understand and with language congruent with my life experiences. I am likely one of the few people who did not take economics in high school nor in college. Don’t ask me how or why I was able to escape this pain, but surely the heavens were shining down upon me.
Over my lifetime, my lack of economic knowledge has concerned me. I did not feel that I had a fair grasp of what was happening in our world and how it worked economically.
Today, after doing a little reading in economics over the last three years, I am thankful that I did not take economics courses in high school or college, because I am convinced they would have provided only one perspective, that being something along the lines of free-market, neo-liberal economics, economics in service of bankers and rentiers.
What brought me into economic reading was a long-standing study of resilience, and in particular, the resilience of people exposed to trauma, disaster, and war. This personal study of resilience- it was not work related- led me to considerations of economic resilience.
After a few years of reading and paying attention, I am of the belief that capitalism, as an economic system, has 1) co-opted our political system, 2) is, by its internal design, extractive, non-generative, and exploitative, and 3) followed to its logical conclusion is not sustainable, because it must infinitely expand and we are on a finite planet.
There are proponents of capitalism, many on Daily Kos, and many in the Democratic Party. I take no issue with this, as I know there are reasonable merits to capitalism. In fact, is this not why we live in a democracy so that we can hold differing opinions and beliefs and debate them civically?
However, my life experiences and observations lead me to believe that most people are unable to answer the question, “when is enough, enough?” and by default corporations- composed of people- cut corners, expand, and become non-generative to communities, employees, and the planet in the quest for shareholder value and profit. There is not a reasonableness to profit-taking, it is a mad race, or so this is the visible behavior of what I see playing out today before me.
Capitalism paired with man’s greed and insatiable desires, has become a very toxic soup for our world. Once this economic system captures the political system, as it has done in the USA and many parts of the world, we are bound to witness gross inequality and increasing poverty, as we are seeing.
This brief word sketching aside, I would like to present a few books I believe are worth reading because of their alternative perspectives on economic thinking. These are books that advance ideas of generative economies, non-extractive economies, and community-based economic systems. They are nice to read because they offer a compelling counter-perspective to what we receive in our everyday living.
I am listing these books below in no particular order. Also, I purposely use Powell’s Books based in Portland, Oregon for my links, as I still believe in independent book stores and Powell’s Books is uber cool. Here goes:
- The Resilience Imperative: Cooperative Transitions to a Steady-State Economy, Michael Lewis and Pat Conaty.
- Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered, E.F. Schumacher
- Viking Economics: How the Scandinavians Got it Right- and How we Can, Too, George Lakey
- Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution, Marjorie Kelly
- Talking to My Daughter About the Economy: Or, How Capitalism Works- and How it Fails, Yanis Varoufakis
- Killing the Host, Michael Hudson
- The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy, Raj Patel
- Worker Cooperatives and Revolution: History and Possibilities in the United States, Chris Wright
- The Conquest of Bread, Peter Kropotkin
- The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein
- This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate, Naomi Klein
- Banker to the Poor: Micro Lending & the Battle Against World Poverty, Muhammad Yunus
- The Happiest Kids in the World: What Dutch Parents Can Teach Us About Raising Independent Well Adjusted Children, Rina Mae Acosta and Michele Hutchison
- The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Today’s American, Mark Sundeen
I don’t think that any one of these books is best. Taken together, however, they paint a broad picture of how life might be lived... differently. I continue to learn, and these books have helped me to see our world more clearly. I appreciate the authors for this.
There are two other books that I would like to read but at present they intimidate me and I know that I will need to set aside sufficient time to read them; they will require focus:
Finally, I would like to mention my current read. It is:
When I was a young boy, my dad repeated a mantra over and over like a broken record. He would say, “reading is the key.” This short sentence is burned into my brain. Reading, combined with travel and life experiences, make for an excellent exploration of life and lead, I think, to a life well lived. Socrates had it right, the unexamined life is not worth living.
Every single day we read the news, watch the news, listen to the radio, receive messages from family, friends, co-workers, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and when we are well read, when we understand counter-narratives to the existing dominate narratives, we are able to parse through the nonsense much more quickly and come to conclusions about what is really happening.
Counter thinkers, like many of the authors I list above, provide a very unique lens through which to see our challenges and opportunities more clearly.
As I close out my word-sketching for the day, would you recommend an economic book worth reading that offers a counter-perspective to extractive capitalism?
Peace.