Whenever the topic of economic growth is broached, there is a common and understandable reaction along the lines that growth is ecologically unsustainable or socially harmful. Since one of the preoccupations of this blog is demand-led growth, it is perhaps worth pausing to reflect on the appropriateness of the topic. This can be broken down into two parts. Why consider growth as such? And why emphasize the possibility that growth is demand led?...heteconomist
Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller (1895 – 1983) was a renowned and influential American inventor, designer, systems theorist, and futurist. Fuller saw himself as a practical philosopher and worked to solve global problems surrounding housing, transportation, energy, ecological destruction, and poverty. During his prolific career, in his different capacities he lectured a lot and published about 25 books, stimulating and leaving a great impact especially on “geeks” of his time and their successors who have then engendered the Information Revolution from the 1970s onward.
In the 1960s, Fuller developed the World Game, a collaborative simulation game in which players attempt to solve world problems and overcome the uneven distribution of global resources.
The object of this anti-Malthusian and anti-militaristic game was in Fuller’s words, to “make the world work, for 100% of humanity, in the shortest possible time, through spontaneous cooperation, without ecological offense or the disadvantage of anyone”. Over the 1960s-70s, the World Game and its ideas diffused via workshops, seminars, conferences, and educational and strategic papers.
The 1971 publication “The World Game: Integrative Resource Utilization Planning Tool” (open-access), along with the game instructions and charts, also included several Fuller’s talks about the essence of game. One of them, given in the US Congress in 1969, caught my eye....Economic Sociology and Political Economy
We undermine our survival if we continue to imagine economics as a ethics-free and care-free sphere.
In a recent discussion, Pope Francis' deputy, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Vatican's Secretary of State, said the world would need to develop a new model of economic development. The Vatican believes this new model must marry economic growth with plans to combat poverty by seeking ways to use resources in a sustainable manner.
Cardinal Parolin, speaking on behalf of the Pope, went on to indicate that both political and economic commitments would be necessary for this plan to work, but that the Vatican believes it is the only way to ensure the health of the planet for future generations. Such changes have been slow to occur, and the Vatican wishes to push the dialogue along in order to facilitate the change in the global population's mindset necessary to make these sorts of commitments possible.
In a report by the Durango Herald, Parolin is quoted as saying, "When the future of the planet is at stake, there are no political frontiers, barriers or walls behind which we can hide to protect ourselves from the effects of environmental and social degradation … There is no room for the globalization of indifference, the economy of exclusion or the throwaway culture so often denounced by Pope Francis."...
Pope Francis has publicly endorsed economic development models that provide employment and opportunity to the poor while simultaneously utilizing new technologies that are cleaner, more energy efficient, and produce less carbon. However, many fear that these types of initiatives may fall out of favor due to short-term concerns by countries around the world about immediate economic growth and job transitions.
Former Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who heads the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, has cited these fears as the biggest factor in preventing such changes, but he refers to the findings of a study by the commission finding just the opposite.
According to Calderon, "We can foster economic growth and mitigate climate risk at the same time...In fact, this is the only way to achieve long-term, sustained economic growth, and through it to alleviate poverty for the millions of souls that need, demand and deserve it."
I have come to conceive of markets as centres of communicative action reliant on the norms of reciprocity, sincerity and charity. In this formulation mathematics is not used to determine (predict) the truth but as a language to facilitate discourse. I believe, based on sociological studies of the markets, that when market makers offer a price they can be seen as making a claim, which can be challenged by speculators and arbitrageurs, who either accept the claim/price and let it pass, or challenge it by taking the price or offering their own. In this sense mathematical models are used to justify claims, furthermore I believe this practice of using mathematics in justifying claims in finance was adapted in both politics, to deliver democracy, and science: I do not believe in stochastic systems models can be used to predict, only to justify in a discursive process.
This might seem academic and irrelevant, the practical usefulness is that it enables me to identify why practices described by Farmer might be unethical, rather than relying on an instinct that speculation in complex financial instruments just can't be right (where as geo-engineering, genetic modification or nuclear weapons are OK). I aim to show in my research, that such markets can offer growth without creating the inequality that Michel Loreau objected to, but I feel is a consequence of the aim at efficiency that a 'Darwinian' economics demands.Money, Maths and Magic
