In 1922, Rabindranath Tagore published one of his most important works, the play Mukta-Dhara. The story, rich in symbolism, is a simple yet powerful one.A child of mysterious birth is found abandoned by a mountain waterfall. He is adopted by the royal family and raised as the crown-prince, Abhijit. As he turns into a young man, Abhijit continues to feel close to the falls. He eventually learns that he is not a prince by birth. He discovers a spiritual kinship with the falls. He goes and … [Read more...]
The Curse of Bigness
The next time I hear a politico or banker or corporate executive talk about institutions “too big to fail,” I’ll direct them to the 34 percent of Americans who are obese. Last I heard, these big Americans, themselves a kind of cultural institution, were failing en masse, racked by diabetes, asthma, heart trouble, and bound for early death. The human form can only grow so big. Or I could point them to Pig #6707. Conceived in the laboratories of the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the 1990s, … [Read more...]
Local Finance Made Simple
The nature of money is to abstract value. That is its role. It stands in place of an actual good or service.If I fail to have the basket of potatoes you are seeking in exchange for the wool from your sheep, I can instead pay for the wool in dollars or BerkShares or Brixton Pounds— which then become an abstract representation of the wool. You can then exchange those $, B$, or B£ at a later time in the market for potatoes, or for any number of other products or services.This capacity for … [Read more...]
Where Time Went (and why we have so little left)
“Sleeker. Faster. More Intuitive” (The New York Times); “Welcome to a world where speed is everything” (Verizon FiOS); “Speed is God, and time is the devil” (chief of Hitachi’s portable-computer division). In “real” time, life speeds up until time itself seems to disappear—fast is never fast enough, everything has to be done now, instantly. To pause, delay, stop, slow down is to miss an opportunity and to give an edge to a competitor. Speed has become the measure of success—faster chips, faster … [Read more...]
Farewell to Development: An interview with Arturo Escobar
Arturo Escobar is co-editor of The Post-Development Dictionary and author of Design for the Pluriverse. He was interviewed by Allen White, Senior Fellow at the Tellus Institute, sponsor of the Great Transition Initiative, where a slightly longer version of this interview first appeared. Alan White: You have argued that the conventional understanding of development in the Global North—individualism, competition, industrialism, market primacy—is at odds with the core tenets of … [Read more...]
Globalization’s Deadly Footprint
That pollution is bad for our health will come as a surprise to no one. That pollution kills at least 9 million people every year might. This is 16 percent of all deaths worldwide – 3 times more than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined, and 15 times more than all wars and other forms of violence. Air pollution alone is responsible for 6.5 million of these 9 million deaths. Nearly 92 percent of pollution-related deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries. All this is according to the … [Read more...]
Livin’ the Screen Life: #productsmakemehappy
Important official legal disclaimer: This is a short work of fiction. Any resemblances to real people, people you may know, people you think you may know, etc., is entirely deliberate.When I’m at work I’m staring at a screen. When I’m not at work I’m staring at screens. Checking social media. Scrolling through updates. Scrolling through friends. Scrolling through products. Scrolling through #instagram. Scrolling through #amazon. The customer is always right. Make sure that what you’re … [Read more...]
In Defense of Degrowth
The economist Branko Milanovic recently wrote a blog post titled “The illusion of degrowth in a poor and unequal world.” He penned it, he says, following a conversation he had with a proponent of degrowth.As it turns out, that proponent was me.First, let me say that I have a lot of respect for Milanovic's work on inequality. I cite him all the time. But unfortunately he doesn't have a strong grasp of degrowth. Let's look at his argument in detail:Milanovic rejects degrowth … [Read more...]
Averting the apocalypse: lessons from Costa Rica
Earlier this summer, a paper published in the journal Nature captured headlines with a rather bleak forecast. Our chances of keeping global warming below the 2C danger threshold are very, very small: only about 5%. The reason, according to the paper’s authors, is that the cuts we’re making to greenhouse gas emissions are being cancelled out by economic growth.In the coming decades, we’ll be able to reduce the carbon intensity of the global economy by about 1.9% per year, if we make heavy … [Read more...]
To Find Alternatives to Capitalism, Think Small
In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s shocking election victory, a shattered Democratic Party and dazed progressives agree on at least one thing: Democrats must replace Republicans in Congress as quickly as possible. As usual, however, the quest to recapture power is focused on tactical concerns and political optics, and not on the need for the deeper conversation that the 2016 election should have provoked us to have: How can we overcome the structural pathologies of our rigged economy and toxic … [Read more...]