The Transition Movement discussion

This topic is for the discussion of chapter 11, Building a Sustainable and Desirable Economy-in-Society-in-Nature.

I thought this chapter was really good. It has seemed to me for quite some time now that new paradigms for the economy need to be developed. How do we transition from a consumer economy to something more sustainable, what would that economy look like, how would it work, how would we prevent massive unemployment if people are no longer employed making so much "stuff" for each other?

I have felt that at some point a new generation of younger economists would start thinking about these things. This chapter tells me that that process has begun, and has been ongoing for a while now.

I'm excited about the fact that two of the nine authors of this chapter are located near me: Gar Alperovitz (whom I'd heard of before) is at the U. of Maryland, and Herman Daly is at the U. of Maryland School of Public Policy.

Random notes:

Table 11-1 is very interesting.

p. 129 - A criticism of GDP which I've seen over and over again, and very true, is that "it counts all (economic) activity as positive" - that is, "From the perspective of GDP, more crime, sickness, war, pollution, fires, storms" are all good things, since they increase market activity and increase the value of good and services made and delivered.

130 - This has led to the creation of Genuine Progress Indicators (GPIs). Again, right here in Maryland the state government has developed such an indicator. What effect, practical or otherwise, it has had so far I don't know. But it's a start. http://www.green.maryland.gov/mdgpi/

135 ff - The discussion of a sustainable macroeconomy represents the new type of economic thinking that is hopefully starting to gain a foothold.

Box 11-1 should really be read by every American, since I'm certain that most do not understand how money is actually created in the economy. The government doesn't create money, it only prints it as necessary. The banking system is what creates actual money, and although actions of the Federal Reserve have an effect on the amount of money that banks create, it is still the banks that make the decisions to create the money, and they do it for their own purposes - to make profits, only.

138-9 - The discussion and graphs relating to income inequality are very important. The figures are from a book that I have been reading for awhile, The Spirit Level Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better.

140 - There's a good list of organizations with their web URLs here. These are groups that are currently involved in "building a new economic vision and testing solutions". Our very own Transition Movement (www.transitionnetwork.org) is at the top of the list!

141 - the discussion of the modeling tool LowGrow, which is being used to model and run low-growth simulations of the Canadian economy, is interesting. (But perhaps not very encouraging - it's really not clear, from a Google search, that this effort is still on-going :( None of the references in the footnotes for this are newer than from 2008!)

Comments encouraged!