Doughnut Economics

Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist

Dados Bibliográficos

ID6011980
AutoresYoko Nagase (0000-0002-6419-9798, Oxford Brookes University, autor correspondente)
Ano2022
Volume33
Fascículo3
Páginas528-530
Data de publicação2022-11-18
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessNão
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoUtopian Studies (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 1045-991X • E-ISSN: 2154-9648
EditoraThe Pennsylvania State University Press (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.5325/utopianstudies.33.3.0528
OpenAlexW4313563477
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas7

Question: Is this a book about utopia? Answer: Yes, indeed; it is a book about a twenty-first-century utopia represented by the Doughnut.The author presents a vision of a pragmatic utopia, represented by the inside of her Doughnut that is both distributive and regenerative. According to the author, a distributive economy is “one whose dynamics tend to disperse and circulate value as it is created, rather than concentrating it in ever-fewer hands.” A regenerative economy is “one in which people become full participants in regenerating Earth’s life-giving cycles so that we thrive within planetary boundaries” (156).The emphasis on the fair distribution of income, wealth, and means of production is an ideal pursued by famous utopians, from perfectly equal distribution of everything in Thomas More’s Utopia to very libertarian position of “whatever he has justly made he has a right to keep” by H. G. Wells.1 The distributive Doughnut community aims to enable individuals to be, in Amartya Sen’s words, “healthy, empowered and creative—so that they can choose to be and do things in life that they value” (43). This ideal of individuals’ rights to choose their life and to realise their ends is the centerpiece of libertarians’ ideal society.2 The Doughnut, however, leans heavily toward democratic socialism. Arguments for redistributive measures such as a universal basic income and taxes on land and wealth put forward by the author go beyond promoting equal opportunity and emphasize the necessity of economic means to make the best out of the opportunities (164, 180, 200).The issue of sustainability at the global level is a concept that does not appear in the classical utopian literature, even though the idea of living happily in perpetuity is very much the tenet of many classical utopian societies. Given the extent of the geographical knowledge that existed by the time Wells explored his idea of a utopia, he was no longer able to set it in some not-yet-discovered place on Earth like his predecessors did—hence the adaptation of “another planet.”3 But this setup had nothing to do with the concept of the ecological limit of Earth. Pre-nineteenth-century utopians would be familiar with the contents of the Doughnut’s foundation, the inner shell that consists of the social and economic factors such as food, health, education, and housing. However, the outer shell of the Doughnut is very twenty-first century, enclosing the nine planetary boundaries of the Doughnut as a life-support system, such as ozone layer depletion, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss, and climate change (44–48).The author points out that we need to get a grip on understanding how we belong in the world. Instead of relying on the power of words as George Orwell’s Thought Police, the author takes full advantage of the power of the visual, by drawing the Doughnut as a map for a new economy and society.4 If studying economics is tantamount to “mastering the mother tongue of public policy” (287), Doughnut Economics is a critical introduction to and the foundation of economic, environmental, and social policymaking.Rather than utopias as purely thought exercise by Plato or More, Raworth, like David Hume, presents a model of a utopia that is meant to be achievable.5 The economics of the Doughnut does not depend on any unrealistic assumptions of human nature. The author proposes means to reaching inside the Doughnut without abolishing the market system or private property rights. But a strong emphasis is placed on additional redistributive policies and regulations that are deemed critical toward sustainability. This position is consistent with that of the former chancellor of Germany who reportedly said that she “wanted as much market economics as possible, but as much state intervention as necessary.”6 In promoting the open-source circular economy movement, the author wonders if it may seem “unfeasibly utopian” (231). Yet given the pace of the climate change and resource deprivation realizing the Doughnut economy is presented not as a choice but a necessity, for humans to survive and thrive, and the book successfully conveys the sense of urgency to realize the Doughnut.Despite serious criticisms on the flaws of what author perceives as the mainstream economics, the book inspires and energizes readers through examples that demonstrate how to get us into the Doughnut, such as shifting the tax base from labor to wealth (193, 238), global scale commons trusts (201–2), regenerative communities (224–26), and repairing instead of replacing (238), just to name a few. As the author says, we cannot know what we face during the transitional phase toward inside the Doughnut, and we also don’t know the precise state of the economy and society inside the Doughnut, as it is not a fixed state. Rather, it is meant to evolve and change (292–93). In this sense, the Doughnut satisfies Wells’s condition for a modern utopia, that is, it must be not static but kinetic, and this utopia is classically liberal.7Raworth presents the Doughnut as the goal of the twenty-first-century economies. We are one-fifth into the century. Have we achieved one-fifth of our way into the Doughnut

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