Econned

"Econned is a great book, which deconstructs economics. It is kind of an “Occupy economics” text that looks at what is wrong with the mainstream economists’ views. It is much more sympathetic to Keynesian economics. It looks at how we have gone wrong in our economic thinking and I think that is an important corrective. My PhD was in economics and I think that for people who are interested in understanding the run-up to the financial collapse, and what’s happened since, this is a great book. Part of the way it relates to the issues of consumption and environment is that I don’t think we are going to be able to solve the ecological issues without also solving the economic problems that we face. Mostly these conversations are separate but we need to put them together. We need to think about new economic models that would allow us to move forward with new structures of production and consumption. There are really interesting social models that show the ways in which social behaviour spreads from person to person through social networks. This could be things like eating, drinking, smoking or sustainable green behaviour. In the standard economic model one person’s consumption is not allowed to affect another person’s. That’s a crazy idea, I know. Those are the assumptions that get us to things like the idea that it is bad for a government to intervene in consumer markets, which by the way, has been the dominant ideology for the last 30 years. Yes, we need to think about the impacts of how we structure consumption, not just on the individual but on the whole system and on the whole planet."