Changing the Goal

 by Robin Cavusoglu

Kate Raworth's 'Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways To Think Like a 21st-Century Economist' presents an economic model called the "doughnut", which depicts the Goldilocks zone between the foundations of a functional society, including education, housing and gender equality, among others, and an 'ecological ceiling' past which the Earth's regenerative processed begin to break down. This is at odds with the entrenched goal of limitless growth, come what may. Therefore, the remodelling of the world economy will require altering several related economic models.

The idea of an inexhaustible Earth due to the rationing function of prices, as argued by laissez-faire economists such as Julian Simon, has proven to be flawed in the era of climate activism. Models such as the circular-flow model, which only considers land as an owned factor which returns rent, are also outdated, Raworth argues; rather, we need to consider an open system within a closed Earth, where matter and energy flow in and out of the system, enabling us to account for the wellbeing of our planet. Similarly, the Kuznets curves for inequality and the environment are deeply flawed due to a lack of evidence supporting them - even Kuznets himself discussed the 'fragility of the data' supporting the inequality curve - but these models still form a basis to 'trickle-down' economic policies today. By replacing these with models that are globally distributive and regenerative, we can allow for everyone to live inside the Doughnut.

The biggest caveat of changing the goal is how radical the changes must be. With the repeated election of right-wing leaders such as Brazil's Bolsonaro, who believes in burning the world's largest rainforest to increase growth, changing the materialist mindsets of those in large countries into more egalitarian ones is a difficult feat. That said, changes for the better are occurring - the Ecuadorian constitution, for example, discusses the Rights for Nature to 'regenerate its vital cycles'. And with the ongoing pandemic showing the effects of inequality inside nations, I believe that society may be more willing to embrace changing the goal than ever before.