Create caring credit and invest in prosperity - References and quotes Philosophy 2021 REFERENCES AND QUOTES PROSPERITY WITHOUT GROWTH Investments are needed but technology won’t be enough, a change in economics is needed. “In fact, it is this need for what we might broadly call ‘ecological investment’ which begins to transform the economics of the twenty-first century. Protecting, maintaining and enhancing the ecological assets on which our economy and our own wellbeing both depend turns out to be vital to the economics of a finite world” “But none of this will happen automatically. None of it flows easily from the logic of conventional economics. There is no simple formula that leads from the efficiency of the market to the meeting of ecological targets. Simplistic assumptions that capitalism’s propensity for efficiency will allow us to stabilise the climate or protect against resource scarcity are nothing short of delusional. The truth is that there is as yet no credible, socially just, ecologically sustainable scenario of continually growing incomes for upwards of nine billion people. And the critical question is not whether the complete decarbonisation of our energy systems or the dematerialisation of our consumption patterns is technically feasible, but whether it is possible in our kind of society. The analysis in this chapter suggests that it is entirely fanciful to suppose that ‘deep’ emission and resource cuts can be achieved without confronting the structure of market economies.” 125 “But even as the engine of growth delivers productivity improvement, so it also drives forward the scale of throughput. Nowhere is there any evidence that efficiency can outrun – and continue to outrun – scale in the way it must do if growth is to be compatible with sustainability.” 126 Importance of investments for possibility of change. Investment is the relationship between present and future. Investment in the current economy, “Even taking speculative behaviour aside, the investment portfolio of the conventional economy still fails any robust test of sustainability. Too much of it is directed at the extraction of rents from finite material resources. Much of the rest is dedicated either to chasing labour productivity or to the relentless production of novelty: the creation and re-creation of ever newer markets for ever newer consumer products (Chapter 6). The result of these strategies is a portfolio of capital investments dominated by the production and reproduction of consumerism. The vital relationship between the present and the future is distorted through lenses of speculation and short-term profiteering. And the prospects for transforming enterprise and employment in the ways described above remain heroic at best.” Need for prosperity investment, of individuals and communities. Social investment. Ecological investment. “The critical distinction is to invest in assets that maximise our potential to flourish with the minimum level of material consumption, rather than in assets that maximise the throughput of material commodities – irrespective of their contribution to long-term prosperity.” 167 “For now it is clear that this new investment portfolio is essential, irrespective of its impacts on conventionally measured growth. Its key aims must be to protect natural assets, improve resource efficiencies, implement clean, renewable technologies and build the infrastructures needed for a less materialistic and more satisfying life. Some of these investments – for instance, those in natural assets and public goods – may have to be judged against criteria other than financial market success. This might mean rethinking the way that investment works; the structure of ownership of assets and the distribution of surpluses from them. But the indispensability of the strategy outlined here is blindingly obvious.” Obscuring complexity of finance. Henry Ford, “It is well enough that the people of this nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” Banks creating money through debt/loan making 169 “Many of these massively unethical investments will offer highly attractive rates of return in the short term. But in the long term they are entirely unsustainable. The social costs of conventional investment (including the huge cost of unrestrained speculative trading) are rarely factored into financial decisions. Worse still, these costs are borne ultimately by the taxpayer. By contrast, the social benefits of more sustainable investments are almost invisible to mainstream funders who tend to look at unfamiliar portfolios and see only higher risk. The ethical basis of sustainable investment only rarely attracts a premium.” Examples av alternative investment thinking include SPEAR, Unified Field Cooperation and credit unions, Triodos Bank 173 I DOUGHNUT ECONOMICS: SEVEN WAYS TO THINK LIKE A 21ST-CENTURY ECONOMIST Regenerative finance. 1. shrink, simplify, diversify and deleverage finance e.g global financial transactions tax See Tobin tax. 2. Longterm investment. State investment and private investment for longterm like Triodos. 3. Redesigning currency. Torekes. 193 Search for gain and rate of return. Aristoteles on interest, “For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of an modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.” Problem of search for gain drives shareholder return, speculative trading and interest bearing loans all depend on growth. See ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS – PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS. Financing meeting limits, Fullerton and Evergreen Direct Investing. Money contrasting against nature. Nature feel entropy as tractors rust, crops rot, smartphones break, building crumble but money just keeps increasing because of interest. Demurrage! Silvio Gessel, make money deteriorate. Keynes was impressed by the idea! See ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS – PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS, MYTEN OM MASKINEN: ESSÄER OM MAKT; MODERNITET OCH MILJÖ 223 I ECOLOGICAL ECONOMICS – PRINCIPLES AND APPLICATIONS Using seigniorage to print and spend money as a fiscal policy 334 Box 17.5 Monetary and fiscal policy and steady state 335 “Eventually, growth in real physical production confronts biophysical limits and must stop. Growth in the monetary value of financial assets is still possible for a time, but when continued investment of borrowed money drives up the value of financial assets more rapidly than the increase in real goods and services, collapse is inevitable, even if we cannot predict precisely when it will occur.” 403, 404 “Among the policies implicit in these goals are public investments in education, the development and deployment of green energy technologies, maintenance of critical public infrastructure, and restoration of depleted natural capital.” 406

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