Lagom, a Swedish word,
is perhaps a key concept for a really sustainable society. According to popular but contested folk
etymology, it is a contraction of "laget om" ("around the
team"), a phrase used in Viking times to specify how much mead one should
drink from the horn as it was passed around so that everyone received a fair share. The closest
you could come in English would be: “just right”.
Rob Dietz and Dan O'Neill authors
of Enough is Enough, take on the task of how
to build a sustainable economy in a world of finite resources. They say,
”Perhaps the most important number is one
- one single blue green planet with finite resources that we all must
share”
The book is well written and the arguments
are convincing. Apart from all the facts in the book, each chapter has an
introductory story with a nice personal touch. Contrary to
most books in the genre, Dietz and O'Neill spend more pages explaining how a
no-growth economy would look like rather than why perpetual growth is neither
possible nor desirable. They do both jobs well.
Both
authors are affiliated with the Center
for Advancement of the Steady State Economy (CASSE). And
“steady-state-economy”
is the term the center use to describe a
no-growth economy. They do ask their readers to come
up with a more
catchy and sexy
term. However, trying to change the world is very different from
selling soap,
and I believe we underestimate people when we assume that we have to “sell” them a catchy phrase.
In the first part of
the book, Dietz and O'Neill debunk the ideas of “decoupling” and “trickle-down economics”. They do that well by providing
a number of facts. For example, for every $100 of economic growth, only 60 cents reach the
billion poor in the world. This is based on a report from the New Economic
Foundation, available here. Clearly this is a decidedly inefficient way of
distributing wealth. As they state: “someone is profiting from
economic growth, but it is not the world's poor.”
There are a number of interesting
observations or ideas discussed in the book. For example:
· Just as several aspects of our
current society have all reinforced each other—for example, population growth,
competition, cheap oil and technology; crisis situations
also have such
self-reinforcing sides. The authors point out that we should expect such
cascading effects in the process of building a steady-state economy
as well.
· The best ways to achieve
well-being are those that take time, consume none or few resources, and are for free.
· The “purpose” of the financial
sector is to facilitate and intermediate between business and investment, and
the costs for this is a burden to the rest of the economy. The fact that the
financial sector takes an ever increasing share of the economic growth is not
a sign of
health or of any improvements in our livelihoods.
In parts two and three of
the book, Dietz and O'Neill outline the strategies of reaching a steady
state economy (part two) and the actions to be taken (part
three). Both parts of the book are very interesting. One can also
see that here the authors, self admittedly, are in unchartered territory.
This is reflected in some redundancy and a vague division between parts two
and three.
They call for changes on a
number of strategically selected institutions in our economy and attitudes in our
society. In their opinion, investments should generate social and
environmental returns instead of financial returns; labor productivity can be perused to reduce and minimize
unpleasant work, but not to take away jobs that bring joy and meaning; new forms
of ownership (e.g. social enterprises)
need to be developed and some existing forms (e.g. cooperatives) need to be
revitalized instead of us being stuck in the choice between private and public; and finally we need to
rethink our relationship to nature.
They refer to these four thoughts as the “foundation” of a steady growth economy.
In
their opinion, ten pillars of “policy directions” are needed.
They include:
1. Limit resource use and
waste production
2. Stabilize population
3. Distribute income and
wealth equitably
4. Reform monetary and financial
systems
5. Change the way we measure
progress (goodbye GDP)
6. Secure full employment (by
job-sharing and guaranteed jobs)
7. Rethink how businesses create value
8. Replace the culture of consumerism
with a culture of sustainability
9. Stimulate political debate
about limits to growth
10. Change national goals
regarding growth and improve international cooperation
With these “pillars” in place, we can move towards a
society that is sustainable and equitable and where human well-being is the centerpiece
of life. Dietz
and O'Neill present an appealing vision of how such a transformed society
could look like.
Such
a transition
will require changes in institutions, laws, constitutions, attitudes and
distribution of wealth. I find that the book mixes “hard” and “soft” factors (see the list
above) in a not so clear way. In fact, for the soft factors there is often no path on how to get there.
It is one
thing to say that we want more equality. There is, I believe, already a broad
public agreement on this, but still differences are forever increasing. This example shows that there is a fundamental
need to re-
distribute assets
and not just to change attitudes.
Like many others, the two
authors
question the use of GDP measure. “What is measured is managed” the saying goes
and the authors concur, but I am not very convinced by that argument; we have
measured poverty or unemployment for decades, we still didn't get rid of it. It is not because Chinese
leaders have decided on a number and being competent, they have a GDP growth of
9 percent; similarly, it is not because European leaders do
not have
sufficiently ambitious growth targets (on the contrary they have very ambitious
targets which they never reach!) that their economies stumble a percent or two over decades.
In real life, the
mechanisms that drive growth are rarely related to the measurement of GDP. Politics of the
normal kind hardly affect GDP growth in the medium and long-term, because it is mainly
the acts of corporations, the effects of technology and energy, and the growth, age and behavior of populations that
determine what kind of growth we will have. In the very short term,
governments
can influence growth by introducing tax cuts, subsidies or
austerity measures etc. The key economic agents—companies and consumers—don't care about GDP.
Companies don't invest, expand or make profits or losses with an eye to the effects
of the GDP. And consumers don't buy flat screen TVs to boost the GDP. Some of
the most spectacular periods of economic growth occurred before there were any GDP
measurement and public GDP targets.
By all means, do away with
GDP; it is a rather meaningless measure. However, don't expect that to
change too many things. And therefore don't put your bets on alternative
measures either. They do play a role visualizing certain developments and they are therefore
good to develop, but they are no game changers.
The weakness of the book
is, in my view, that the authors don't address how to change the logic of property,
profit (and other forms of capital accumulation) and competition. They write “A key question, then, is
whether the profit motive is compatible with a non-growing economy”. In another
part they say that higher labor productivity is almost always converted into higher
production because business owners are beholden to profit motives. Although they do see the problems,
their prescriptions fall short of addressing them. The
book discusses
the enormous gap in wealth in the world today, where 50 percent of the world's
population shares 1 percent of global wealth. But there are no proposals
in the book that will turn this around.
I look forward to the next
book by Rob Dietz and Dan O'Neill where they advance their ideas further. They
are on an important track: Enough is
Enough is indeed good enough… Lagom!
You can read the authors
introduction to the book here.
