There are proposals out there to say all currencies should all be related to energy use or consumption using this. There's great chunks of the things we actually enjoy doing that nobody would ever charge for anyway right meeting your friends isn't something you charge for and you can expand that principle quite easily even. That seems like an obvious solution to a world in which material stuff is harder to get hold of so therefore you make all the nice fluffy social stuff free and easier I mean that just sounds like a world that everyone would want to live inQuite frankly you'd hope so you'd hope, he says. "You know people tend to get a bit they raise many questions about all of this"
“If you think about how you might get out of this and get to something better, what really matters is the distribution of resources. Who has what? Who holds the wealth? And what are they doing with it? Government borrowing and quantitative easing, this sort of thing, can change some of that, but really when you get down to it, you're going to have to think about how you're going to tax some of that wealth because you need to shift actual resources around. The most effective mechanism we have for doing that is taxation.”
Economics is a pretty bizarre field: A social science masquerading as an actual science, economics inflexibly dictates life, relationships, election manifestos and policy despite none of it being set in stone. The beauty of economics is we can radically overhaul our economic systems and institutions to better serve us, rather than being prey to the outputs of a haggard and worn out system. Such a realisation is, though, beyond the imagination of most economic leaders.
But there are economists out there working to debunk the myths, cut through the noise, and creating policies which would serve both people and planet. James Meadway—former treasury advisor, member of the Progressive Economy Forum council, and the host of the Macrodose podcast—is one of them. He joins me to discuss the emergency and long-term policies we should implement to navigate the climate crisis, the economic crisis, and to radically overhaul and transition our societies to those which support life over productivity. We discuss some alternative frameworks that are being researched around the world, including de-growth and modern monetary theory, whilst James insists that which needs to be re-evaluated is value itself.
Planet: Critical investigates why the world is in crisis—and what to do about it. Support the project with a paid subscription.
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