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Can we talk about work?
You may remember a recent comment by Elon Musk, made to Rishi Sunak during a cringe-worthy staged chat, that Artificial Intelligence (AI) would soon mean that we will live in a world where no-one has to work. The comment sparked a debate (albeit a very brief one) on the nature of work. A typical example…
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Work: a history of how we spend our time
Suzman, J. (2020). Work: A history of how we spend our time. Bloomsbury Publishing. From the title and sub-title of this book, you’d be unlikely to imagine the breadth of scope of the work it contains. James Suzman takes us on a a remarkable and fascinating journey through the evolution of our species: how we’ve worked…
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Customise the Embedded Economy diagram
The Embedded Economy (JPEG from the DEAL website) The Doughnut (JPEG from the DEAL website) The Embedded Economy model is central to the progressive economic theory laid out by Kate Raworth in her book Doughnut Economics. Kate Raworth is a systems thinker with a talent for communicating her ideas visually. But the diagram of the…
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Talking to my daughter: a brief history of capitalism
Varoufakis, Y. (2017). Talking to my daughter: a brief history of capitalism. Random House. Yanis Varoufakis is a progressive politician and economist who negotiated on behalf of the Greek government during the Greek debt crisis of 2009-2018. He has a gift for communication and here has written an economics book that is unusually accessible. As far…
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Honourable Friends
Lucas, C. (2015). Honourable friends?: Parliament and the fight for change. Portobello Books. Although this is, to a degree, a memoir of Carloline Lucas’ first parliamentary term from 2010 to 2015, it is also much more than that; it is a searing critique of democracy as exercised through our early 21st century parliamentary system. If you…
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“We need to stop thinking that economic growth will lift all boats”
Do you remember a few years back in 2019 when the UN rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights published a report that accused the Conservative government of presiding over a “systematic immiseration of a significant part of the British population”? Well the current incumbent of that position – Olivier De Schutter – has been…
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Moneyland: why thieves and crooks now rule the world and how to take it back
Bullough, O. (2018). Moneyland: why thieves and crooks now rule the world and how to take it back. Profile Books. At the heart of this book lies a simple dichotomy: In an often jaw-dropping tour of the murky world of big money – Oliver Bullough shows how this relationship between law and money is systematically exploited…
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Reclaiming Economics for Future Generations
Ambler, L., Earle, J., Scott, N. (2022). Reclaiming Economics for Future Generations. United Kingdom: Manchester University Press. This is a book written predominately by young economists who refuse to submit meekly to the received wisdom of mainstream (neoclassical) economics which dominates the academic and cultural framing of economics in the world today. They argue that neoclassical economics is largely responsible for the environmental, social…
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Wild Britain – a challenging thought experiment
Review of Inside Science: Wild Britain Wild Britain is an episode of the Radio 4 programme Inside Science which was broadcast on May 5th 2023. The programme was presented by Gaia Vince and her panelists were Richard Benwell, Meredith Whitten, Hugo Tagholm and George Monbiot. At the 2022 United Nations Biodiversity Conference (COP15), the UK…
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Post Growth – Life after Capitalism
Jackson, T. (2021). Post Growth: Life After Capitalism. United Kingdom: Wiley. Whilst the degrowth/post-growth literature, by definition, confronts the hegemony of growthism, it sometimes fights shy of directly challenging capitalism. But as the subtitle of Tim Jackson’s latest book makes clear, Post Growth does not suffer from any such coyness. In the second chapter- Who Killed Capitalism? – Jackson asserts…
