Money, Work, and Mass Extinction: Transformational Degrowth and The

MONEY, WORK, AND MASS EXTINCTION: TRANSFORMATIONAL DEGROWTH AND THE JOB GUARANTEE A DISSERTATION IN Economics and Social Sciences Consortium Presented to the Faculty of the University of Missouri-Kansas City in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by BJ UNTI B.A., Portland State University, 2006 Kansas City, Missouri 2020 MONEY, WORK, AND MASS EXTINCTION TRANSFORMATIONAL DEGROWTH AND THE JOB GUARANTEE BJ Unti, Candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy Degree University of Missouri-Kansas City, 2020 ABSTRACT This dissertation is composed of three independent essays. Each essay traces social and ecological crises to capitalist institutions and proposes how a job guarantee (JG) can be adapted to resolve them in the context of degrowth. The first essay focuses on the relationship between economic growth and ecological destruction. In a monetary production economy, there is a trade- off between employment and the environment. To reconcile social and ecological goals it is necessary to decouple employment from growth. A JG makes this possible. The outlines of a simple two-sector model show how a JG can be used to maintain full employment and facilitate a reduction in aggregate output. The JG offers individuals a way to opt out of monetary production and thus, presents a pathway to fundamentally transform the economy. The second essay considers the diverse variety of strategies and policies that have emerged in the degrowth movement. These are classified into two categories. Top-down approaches insist that centralized policies relying on government control are necessary. Bottom- up approaches insist that transformation must stem from the decentralization of power and the expansion of individual autonomy. This essay proposes that a JG is uniquely positioned in between the two and demonstrates why this unique positioning enables a JG to serve as a platform for the multi-dimensional strategies and aims of degrowth. Here the argument is not ii that a JG alone can achieve the diverse goals of degrowth, but rather that it can serve a vital function in catalyzing, supporting, or unlocking pathways envisioned by the movement. The third essay argues that the crisis of mass extinction is equal parts human and ecological. The Anthropocene is evidence of humankind’s capacity to change the world. However, the rapid extension of market logic and money value during the neoliberal era is generating forms of alienation that destroy human meaning and rob people of their own social agency. Overcoming the problem of mass extinction thus involves developing a more anthropocentric economy. A JG presents a radical possibility for transforming the world by reclaiming the human meaning and value of work. iii The faculty listed below, appointed by the Dean of the School of Graduate Studies, have examined a dissertation titled “Money, Work, and Mass Extinction: Transformational Degrowth and the Job Guarantee,” presented by BJ Unti, candidate for the doctorate degree, and certify that in their opinion it is worthy of acceptance. Supervisory Committee Mathew Forstater, Ph.D., Committee Chair Department of Economics Scott Fullwiler, Ph.D. Department of Economics Zhongjin Li, Ph.D. Department of Economics Douglas Bowles, Ph.D. Social Science Consortium Caroline Davies, Ph.D. Department of Earth and Environmental Science iv CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................................... ii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS ........................................................................................................................................ vi 1. INTRODUCTION...................................................................................................................................................... 1 2. TRANSFORMATIONAL DEGROWTH .................................................................................................................. 8 3. NON-REFORMIST REFORM ................................................................................................................................ 30 4. MONEY, MEANING, AND MASS EXTINCTION .............................................................................................. 64 5. CONCLUSION ...................................................................................................................................................... 136 REFERENCES ........................................................................................................................................................... 147 VITA .......................................................................................................................................................................... 163 v LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS (Figure 1) Boulding’s Bathtub Accumulation…………………………………11 (Figure 2) Boulding’s Bathtub Crisis………………………………………….19 (Figure 3) Nell’s Two-Sector Productivity…………………………………….27 vi vii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION When I began this project in 2011, the world was still reeling from the Great Recession that started with the financial crisis of 2008. Today, the economy is rapidly sliding into a new and likely bigger crisis, this time kicked-off by a virus. The dramatic events that mark the onset of these crises come to be viewed as causes in themselves, but the fact is, financial bubbles and coronaviruses only reveal ever-present structural fragilities of a capitalist economy that have become more pronounced in recent decades of neoliberal hegemony. Whatever the economic situation, the twenty-first century is defined by ecological crisis. The scientific community warns—and has been warning—that humans are exploiting the earth at an unsustainable rate. Our collective failure to heed these warnings has everything to do with the same economic institutions that produce recurring crises of recession and depression. Overlapping, dual economic and ecological crises pose a regrettable dilemma. Maintaining business as usual on the economic front also means maintaining business as usual with respect to ecological destruction. The focus of this work is to better understand this dilemma and explore ways out. The contradiction set up by these dual crises is something economists have been aware of since at least the 1970s. In her address to the American Economic Association, Joan Robinson (1972) announced “the second crisis of economic theory.” The first crisis, associated with the Great Depression of the 1930s, was resolved—at least in theory—with the publication of Keynes’s The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936). Keynes explained why the system would not self-correct and what government could do to save the economy. The 1 core of Keynes contribution was to demonstrate that society had the capacity to determine the volume of output and employment. The second crisis emerged with the realization that employment as such did not entail prosperity. Indeed, since the 1930s “military Keynesianism” had proven to be the only acceptable method of fiscal stimulus. Of course, this does increase output and employment, but it is output in the form of weapons, and employment in the form war. Thus, while the first crisis of economic theory was a quantitative problem of determining the volume of employment, the second crisis involved a qualitative problem of determining what it is we produce and, equally important, how we go about producing it. The most alarming aspect of the second crisis is related to environmental decline. While the growth of output and employment may produce social benefits, historically it has also driven environmental destruction and ecological overshoot. By 1972, concern for the environment was moving to the center of public discourse. A decade earlier, Rachel Carson sparked environmental consciousness with her book Silent Spring (1962). Her warning regarding the threats posed by economic growth and industrialization was echoed in rapid succession by Georgescu-Rogen (1971), Meadows et al. (1972), Daly (1973), and Robinson herself (1971, 1972). What was so disconcerting about the second crisis was the contradiction it set up with the first. At bottom it appeared we faced a trade-off between employment and the environment: between ecological and economic prosperity. Although Keynes solved the immediate problem of unemployment, his solution only opened the door to a much bigger and more troubling question. In essence, Robinson’s second crisis is a backhanded nod to Keynes’s achievement that says, “Yes, but…what is the point?” We can have full employment, but to what end? The question marks Robinson as a heretic. 2 Economics religiously evades this topic, refusing to hear the question. An assumed answer orients the entire whole enterprise by way of default. Adam Smith opened an inquiry into the wealth of nations. Ever since, economists have taken it as given that the never-ending growth of material wealth is the objective. Anyone who stops to ask Robinson’s question risks excommunication. A straight line runs from homoeconomicus and Hobbes’s jungle to the modern crisis of mass extinction. The history of economic thinking does not reflect a linear progression towards a more accurate re-presentation of reality; except, in a perverse way it does. History shows reality has moved closer to theory and not the other way around. The individualistic premises of neoclassical economics have helped create a world of isolated individuals and a concomitant

Load more