Upstream - International Development and Post-capitalism with Jason Hickel

Episode Date: May 28, 2020

Continuing our focus on the COVID pandemic and its intersection with capitalism, in this Conversation, we spoke with London-based economic anthropologist Jason Hickel. Jason in the author of The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and Its Solutions, Jason’s new book, “Less is More,” is being published in August by Penguin. We spoke with him about international capitalism during the pandemic, new opportunities for degrowth economics, and how to fundamentally move to a post capitalist world — which will take more than just a shift in economic policy, but a fundamental shift from the world view of capitalist thought.  This episode of Upstream was made possible with support from listeners like you. Upstream is a labor of love — we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

If we want to have any chance of shifting to a post-capitalist economy, this is more than just figuring out the right economic policies. I mean, Degrowth Scholarship loves thinking about what are the policies that we need to shift to a post-growth economy in a kind of safe and just and sustainable way. And that's great, but it's in fact not enough. We also need a deep ontological shift to restore a sense of connection to the rest of the living world. And to me, that's the most exciting part, right? As an anthropologist, I get to tell

these phenomenal stories about the way that different people in different parts of the world today think about nature in fundamentally different ways to the way that we do in Western capitalist societies. And what can we learn from that? What does that mean for our ethics in terms of engagement with each other and with the living world when we refuse to see other forms of life as fundamentally separate and beneath us, right? That changes the game entirely. You're listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. I'm Della Duncan. And I'm Robert Raymond. him about international capitalism during the pandemic, new opportunities for degrowth economics, and how to fundamentally move towards a post-capitalist world. Good to speak with you, Jason. Thank you so much. Good morning, good evening, good afternoon.

Yes, thanks for having me on. Yeah, it's my pleasure to be with you. And Jason, I'd love if you wouldn't mind introducing yourself, because I love to hear how folks introduce themselves. And I know you've written a lot and you do a bunch of different things. So how would you introduce yourself for our listeners? Oh, gosh, let's see. Well, I'm originally from Swaziland. And so in my work, I do my best to sort of bring a global South perspective where possible. I teach at, in London, both Goldsmiths and also at the London

School of Economics. I'm an economic anthropologist. But my work these days is actually mostly on kind of global inequality and political economy, sort of the history of global inequality, especially, and increasingly these days on political ecology. So thinking about how power balances play into the maldistribution of resources and energy and how that's driving ecological breakdown in interesting and problematic ways. So that's, gosh, that's kind of what I do these days. I'm working a lot on post-growth and de-growth economics, but also bringing an anthropological perspective to that so thinking about ontologies and different ways of being and how degrowth might enable some of those possibilities and

yeah when i last spoke with you you were more focused on global inequality and you had just come out with a divide a brief guide to global inequality and its solutions and so how did you just briefly how did you get to degrowth and more looking at ecological breakdown? Is that a relatively new thing? Or has that always been a thread? Yeah, that's so interesting you ask that, because at the end of the divide, I sort of had a reckoning, if you will, actually, because I was proposing these sort of fundamental changes to the global economy that would allow global South countries to capture a much fairer share of income from the global economy, right? Like more proportionate to the labor and resources

they put into the global economy in the first place. So a kind of less exploitative economy. But in the process, what I realized is that there's also kind of a ceiling on what is possible here. And that is basically the climate crisis and the ecological crisis. So yes, we can reorganize economies such that global South nations can flourish and grow, but global North nations cannot continue to grow at the same time if we want to avert catastrophic ecological breakdown. So then I was really struck by this conundrum, right? Like in a way, international development over the past few decades has been focusing on poor countries as though they're the

problem. But suddenly what's become clear is that rich countries are the problem in the sense that they're the ones that are driving climate and ecological breakdown. And so development in the 21st century, oh, and by the way, that breakdown is having a disproportionate effect on the South, like the vast majority of the deaths and the economic costs and other consequences are happening in the South. And so if we want to have a chance of meaningful development in the 21st century, then it's going to have to involve a fundamental change in the kind of economics that high-income nations have. And so this is a totally different way of thinking about developments, which I think is actually more challenging in a way. It requires us to sort of challenge fundamental assumptions about how

high-income nations nations economies should work. And that's quite difficult to change. So my work has kind of shifted there as a consequence of thinking about global inequality and the North-South divide. Great to hear that story. Yeah, I have to say The Divide is just such a phenomenal book. I got to reread it being in the London School of Economic Fellowship and just, yeah, so appreciated the histories, right, that you shared and also about bringing in colonization and slavery and just all the conditions that have led to global inequality. So it's really neat to have read that and then now to hear where you're going now.

going now. And I'm wondering if you can pinpoint a memory or a time, like what was that awakening moment for you when you felt that you needed to focus more on ecology, climate change, and what's going on there? Was there a paper or a moment or something that led you into that direction? That's a good question. Well, at one point, I wrote an article for The Guardian. And it was called something like, let's stop talking about developing poor countries and start talking about de-developing rich countries or something like that. And that was just my first kind of provocative attempts to think about this problem. But then a couple of ecological economists, including Yorgos Kalas, who is a really phenomenal researcher in the degrowth school of thought, reached out to me and said, you know, look, there's actually, there's research being done on this in ecological economics. And that was kind of my awakening. And I really dug into the, into the discipline from there. And I guess kind of my goal has been to translate some of those really excellent insights from that

discipline into language that's accessible to a broader audience and really speak into the sort of historical moment we're in right now, where people are questioning fundamental things about the economy, and, you know, where the climate crisis is really driving us to reimagine things fundamentally. So I suppose, in some ways, that was kind of the moment for me. But there's actually another really interesting story that always comes to mind. And that is that, you know, at one point, I went to a lecture by Paul Krugman at the London School of Economics. And I was a huge Krugman fan at the time. And this is the middle of the Great Recession. And he was talking about how rich countries need to do everything they can to stimulate demand, right,

to get out of the recession. And I was like, yes, this is what we need, a good Keynesian stimulus to get the economy growing again. And that just seemed to me sort of obviously good. And then my partner on the way home from this lecture asked me, do rich countries really need more growth? And I was like, of course they do. Of course they do. This is just basic economics. But her question really stayed with me.

I realized that all of the answers I was giving in response to justify this kind of ideological insistence on growth actually didn't hold water, really. I had not actually thought through whether rich countries really do need to have continuing exponential growth forever with no identifiable endpoints. And that really triggered questions for me. And I had to completely rethink my assumptions about how the economy should work. And I've now arrived at the exact opposite conclusion I think many people have in ecological economics, which is that high income nations not only don't need more growth in order to achieve all of their social goals and deliver flourishing for all, but in fact, need to actively scale down excess economic activity. Wow, I love tracking the questions that were asked and that we follow in our lives. That's great to hear. And so let's go into what degrowth means for a moment. So there's green growth, right, which is continuing to grow economies, but to change them to more

renewable or sustainable energy sources. And there's also something called the steady state movement. And then there's degrowth. And so can you help us make sense of all of these? And what is degrowth? And also, what is it not? sense of all of these and what is degrowth? And also, what is it not? What do people misjudge it as? Or what do they worry about when they hear that term degrowth? Yes, okay, it doesn't seem like a complicated terrain when you name all those different isms, if you will, right? So

basically, green growth is the idea that you can continue to pursue GDP growth forever, while at the same time reducing ecological impacts like resource use, for example, down to sustainable levels. This is what's called absolute decoupling. Now, unfortunately, this is really the sort of dominance policy perspective right now. And all we need to do is have the right technology and improve the efficiency of our economy, and this is going to deliver the results we want. Unfortunately, there's no evidence that's the case because GDP growth is very tightly coupled to energy use and resource use, not tightly coupled necessarily to emissions. All you need is renewable energy to decouple GDP from emissions. But to energy and resource use,

it is very tightly coupled. And we'll explain, I'll talk later about why that's a problem. But so green growth is empirically not feasible to achieve. And that's kind of where degrowth comes in. You know, if you can't achieve green growth, then you have to rethink the way that your economy works much more fundamentally. Now, post-growth economics is simply the claim that we need to shift our economies away from a kind of structural addiction to economic growth to focus instead more on well-being and ecological stability. A steady state economy is simply the claim that we need an economy that is fundamentally in balance with the living world. So there are a couple of basic rules. Essentially, you cannot take more from ecology than it can regenerate or sustainably

replenish. And you cannot waste more than ecosystems can safely absorb. And so you basically run the economy in a way that is consistent with the principles of ecology. And none of these are incompatible with degrowth. The principle of degrowth is basically for high income nations, which have very excessive levels of resource use and energy use, to scale down energy and resource use back down to planetary boundaries, back down to the level of a steady-state economy. So these three, post-growth, steady-state, and degrowth, are sort of compatible. It's just that degrowth advocates insist that the initial scaling down has to happen in rich countries. Now, crucially, what degrowth is not? Degrowth is not about actively trying to reduce GDP. I think that's probably the first mistake

that people will make. Because we talk about growth as though growth is about GDP growth, which it is. Degrowth is not about that. Degrowth rejects the idea that GDP is an important indicator for economics and is instead about let's actively introduce policy to reduce resource use and energy use. But we have to be aware that in doing so, that will likely impact the part of the economy that is presently measured by GDP. And therefore, we have to be prepared to run the economy effectively with less GDP, because if we're not, it's going to be effectively a disaster, a recession. We all know that when economic activity does shrink, that causes social and political and economic disaster.

Poverty rates go up, unemployment rates go up, etc. So we have to have policies ready to go that will mitigate that so that we can scale down damaging parts of the economy while still maintaining and even advancing human flourishing. So that's kind of the key principle of degrowth is that this has to be a just and sustainable transition to a steady state economy. You know, you mentioned planetary boundaries and changing the goal of the economy. So I automatically think of Kate Raworth and donut economics. And in her book, donut economics, one of the things she speaks about is being growth agnostic, you know, which is really seeing growth as a means to an end, but not an end in itself. And that really resonates with all that you're saying that if you change the goal of an economy

to the flourishing of people in the planet, then perhaps there's growth and perhaps there's not growth. It's dependent on what that goal is. So I think what you've just laid out is definitely related to that. And it's helpful to me because sometimes I say growth agnostic is the way to be. But what you're saying is they can come together and particularly degrowth, as you're saying, focused on the high income countries is what's important to focus on. This is crucial. Okay, so let me see if I can just bring some clarity here. So growth agnostic, yes, we should be, right?

In the sense of, and to me, this is particularly true for the global south, right? So the goal should be to target the objectives you actually want to achieve. So higher levels of education, better health outcomes, better wages, et cetera, et cetera. Higher levels of employment, whatever it might be that you think is valuable to pursue, pursue that directly rather than just growing the economy indiscriminately and hoping that GDP is somehow going to trickle down to accomplish your goals, which it virtually never does, right? So it's kind of an irrational way to approach economic policy. So in the global South, the idea is you want to target those sort of welfare or well-being indicators. And if the

economy grows as a consequence of that, then so be it. And I should emphasize, we know that it's possible in the global South for countries to achieve world-leading levels of human well-being and life expectancy and welfare, etc., while remaining within planetary boundaries. So that should be the goal. So Costa Rica is an example here. Costa Rica is an incredible country because it has life expectancy levels that exceed that of the U.S., but unlike the U.S., has ecological impact that is within planetary boundaries. So that's the objective. And it does that effectively through robust, high quality provision of universal public services like healthcare, education, social security, things like that. So that's what you do. That's how you win the game, if you will.

But for rich nations, it's a little bit different. So rich nations definitely should pursue well-being objectives and should organize the economy around well-being instead of around growth. But we cannot in rich nations be agnostic about what happens behind the scenes when it comes to economic growth or not. We can't actually be growth agnostic in the sense that we have to actively target a reduction in energy and resource use. That needs to be part of our targeting. Now, what that is going to mean is that parts of our economy will scale down, and we need to be prepared to organize the economy in such a way that that's going to be okay

and not cause a disaster. And we know that's possible. So I think that's the key point here, right? I don't think that we can afford to be growth agnostic in high income nations. We need to be very conscious of what's happening with resource and energy use and have clear policy around reducing that.

Now, let me try to give a bit of clarity as to why this is so important. Let's take the most immediate challenge we face, which is averting climate breakdown. Now, we know that in order to stay under 1.5 degrees of global warming, then globally we need to reduce emissions to zero by 2050 or before. Now, for rich nations, it actually has to be a lot faster than that, given the principle of equity and differentiated responsibility. We know that rich nations have contributed the vast majority of excess emissions historically. And as a consequence, they have a much higher responsibility to reduce emissions faster. So according to the Stockholm

Environment Institute scientists, rich nations need to reduce emissions to zero by about 2030. Institute scientists, rich nations need to reduce emissions to zero by about 2030. That's fast. That's no time at all. That's one decade for a totally radical transition to clean energy. Now, we know that that is technically possible to achieve with renewable energy outlays, something like a Green New Deal. But here is the tricky part. We cannot achieve that rapid rollout of renewable energy while growing the economy at the same time. And the reason is because more growth drives energy demand up. And as energy demand rises, it becomes more difficult to supply that energy demand with renewable sources. If we have to reduce emissions to zero by the middle of the century, we probably shouldn't be doubling the size of the global

economy at the same time or tripling it, which is our present trajectory, right? That just makes our job much more difficult. And so the proposition that degrowth scholars make is that the smaller your energy system, the smaller your economy, the easier it is to cover that energy demand with renewables. So in rich nations, we actually have to reduce, instead of growing energy demand, we have to actually reduce it. Now, and here's the crucial thing, is that this is not about individual behavior change, right? This is not about make sure to turn off the lights when you leave the room and switch your house over to LEDs and so on. Of course, those are important interventions. high-income countries has to do with the material economy, right? So think about all the material stuff that our economy extracts and produces and transports and consumes and wastes every year, right? It takes an enormous amount of energy to do all of that. That's where the vast majority of energy use is happening. So what climate scientists propose, and this is actually an

IPCC proposal, which they consider to be the most feasible possible way of achieving radical emissions reductions, is to scale down material throughput, resource use in high-income nations. Because as you scale down material use, then you scale down energy demand, and therefore you make it much easier. In fact, it's the only way to make it feasible to transition to renewables fast enough to avert climate breakdown. So this is exciting because it shows that it is technically possible for us to stay under 1.5 degrees. The trouble is that we can't do it with our existing style of economics.

So this raises the question, how do you actually reduce material throughput like this? How do you reduce resource use like this? Ultimately, this is about designing an economy that does not require ever-increasing levels of material throughput. So what does that look like? The first measure is one that is straight from the post-growth playbook, which is abandon GDP as your primary indicator of economic success. GDP is a bad measure. It doesn't include the costs of economic activity, either ecological or social costs. And there's a wide consensus now that it needs to be replaced with something more holistic. So target more holistic measures or target the things you actually want to achieve and have politicians pursue those rather than this bad aggregate measure.

So that's one thing. But the second thing is like we have to have a conversation about why should we assume that every sector in the economy should grow all of the time, regardless of whether we need it? Can we have a conversation, a democratic conversation about what sectors of the economy could be usefully reduced and what sectors we still want to grow? So maybe we still want to grow, of course, we want to grow renewable energy. We also want to grow public healthcare, say in the US, for example, right? Where there's very little of it. But we might want to grow public health care, say, in the US, for example, right, where there's very little of it. But we might want to scale down the production of SUVs and scale down the private jet industry and scale down the industrial beef sector and scale down advertising and scale down the use of planned obsolescence for artificially high turnover and scale down food wastes, you know,

etc, etc. Those are. Those are degrowth proposals. I mean, that's talking about reducing certain sectors of the economy, which has for so long been, for some reason, completely unthinkable. It's like that's not a conversation we can actually have. Interestingly, I think in the wake of coronavirus, as it's become clear that there is an emergency break, that we actually can scale down sectors of the economy when we take an emergency seriously enough, suddenly it's thinkable for us to do that.

Maybe we can scale down the airline industry, you know, in a just and equitable way. Maybe we can scale down private car use, you know, et cetera, et cetera. So I think that's the interesting part. Now, here's the thing, right? And this is where it gets interesting, is that as you scale down kind of this excess material and energy use in the economy, then under normal conditions, this would cause a recession. And again, we discussed how that's a disaster. You don't want that. So how do you prevent that from happening? The key proposal that ecological economists make is that we need to shorten the working week, redistribute necessary labor more fairly, and redistribute income more fairly. And in so doing, you ensure that despite having effectively reduced the size of your aggregate economy, people still have access to the livelihoods they need to

live well. And there's no mass unemployment, everybody has a job. And you can even introduce a job guarantee to ensure that. And training programs to move people from sunset industries like SUVs into necessary industries like renewables and public service and so on. At the same time, you need to cancel unnecessary debts, therefore liberating people and even governments from the imperative to extract and produce ever more just to pay down exponentially rising interest rates. And we also need to invest in a robust program of universal basic services, starting with healthcare and education, but extending that to transportation, to maybe the internet, you know, things like that, to ensure that everybody has access to the basic goods they

need to live long, flourishing, happy lives. Over and over again, it's clear in the evidence that that is what counts when it comes to human well-being, to good human health, and so on. So it's an interesting space. I mean, basically, ecological economists have strong proposals for what it would look like to manage a scenario in which we are reducing unnecessary parts of the economy. And that's, to me, very exciting. Absolutely. And yeah, I love tracking where folks think the intervention points lie for this transition. And, you yeah, I love tracking where folks think the intervention points lie for this transition. And, you know, I appreciate how you said, it's not necessarily human behavioral, like individual behavioral changes. There's also folks who look at more of the mindset, and you certainly referenced that, like questioning our addiction to growth,

you know, on the individual level consumption, but also on the economic level, the assumptions within traditional economic thinking. But you're really bringing about intervention points in really large global economic systems, kind of the outer systems realm, which really would require a lot of government leading or support. So I'm just wondering, you know, from where you are, I know you're an academic and a writer, a journalist, how could you and how could we contribute to this beautiful, larger vision of degrowth? Because sometimes when it gets so large and systemic, folks may feel that it's difficult to see themselves in that change. So I'm just wondering how you see that. Yeah, I mean, most of my work has been basically organized around demonstrating that

it is possible, right? Because there's this really debilitating discourse out there that indicates that, you know, 1.5 degrees is, you know, impossible. We're sort of destined for three degrees or maybe even more. And what we need to do is just start adapting. I utterly reject this discourse. I think that we need to be making the argument that it is in fact possible. We're sort of destined for three degrees or maybe even more. And what we need to do is just start adapting. I utterly reject this discourse. I think that we need to be making the argument that it is in fact possible. It just requires that we change the way our economies work. And so that needs to be really core to the climate's movements, right? In a way, I mean, the climate movement has kind of made a bit of a mistake because they focus everyone's attention on fossil fuels, and rightly so. But ultimately, the real problem is deeper than that, isn't it? The real problem has to do with how our economies are programmed

to operate. I mean, basically how capitalism works, which is an extractive system that's organized around constant self-replication and exponential growth. So we need to shift to a post-capitalist system. Now, that does sound big and difficult and perhaps even scary. But what's interesting is that in my research, I've come across so many different surveys from around the world showing that people are eager and ready for a different kind of economic system. Over and over again, we see that people want their governments to prioritize human well-being over economic growth, want their governments to prioritize climate stability and ecological health over economic

growth, and even at the expense of economic growth. And these are large majorities. These are like, you know, 70 plus percents of people will come out with these opinions. And I'm wondering, like, over and over again, we see that people are ready for a kind of post-capitalist, post-growth economy in large numbers. Why is it that we don't have that economy? It's because we haven't had an opportunity to actually have a democratic conversation about how the economy should operate yet, because our political parties are locked down on growthism, right? And this is crazy, if you think about it. The left and the right will bicker about how to distribute the yields of growth, but on the question of growth itself,

there's no daylight between them. It must be one of the most hegemonic ideologies in our system right now. It's very difficult to question. If you question the necessity of growth, people will look at you like you're crazy. And that's a difficult experience. Say degrowth, and they'll look at you like you're even crazier. It's not a thinkable thought. That's beginning to change, of course. And yeah, I think that as soon as you start having a democratic conversation about what we want our economy to pursue, then things will end up changing. And that is happening now, actually. And again, in the wake of coronavirus, we're seeing some of that. Like a recent survey published by YouGov shows that 80% of people in Britain want the government to pursue well-being over growth.

And then there was 80%. That's crazy. People are ready for something radically different. Then there was this amazing document that was just published by a few hundred Dutch academics who are calling on the Netherlands to shift to a post-growth economy and integrating degrowth principles into those demands, including degrowing destructive sectors of the economy, redistributing income, reducing working hours, canceling debts, shifting to regenerative agriculture. When that was published, it spread like wildfire on social media. It got huge attention and spawns kind of copycat versions of that little manifesto everywhere, including at least three here in the UK, signed by hundreds, if not thousands of NGOs, academics, and others. So what this all reveals to me is that people are ready for a transition. They're ready to pick up new ideas. They're ready to fundamentally challenge

old dogmas, the dusty old dogmas of capitalism. This old 16th century system are not fit to be dragged into the 21st century. We need something quite different. And I think people are ready for that. So that gives me hope. Of course, that doesn't mean it's going to be easy. Clearly, this is going to require a substantive political struggle. But then every struggle for economic, social, and ecological justice has always required that kind of work. And this has to be a collective struggle. And that's why I emphasize that, while individual responsibility is, of course, important, let's not get bogged down into thinking

that all we need to do is sit in our apartments and make sure that we compost and recycle, right? That's, in fact, not going to be enough. We need to build movements that are organized around building a different kind of economy. Now, what does that look like? Does that look like pressure from below, like Extinction Rebellion?

That's one powerful model, I think. Does it look like the student climate strikes? Again, a powerful model. Does it look like the divestment movement? Or does it look like trying to influence a major political party? There's been big efforts to help shift the Labour Party in the UK

towards a more post-growth economic policy platform. And to some extent, that has actually been quite successful. So that's exciting to see. Of course, the Labour government won't come out and say that outright. But if you look at their policy documents over the past couple of years, they're increasingly incorporating some of those ideas. So that's another approach to change, I think. And then, of course, you have a kind of even more grassroots approach to change, which is basically to start building the alternatives in the cracks of the existing system. And we see that happening around the world, including in Kurdistan, for example, in Rojava, where there's kind of this interesting experiment being run around feminist ecological

economics, right, where they're just shifting their society at the grassroots level and seeing where that goes. So a number of different ways to approach it, I guess, all of which are exciting, and we should keep them all in our toolkit, I think. Absolutely. And I appreciate that you brought up this opportunity that we have right now with the coronavirus. And it really, it's feeling like it's the coronavirus is what we decide to do with it. It's what we decide, what meaning we make of it and what opportunities we see, what potential. And so, you know, I do know that in the London School of Economics, I heard folks described this time as the COVID-19 is an inequality ratchet. And there's this kind of sense that inequality is growing as a result

of it. And I personally am very worried about a lot of small businesses and restaurants where I am, and I'm sure others are as well. And then there's also the opportunities for positive change, like the political possibilities that are being talked about as never before. Then there's also, you mentioned transportation. I saw something in Europe that said that they were considering not reopening domestic flights, which I thought was a really great idea. So just wondering if there's any other meaning making that you're doing around this time in particular with the coronavirus and any potentials that we could see right now that maybe we haven't seen before.

Yeah, there's a lot happening, I think, right now. I mean, first, let me address your question about inequality, the inequality ratchet question, right? So yes, I worry about this a lot too, Della. And what I'm seeing right now is that the government's policy responses in the US and the UK in particular are definitely going to increase inequality. Now, in the US, it's obvious, right? It's obvious how bad this is.

I mean, effectively, the rescue package has been a massive bailout to Wall Street while giving very little to workers. Unemployment is skyrocketing. I mean, this is a recipe for disastrous levels of inequality. I think that's more or less guaranteed to happen. In the UK, it's a bit more complicated and perhaps more interesting in the sense that the government seems to have done quite a lot to support workers with the furlough scheme and 80% of wages and so on. But here's the trouble, is that basically they're giving public money to companies to pay wages, or a portion of wages. But those wages are then going straight out from workers to pay rents and debts. And because the owners of rents and debts are ultimately rich people, by and large, for the most part, that means that the government is effectively using public money to pay rents and debts because they have not canceled rents and debts.

But rich people who are receiving all of this money are not spending in the economy. So the government is covering wages that would normally come from spending in the economy. And that means that money is pooling among the richest right now. come from spending in the economy. And that means that money is pooling among the richest right now. And so this is generating tremendous amount of inequality that will not be revealed until the bill comes due for this rescue package, right? So it all depends on how that rescue package is paid for. Now, one way to pay for it, which will make sure that this does not bring austerity down the pipeline, is to pay for it with a wealth tax. And this is something that I advocate for vocally. It's the only way to ensure that the costs of this crisis are borne by those

who can most afford to pay it. So you could talk about just canceling rents and debts, and that's one way to do it. But another way is to let them stay in place, but pay them all with a wealth tax, which is effectively the same thing, but even more progressive because it ensures that the burden falls on the very richest. So that's the way that I think it needs to be done. The other problem here is that both the US and UK right now are printing enormous amounts of money to basically pump up asset values. And interest rates are super low. And so rich people are taking that money and they're buying houses and buying stocks and so on. That's keeping stocks afloat. And so you see this real divergence, right, where stock values are actually rising right now and house prices

are rising, despite the fact that you have unprecedented unemployment in the US. So again, you're seeing this kind of this printing of money, this expansion of balance sheets, the US. So again, you're seeing this kind of this printing of money, this expansion of balance sheets, just to pump up asset values. And that means basically pumping up the wealth of rich people. And this is what happened in 2008. And that's what led to such extraordinary inequality in the wake of that crisis. And the exact same thing is happening now. And I think this should temper any optimism that we have about what's going on. I mean, it's interesting because the coronavirus crisis has stimulated this incredible efflorescence of critical new economic thinking. But at the same time, behind the scenes, it's actually exacerbating many of the problems that we're having to deal with in the first place. So that's something to

keep in mind. But yeah, I mean, in terms of the possibilities that this crisis is opening, I think it's revealing so much, right? I mentioned before how it's suddenly revealed that it's possible to shut down parts of the economy in order to protect people's lives and health when you take a crisis seriously enough. We were told before that was fundamentally unthinkable under no circumstances, and especially not in face of the climate crisis. Could you ever consider doing that?

And now we realize it is thinkable. And so we can actually have a conversation about, do we really want the airline industry to keep growing, for example, right? And as you pointed out, in France, they've, in fact, decided to start canceling domestic flights between cities that can be traversed by a train. So that's the kind of thing that we need to think. I think also it's illuminated the fact that we have economies that are very vulnerable to long distance supply chain shocks. And that's bad when you need to provide food and medical supplies in an emergency like this. And so I think it's quite clear that we need to relocalize economies as much as possible, especially food and essential supplies. And I think that's something that

we'll have to come down the pipeline here soon. I think also it's revealed that neoliberalism is a real problem in the sense of if you look at the way that the differences in the ways that the crisis has played out in different countries, the disparities are really remarkable. East Asia handled it super well. For the most part, the social democracies in Northern Europe handled it really well, too. Iceland's, for example. most part, the social democracies in Northern Europe handle it really well too. Iceland, for example. But the more neoliberal countries like the UK and US have handled it disastrously. And one of the reasons for that, I mean, in the US, it's clear that you can't manage a pandemic like this with totally fragmented, privatized health system. So countries that have robust public health systems are the ones that do the best in this kind of crisis. But also, it changes the way that our political leaders think. In countries that are not organized as much around neoliberalism,

then, you know, it's clear that political leaders can act in the public interests rapidly and effectively, even when it means running against the interest temporarily, perhaps, of capital, right? And that's not something that the u.s and the uk are really capable of doing without being forced to which eventually did happen so i think this is a wake-up call to all of us that neoliberal economies are extremely vulnerable fragile and really horrible at responding to a crisis like this and that's true of this crisis the covid crisis but is it is even more true of the climate crisis. It's not an economic system that is fit for responding to the climate crisis.

And that should be a wake up call to all of us. Absolutely. I want to, because you mentioned in your intro, you're from Swaziland. And of course, your work really does also focus on the global south. I do have to say in hearing about degrowth and also in hearing about the coronavirus crisis, like I also do think about the global south and think about, for example, garment workers or folks in factories of those global supply chains that it seems from what I'm hearing, it's like there's really a having to decide between working and living or not working and potentially dying of starvation. So I'm just wondering, like, what's your sense of what's

happening for the global south, and particularly in regards to the Coronavirus and supply chains, but also more generally about degrowth? Like, is there any concern that if we degrow some parts of the economy, that it might adversely affect or draw more suffering towards other countries? Yes, both are excellent questions. I'm so glad you've asked. So first about coronavirus. Yeah, to me, just as coronavirus has exposed problems in the economic system of neoliberalism in countries like the US and UK, we're seeing the same thing play out in the Global South. And this is important because over the past 40 years, the Global South has been subjected to structural adjustment programs by the IMF and the World Bank and other investors, which have basically forced them to massively slash spending on public health care and public

education, cut wages, cut environmental standards, cut capital controls, etc, etc. But when it comes to a crisis like this, the real crucial thing is the cuts to public healthcare spending. And so in the immediate decades following the end of colonialism, then most global South countries, most newly independent, you know, democratically elected governments in the South, were building robust universal public healthcare systems. And beginning in the South were building robust universal public health care systems. And beginning in the 80s with structural adjustment, all of that was shredded. And so most countries in the South these days have very poor public health infrastructure. And that is not a natural state of affairs. It's not just that they never got around to developing them, right? It's not just because they're poor countries, they don't have public health care systems. No,

they were actively and purposefully shredded by structural adjustment. And what we're going to see is that as a consequence, they're fundamentally unprepared to deal with a crisis like COVID. And we're seeing this happen already in places like Ecuador, right, where bodies are literally piling up in the streets. There is a total deficit of PPE, of hospital beds. The system is utterly fragmented. It cannot cope. And it is a catastrophe. For the most part, these images and these stories have not surfaced in Western media. And to me, this is so heartbreaking because Western economies or the governments of Western economies did this to the South. And there needs to be some kind of reckoning. Now, for me, the first step here is that there has to be

massive amounts of debt cancellation in the global South right now. There are dozens and dozens of countries in the South that are presently paying more in debt service than they're spending on public health and education, right? This is ludicrous. And for the most part, these debts are old debts. In some cases, they've been paid off many times over. But because of the miracle of compound interest, they're still owed. So there needs to be massive debt cancellation. I mean, this is on the table right now, but in such meager amounts that it's laughable, right? Like, rich country creditors got together and decided they would cancel, I think, $20 billion worth of debt in low-income countries. I mean, compare this to the multi-trillions of dollars that they have

used to bail out their own economies, right? So I think a much fairer proposal would be to cancel in the region of one trillion US dollars of debt in the South right now, which is what the UN Conference on Trade and Development has demanded. And that is an essential way of making sure that you effectively put money in the pockets of global South governments, and they can use that to build public health care systems, expand ICU capacity, roll out testing, and do everything possible to mitigate the effects of this crisis. To me, that's urgent. And so I see debt cancellation as a form of reparations, really, for the destruction that has been wrought on Global South public health care systems and economies since the 1980s. So that's that. Now, your other question about degrowth and economies since the 1980s. So that's that.

Now, your other question about degrowth and impacts on the South, right? So again, just to clarify for listeners, degrowth is only about high-income countries that are overshooting planetary boundaries. The vast majority of global South countries are within planetary boundaries, and so it does not apply to them. But it's an interesting question. Given the integration between the global North and global south, if global north countries do scale down parts of their economies, you know, such as resource use, since most resources come from the south, is that going to negatively impact global south countries that are dependent on resource exports? is that, yes, if all else remains the same, but we're not calling for all else to remain the same. We're calling for a shift in global South countries along the lines of a school of thought called post-development, which would see global South countries shift from being primarily exporters of cheap labor and raw materials to the North to economies that are much more regionally

integrated and focused on independence, economic sovereignty, and human welfare and well-being. That's the kind of shift that has to happen. Now, it's interesting people will say global north countries need to keep growing and keep extracting resources from the south so that we can reduce poverty in the global south. And this to me is a bizarre argument that really does have strange colonial overtones, really, right? It's basically saying that the plunder of the South, because that's the present arrangement, right? The plunder of cheap resources and labor from the South is necessary in order for the South to develop.

It's sort of like this discourse of colonialism is for the good of the colonized, slavery is for the good of the enslaved, etc., etc. We must reject that discourse. The idea that the only way for the South to improve human welfare and human development and et cetera, is to be plundered by the North. That's ludicrous. We must reject that. So yeah, no, it requires a kind of shift in the economies of the South for sure. And this has been something that progressive economists

in the global South have called for for decades, at least since the 1960s. It actually goes back to Gandhi. It goes back to Frantz Fanon, Amy Césaire. Virtually every anti-colonial leader was pointing out that the key to post-colonial developments is that we unhinge our economies from extractivism by the north. And again, during the immediate post-colonial decades, they were successfully doing that, building robust, fair, sovereign economies. But again, that was all reversed during the structural adjustment period in the 1980s and 1990s, where global South countries were effectively forced again to serve as exporters of cheap labor and raw materials to the North. exporters of cheap labor and raw materials to the North, right? So degrowth in the North must come along with a kind of decolonization, right, of the South. In fact, I see degrowth as a call for decolonization. You know, the less extraction from the South that excess consumption in the North requires, the freer the South is to reorganize their economies along different lines. And I think that that has to be central to our analysis. Yeah. And I think just to give a little bit more context, when I asked that

question originally, I was thinking of folks who say, oh, if I don't buy from that store that uses sweatshop labor in the global South, and instead I buy more locally, then am I potentially putting somebody in the global South out of their work or out of labor. And now I'm seeing through this conversation, one, I'm making an assumption that individual behavior is what changes economics, right, which you've talked about, isn't the only way and isn't even the biggest. And then also that it doesn't recognize the need for the shifting in the economies of the global south that you've really beautifully put. So yeah, there's kind of assumptions within that. And yeah, I think I think for me, what I was just

worried about when I hear about just from the news that I've received, and maybe this is an issue of news, but folks in the global south who say, in particularly Africa, I remember in Kenya, one story where it's like people saying, I literally cannot stop working or I potentially could die of hunger. And so for me, it just made me feel like, wow, the insecurity and the precariousness of some of the economies in the global South where folks, let's say garment workers or these folks are so dependent on labor from the capital extractive exploitative systems that it could mean death. Like for me, that's a very different reality

from my privileged place in the global north. So I think that's a little bit more about why I asked that particular question. Yes, no, and I think that's a really, it's an important and difficult question. Now look, in most global south countries, it would be possible to avert this kind of disaster, even with domestic policies,

with a wealth tax, for example, and some government's intervention in the food supply chain, you could make sure that everybody has access to the basic income they need to get through this crisis and access to food. That could be done. The fact that it's not being done is because the global South is now predominantly, as a consequence of structural adjustment, run by neoliberal governments, right? But again, the North plays a significant role here. And this is where the debt cancellation thing comes in so crucial because with debt cancellation,

it would liberate Global South governments to make that kind of intervention much more easily, right? To pay a basic income, to deliver food to where it's needed, etc. And look, you know, actually, we're seeing places where this is happening effectively. Like take Kerala, for example. Kerala is a really bright spot in the Global South right now. They do not have a high level of GDP per capita. And yet their response to the coronavirus crisis has been so incredible. They responded quickly. They made sure that

migrant workers and homeless people all had places to shelter. They provided hot meals. They provided a rapid public service for widespread community testing. You know, they really pulled it together. And that's precisely because Kerala is not a neoliberal government. They have a socialist government that has really demonstrated some incredible solidarity in response to this crisis. And so that, you know, that to me is a beacon in the South that reveals what's possible. But yeah, you know, the thing about if people in the North stop buying clothes that are made by Nike or Primark and therefore reduce demand for sweatshop labor, on the face of

it, yes, that is a disaster. And there is a discourse out there. This was recently promoted by Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times, who wrote a piece called Two Cheers for Sweatshops. And his argument is basically, we might think that sweatshops are bad, but sweatshops are a lifeline for impoverished workers in the global South. They're a key to getting out of poverty. And again, I'm struck by the coloniality of that logic.

Exploitation is the best way to reduce poverty. And it's ludicrous, right? The best way, I mean, you know, in this instance, if you want to maintain these global supply chains and international trade and labor effectively, then what you need is you need a global minimum wage. And this is actually relatively easy to do. It could be governed by the International Labor Organization. They've indicated their willingness to do this. And it could be pegged at, say, 50% of each country's median income. So it does not disrupt existing patterns of comparative advantage in labor. And a simple intervention like that would make would ensure that workers in the global south get paid a fair decent wage for the labor that they render to the global economy than they presently do and that would be a game-changer we

don't need development aid and charity to solve the problem of poverty in the south it is a problem of injustice and it demands a political economic response a global minimum wage would be an essential first step in that direction in the South. It is a problem of injustice and it demands a political economic response. A global minimum wage would be an essential first step in that direction. So that's the kind of level of intervention we should call for. Not that we should keep mindlessly consuming sweatshop garments, but rather that we should rally around a call for a global minimum wage. Again, something that economists in the global South have been calling for for a very long time. Very cool. Well, so let me ask the last question, just because I'm so aware of time. And I'm so appreciative of you. I have to say,

this whole conversation, I'm listening to it. I'm like, I want to listen back to this, like over and over again, because I just so appreciate your sense of history and your sense of breadth of all the disciplines. So it's really awesome to get to talk to you. So I'd love to ask you about a question that connects both this introduction that you gave to yourself around looking at inequality, and then now more looking at ecology, ecological economics, and degrowth. So I'm curious about the book that you're currently working on, or that is about to come out in August. I know it's about ontologies. I know it's about the ecological worldview. So tell us about that project, how you came to that and what you've been exploring and what are some of the main insights there? So the book is called Less is More and it's coming out with

Penguin in August. It started off as a project about degrowth, basically an attempt to communicate degrowth thought and policy to a broad audience. And it's framed with respect to what we have to do to address precipitating crisis of ecological breakdown, right? But at the same time, I realized that this story could not be told without a deeper history of capitalism and kind of the deep logic of what makes capital tick. But also not only that, but also the story of how we came to see nature the way

that we do, how we arrived at this kind of dualist ontology that allows us to see ourselves as separate from and above and superior to nature. What I realized is that in the history of capitalism, and this is what the book lays out, in the history of capitalism, you know, the first step to instituting the possibility for a capitalist economy was enclosure, was the enclosure movement. But that alone was not enough. You also had to find some way of convincing European peasants to regard the lands and the forests and mineral seams and so on as objects to be extracted and exploited. And that was something that really ran against the grain of the dominant cultural beliefs at the time, which were that the earth is alive and forests are enchanted and full of agency and plants participate in spirit and agency in just the way that humans do, right?

There's no fundamental distinction. And so Europe's elites really struggled to find ways to convince peasants of this kind of philosophy of separation. And this is where Bacon and Descartes were really essential, right? Because that perspective was really essential to the very possibility of extractivist capitalism, and later to justifying colonialism, right? Because you have to regard nature as an object. And so suddenly, this can apply to humans too, if you can consider them closer to nature, right? So if you create hierarchies where women are closer to nature, then you don't have to pay them. You can exploit them without pay, unlike European male peasants, which you would pay

at least a very small wage, right? And you can extrapolate to indigenous Americans and to Africans trafficked for slavery, etc. If you can develop a philosophy that sees certain humans as closer to nature, then you can justify brutal extraction and exploitation. And that's exactly how that philosophy was used. So it was not just a philosophy that was organized around the domination of plants and animals and the land, but also around certain types of humans. And so this shift in philosophy was actually really essential to the possibility of capitalism.

And remember, the rise of capitalism in the 16th century depended on the slave trade. It depended on colonialism. Look at the key ingredients in the Industrial Revolution, right? Cotton and sugar don't grow in Europe. They were grown on lands stolen from indigenous Americans with the labor of enslaved Africans. That was essential to the very possibility of industrialization in Europe.

And we have to remember that. So, you know, these patterns, right, these deep historical patterns of enclosure, of colonization, of the slave trade, and of dualist ontology all fit together in the early history of capitalism. And the argument I make in the book is that if we want to have any chance of shifting to a post-capitalist economy, this is more than just figuring out the right economic policies. I mean, Degrowth Scholarship loves thinking about what are the policies that we need to shift to a post-growth economy in a kind of safe and just and sustainable way.

And that's great, but it's in fact not enough. We also need a deep ontological shift to restore a sense of connection to the rest of the living world. And so that's kind of but it's in fact not enough. We also need a deep ontological shift to restore a sense of connection to the rest of the living world. And so that's kind of where the book takes us. And to me, that's the most exciting part, right? As an anthropologist, I get to tell these phenomenal stories

about the way that different people in different parts of the world today think about nature in fundamentally different ways to the way that we do in Western capitalist societies. And what can we learn from that? What does that mean for our ethics in terms of engagement with each other and with the living world when we refuse to see other forms of life as fundamentally separate and beneath us, right? That changes the game entirely. Once you recognize that you live in a world that's pulsing with

life and agency of non-human beings. And they are not mere objects, but rather subjects in their own right. This changes the way that you think of how an economy should operate. And that's where the deep shift happens. And I've been so inspired by reading indigenous philosophers, right? Jack Forbes, for example, and more recently for me, Robin Kimmerer, who's been, in fact, you know what, Della? I think you were the one that recommended Braiding Sweetgrass to me, and I read it, and it was a life-changing moment for me, I must say. I would urge anyone who hasn't read Robin Kimmerer to definitely take up her work.

It's very eye-opening. One of the things that Kimmerer argues is that we need to build societies that are organized around the principle of reciprocity with nature. And so in my book, Less Is More, I take up that idea and I imagine what would it look like to have an economy organized around the principle of reciprocity rather than extraction. And I think to me, this is the basis of a kind of post-capitalist economy or post-capitalist ethics, you know, an economy where you never take more than you give back, an economy where, you know, there's organized around, you rounds, ecological and human well-being rather than endless capital accumulation. That's the kind of economy we have to shift to. So I think

there's really exciting possibilities there. And I feel that there's a fascinating opening happening right now in our culture, where people are increasingly ready for these ideas. Five or 10 years ago, they would have seemed laughable. But just as degrowth is becoming thinkable, so too post-dualist ontology is becoming thinkable in a way that I wouldn't have imagined a few years ago. And so what I try to do is I try to connect the idea of degrowth to post-dualism by pointing out that degrowth must ultimately be a process not just of decolonization, but of de-thingification,ification, of de-objectification. And this actually goes back to one of my favorite authors, Amy Césaire, a radical Martinican revolutionary intellectual from the 60s, who wrote a book called Discourse on Colonialism.

And he pointed out that capitalist colonialism is fundamentally a process of thingification, the thingification of human bodies, of people of color, and also of other forms of life. And so if our degrowth is going to mean anything, it must be fundamentally a process of de-thingification. So that's kind of where I think we need to go. It reminds me of the Thomas Berry quote, the universe is not a collection of objects, but a communion of subjects. I love that you're looking at the ontologies or worldviews, paradigms, right, that underpin our movements and inviting us into a world of animism as we go forth. And especially to do that in economics is such a beautiful

invitation. So thank you so much. And I'm so excited for that book and to hear the stories that you've gathered about that and all the wisdom. And I love that you're uplifting the voices of Indigenous writers too in that work, creating more plurality in our economic teachings and writings. That's wonderful.

Thank you so much for this time and for all of your thoughts and for all of the work that you do. Yeah, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me on, Del. It was good to catch up. You've been listening to an Upstream Conversation with economic anthropologist Jason Hickel. His new book, Less Is More, will be out in August. Upstream is a labor of love. If you like what you hear and want us to be able to produce more content,

please consider donating at upstreampodcast.org forward slash support. And you can follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Upstream Podcast. Thank you. you