agriculture (more labor intensity possible), a country with easily accessed capital
would focus on fishing and scale down its agricultural sector, and a country with
cheap labor would prioritize farming over trawling. As a consequence they would
quickly benefit: convert the boats into farms and up shoot the exports. In the
calculations for the basic model, this conversion is assumed to be free of costs and
involve a workforce that instantly migrates to wherever work is available. When I
asked if its adherents really believed that people would not find it very costly to
uproot their entire way of life simply because of the current terms of trade, the
professor gave me a stunning response: “Oh dear, a warm heart speaking.”
Confused as to why a cold heart was a good thing, or at least a prerequisite for
believing in mainstream economic models, I used my PhD to study theory of
science and the history of economic thought as well as global political economy,
institutionalism theories and the role of law. I continued to be drawn into what I
described as the reflexive approaches that I put emphasis on with the concept of
materiality of ideas in Fig. 2.5.
In the summary of Chap. 2, I discussed the way that the term ‘ideas’ captures
more than simple flashes of thought, mere slogans or buzzwords. This chapter is
about zooming in on some ideas that have been instrumental in shaping the processes and systems we live in today. According to Morten Bøås and Desmond
McNeill, who have researched the role of ideas in the forming of institutions, these
ideas have “some reputable intellectual basis,” but they “may nevertheless be found
vulnerable on analytical and empirical grounds.” What is special about such ideas,
they argue, is that they are “able to operate in both academia and policy domains”
(Bøås/McNeill 2004: 1).
In the following I will identify some key ideas that, if changed, could induce a
paradigm shift and thus trigger a very high leverage point in unlocking unsustainable path dependencies. I think the Brundtland Commission was already at this
point when it urged for the “need to integrate economic and ecological considerations in decision making” because this is how the workings of the real world
operate. The commission also pointed out that this will “require a change in attitudes and objectives and in institutional arrangements at every level” (WCED 1987:
55). So this chapter seeks to improve futures literacy: people’s capacity to imagine
futures that are not based on hidden, unexamined, and sometimes flawed
assumptions about present and past systems. It hopes to serve the spirit of jointly
tackling the structures and path dependencies that keep us, collectively, from
bringing about the sustainable world that we, individually, wish for and have agreed
to guide our policies toward.
As stated earlier, my goal is not to provide a detailed historical assessment of
theoretical and methodological intricacies but to show how strong the influence of
some basic economic ideas born in the Enlightenment era remains in
decision-making and its rationalization or justifications today. This is why I zoom
in on a few key concepts that are customarily applied when deciding how to put the
goals of sustainable development into practice: delivering on the needs of current
generations while safeguarding the means of need satisfaction for future ones. The
1992 Rio Declaration included the agreement that such development should
54
3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …
would focus on fishing and scale down its agricultural sector, and a country with
cheap labor would prioritize farming over trawling. As a consequence they would
quickly benefit: convert the boats into farms and up shoot the exports. In the
calculations for the basic model, this conversion is assumed to be free of costs and
involve a workforce that instantly migrates to wherever work is available. When I
asked if its adherents really believed that people would not find it very costly to
uproot their entire way of life simply because of the current terms of trade, the
professor gave me a stunning response: “Oh dear, a warm heart speaking.”
Confused as to why a cold heart was a good thing, or at least a prerequisite for
believing in mainstream economic models, I used my PhD to study theory of
science and the history of economic thought as well as global political economy,
institutionalism theories and the role of law. I continued to be drawn into what I
described as the reflexive approaches that I put emphasis on with the concept of
materiality of ideas in Fig. 2.5.
In the summary of Chap. 2, I discussed the way that the term ‘ideas’ captures
more than simple flashes of thought, mere slogans or buzzwords. This chapter is
about zooming in on some ideas that have been instrumental in shaping the processes and systems we live in today. According to Morten Bøås and Desmond
McNeill, who have researched the role of ideas in the forming of institutions, these
ideas have “some reputable intellectual basis,” but they “may nevertheless be found
vulnerable on analytical and empirical grounds.” What is special about such ideas,
they argue, is that they are “able to operate in both academia and policy domains”
(Bøås/McNeill 2004: 1).
In the following I will identify some key ideas that, if changed, could induce a
paradigm shift and thus trigger a very high leverage point in unlocking unsustainable path dependencies. I think the Brundtland Commission was already at this
point when it urged for the “need to integrate economic and ecological considerations in decision making” because this is how the workings of the real world
operate. The commission also pointed out that this will “require a change in attitudes and objectives and in institutional arrangements at every level” (WCED 1987:
55). So this chapter seeks to improve futures literacy: people’s capacity to imagine
futures that are not based on hidden, unexamined, and sometimes flawed
assumptions about present and past systems. It hopes to serve the spirit of jointly
tackling the structures and path dependencies that keep us, collectively, from
bringing about the sustainable world that we, individually, wish for and have agreed
to guide our policies toward.
As stated earlier, my goal is not to provide a detailed historical assessment of
theoretical and methodological intricacies but to show how strong the influence of
some basic economic ideas born in the Enlightenment era remains in
decision-making and its rationalization or justifications today. This is why I zoom
in on a few key concepts that are customarily applied when deciding how to put the
goals of sustainable development into practice: delivering on the needs of current
generations while safeguarding the means of need satisfaction for future ones. The
1992 Rio Declaration included the agreement that such development should
54
3 Why the Mainstream Economic Paradigm Cannot Inform …