Books on Alternatives to Conventional Economics

MPs are obsessed with economic growth (an out-dated and terrible way to manage countries, also read our post on The Happiness Index, top rated is Costa Rica, we are not even near).

Beloved Economies is book of seven steps for for businesses, non-profits, farms and schools to build more purposeful economics that build trust and share power. ‘Work’ can work for us all, to build an economic future that is good for everyone.

Based on extensive research with organizations and companies that are boldly breaking out of business as usual, Beloved Economies offer readers an imagination-expanding vision of what work could be.

Looking at over 60 people from a wide range of professions, what these groups have in common is that they are generating forms of success that put well-being, meaning, connection and resilience at the hearts of their businesses, not just financial success and quality.

It’s not only what we do for a living, but how we do it – that moves us into economies that all of us can love.

The Seven Practices

1. Share decision-making power
2. Prioritise relationships
3. Reckon with history
4. Seek difference
5. Source from multiple-knowing
6. Trust there is time
7. Share and test ideas

A compelling vision of a world in which the relationship between work, the environment and human flourishing, is one of harmony. All made vivid, through stories of people who are already changing the status quo. Eric Ries

Jess Riminton is an economy strategist who focuses on emerging post-capitalist ways of life. Focusing on the imagination of small business and organisation leaders, who are stepping out of current extractive systems.

Joanna Levitt Cea has worked in community efforts to stop destructive investments that threaten local livelihoods and ecosystems, and led the human rights organisation International Accountability Project, and was founding director of Buen Vivir Fund with Thousand Currents.

Plenty Good Room (an economy of enough for all)

Plenty Good Room lays out a more hopeful approach to economics – one of ‘enough’ for everyone. In a world ravaged by capitalism, this approach offers plenty good room – not just for a few, but for all.

Sharing tools and cars is good for communities and the planet. Repairing goods and passing things on reduces rubbish. Libraries, swap events and repair cafés help.

In a world ravaged by intensifying social justice and capitalism, this is a form of economics that works for everyone, not just a few. Capitalism does not work: it creates an uneven balance of power, constrains life chances and limits imaginations. It’s unkind and boring. It only benefits owners and investors.

This American book suggest an alternative to way to organise our life – as ‘homegrown as sweet potato pie!’ What if we could become moral engineers of the world we create? And challenge conventional greed, inequality and capitalism?

Drawing on the threads of history and Scripture, this book is also inspired by black radicals like Dr Martin Luther King Jr, pointing to how often it’s people in the Black Christian movement, who began these kind of changes. Which can permeate out towards a wider society.

Wilkes offers the biblical and theological foundations for economic democracy. He demonstrates that there is no distance between Jesus and justice. In fact, it’s what God requires and what all people of conscience must make real. Rev Dr Liz Theoharis

Rev. Andrew Wilkes PhD is co-pastor of the wonderfully-named Double Love Experience Church in Brooklyn, New York. Married to a fellow pastor, they regular use their voices to write for black social justice. He is a graduate of Hampton University and Princeton Theological Seminary.

The Biblical Vision of Sabbath Economics

MPs are obsessed with economic growth (an out-dated and terrible way to manage countries, also read our post on The Happiness Index, top rated is Costa Rica, we are not even near).

You don’t have to be religious, to understand the benefits of Sabbath Economics. This collection of essays uses Biblical parables to reveal an ancient standard of social justice, waiting to be revived. Where one day each week is set aside for rest.

There is enough for everyone. The world is an abundant gift, where we can all live with gratitude and accept our limits. And forgiveness is not just a spiritual matter, but a practical reality for systems of debt and ownership.

In this concise and powerful collection of essays, the author grasps the nettles of Biblical stories and parables we prefer not to take literally, and reveals an ancient standard of social justice, waiting to be revived.

In a world of obscene inequality, these words are a timeless challenge to us, to live out the letters of Jesus’ teaching, and call others to work for Jesus and justice. Dr Sally & Dave Mann

A Book on How Economists Forgot About Nature

MPs are obsessed with economic growth (an out-dated and terrible way to manage countries, also read our post on The Happiness Index, top rated is Costa Rica, we are not even near).

The Invention of Infinite Growth is a book for those of us who shout at the TV when MPs come on and bang on about ‘growth’, as we are yelling ‘but your obsession is destroying our planet, there are better alternatives’.

In this book, the author argues that economists and politicians have lost touch with reality. You can’t create a society of (what ecological writer Satish Kumar called ‘buy, buy and throw away’) just to produce the right numbers for the budget and Whitehall.

That means we destroy forests to make toilet paper, keep people sick to hire nurses, keep people unsafe to build prisons, and keep having oil spills, as the clean-up operations produce ‘economic growth’.