Yes, there is an alternative

But don't expect your elected representatives to tell you about it

I’ve not been writing much over the last couple of weeks, but I have been thinking. As I’ve watched what passes for politics both here in the UK and in the US, I’ve come to the conclusion (not for the first time) that politics as we currently do it has no answers to the mounting problems facing the world and its people.

This is why why so many have lost faith in politicians: not only are they bereft of ideas, they seem to have no apparent understanding of how we got here, nor any sense of the magnitude and nature of the changes required to get us back on track.

It’s too late for incremental change. There is no point tinkering around the edges. Nor will things improve if, as Sir Keir Starmer argues, we just manage the system a little better. It’s largely the system — the poisonous cocktail of an economy geared to minority interests, politicians who’ve given up control over it, the oligarchs who do now control it, and the media that supports them — which has brought us to this point.

If we are to slow the decline of civilization, prevent the early deaths of millions in poorer countries, and reverse rapidly reducing economic security for many in richer nations, then we have to transform the political and economic structures that shape our societies. These are changes that can only be brought about by nations working together towards mutually beneficial ends.

Most people tell me that’s never going to happen. It’s just too difficult. To which my reply is usually ‘maybe not, but it could’. If I’m feeling brave I might add ‘and if you care about your children’s and your grandchildren’s futures, it really does have to happen’.

Even among writers on the left, and others who understand what will happen if we don’t change course, there is a worrying lack of ideas about how to actually make change happen. I’m as guilty of this as anyone. There are lots of great ideas out there, but how do we create change when democracy has given up power over the economy, and lost sight of its true purpose as the only provider of material wellbeing for everyone.

Today, the World Inequality Lab launched its Global Justice Report. You probably missed it because, save for The Guardian, it’s been pretty much ignored in the mainstream media.

It’s a remarkable piece of work, not only because it provides a blueprint for turning things around by the end of this century, but because it also demonstrates how it can be done.

In a world in which politicians, business people, the media, and that amorphous blob we call the markets genuinely cared about ordinary people and the planet as a viable home for future generations, this blueprint would be adopted immediately.

An international conference would have been convened ahead of time at which Thomas Piketty and his colleagues would stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the world’s leaders and applaud as, one by one, they signed an agreement to enact the recommendations of the report, and instantly altered the trajectory of our struggling civilization.

But we don’t live in such a world. Instead we live in a world in which too many are invested in an economic system that pits country against country and citizen against citizen. A world in which, as a consequence, nearly everybody appears happy to trade long-term survival for short-term material gratification.

There is no practical reason why the recommendations of the Global Justice Report should not be implemented in full. The economics is sound, and the data to back up the authors’ conclusions has been rigorously researched. But three things prevent it from happening: elite power; a lack of political will, and a deep-rooted psychological resistance to change on the part of many ordinary people, even when such change is overwhelmingly in their interest.

I’ve not read it all yet, but I have read the summary. And I can do no better than the authors, when they explain that it

‘is the first attempt to propose a fully quantified plan going in this direction, combining four dimensions that today's debates often treat separately: redistribution at the world scale, a deep reform of the international financial and economic order, a radical transformation of energy systems, and substantial shifts in consumption patterns.’

Among the outcomes envisaged, if governments were prepared to cooperate on the creation of new institutions and pass complementary legislation to enable the restructuring of the global economy, are:

• greater equality between countries

• average labour hours reduced by 50 percent

• huge increases in average global spending on healthcare and education

• fast decarbonisation keeping global temperatures within 2°C of pre-industrial levels

• 89 percent of people having their monetary income double, with 99 percent better of when factoring benefits of increased leisure time and improved planetary habitability

• the poorest 50 percent seeing their share of global wealth rise from 2% to 30%, while the billionaires’ share falls from 6% to 0.05% - though they’ll still be the richest people in the world.

So where’s the catch? The report’s authors acknowledge it will require a ‘substantial shifts in consumption patterns’. But we know this already. There is no way the consumption levels of better-off people in rich countries can be extended to growing numbers of people in poorer countries. It’s this failure that’s already persuading so many in the global south to risk their lives to reach the richer north.

But instead of selling development as a means to greater material consumption — and let’s face it, consumer culture doesn’t seem to have done much for people’s mental wellbeing in rich countries — what if we promoted development as a process through which nearly everyone experiences an improvement in their economic security while having to work fewer hours? If it sounds too good to be true, then read the report.

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Everything proposed in the report is achievable in theory and in practice. If it doesn’t happen it will only be because democracy is failing to deliver politicians with the courage to speak truth to elite power, and the moral ambition to join forces with their colleagues in other countries and cooperate on solutions to the common problems faced by every nation.

I began by suggesting that politics is no longer fit for purpose. But, I’m always happy to be proved wrong, so I thought I’d give the UK Government the chance to redeem itself. I googled ‘UK Government response to the Global Justice Report’ and nothing. Perhaps it’s a bit too soon. They’re probably still digesting the 1,500 pages of crucially important tittle-tattle contained in the Mandelson papers released earlier this week. I’ll keep checking though, more in hope than expectation.

But seriously, what are we to do if, when presented with a workable solution to the immense challenges facing our civilization, those we elect to run things choose simply to bury their heads in the sand?

As Jonathan Watts says in his analysis for The Guardian:

While critics will question the feasibility of this vision because it relies on a radical reform of global financial institutions and massive wealth taxes – both of which have long been dismissed as unthinkable by rich countries – there can be no worthwhile assessment of its value without considering the far bleaker options offered by the far right and the old left.

The key words here are ‘dismissed as unthinkable by rich countries’. What’s tragic is that the consequences of inaction, consequences that are pretty unpalatable for nearly everyone, are not similarly dismissed as unthinkable. Without a change of course, they are going to happen.

In the same piece, Watts quotes Robert Watson, a former chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, who suggests that in the battle to get people to take climate change seriously, more attention should have been paid to the social sciences in order to better understand the psychological factors that prevent people from engaging with the threat posed by global warming.

Those same psychological factors, shared as they are by politicians, oligarchs and millions of ordinary people around the world, may well be the biggest obstacle to implementing the changes proposed in the Global Justice Report. If that’s true then we need urgently to develop therapeutic interventions to help people see just how serious things already are and how much worse they will soon become.

If there really was no alternative to current arrangements, then we could devote our efforts to ameliorating the worst effects. But there is an alternative. It is coherently articulated in a 133 page report published this very morning. Collectively we have a choice: to embrace it and the positive future it promises. Or do nothing and resign ourselves to the consequences.

If enough of us do the former, and choose to do something about it: write to our representatives; become involved in one of the many campaigning groups that will respond positively to the report; tell our friends about it; start having honest conversations with people who’d rather bury their heads in the sand; then there is hope. Do anything you can. Choose civilization over chaos, while there’s still time.

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Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this post and you want to spread the word about the Global Justice Report and the hope it offers then please to click on ‘like’ and ‘restack’.