Robert Skidelsky

The Skidelsky brothers have written a succinct book arguing that neoliberal economic ideology is failing the developed world. They suggest replacing the imperatives of economic growth and productive efficiency with an ethic of the ‘good life’, cobbled together from the democratic socialism of the mid-20th century, older philosophical works, and Catholic teachings. Although I’ve read other books with very similar central themes (notably [b:Growth Fetish|1230190|Growth Fetish|Clive Hamilton|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1316132164s/1230190.jpg|1218764] and [b:I Spend Therefore I Am: How Economics Has Changed the Way We Think and Feel|18209316|I Spend Therefore I Am How Economics Has Changed the Way We Think and Feel|Philip Roscoe|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1382354377s/18209316.jpg|25630087]), this one has a distinctive voice. Unfortunately, that voice can sometimes seem a little, how can I put this, supercilious. The authors have strongly academic backgrounds, yet this book is clearly intended for a wider audience. Whilst it is certainly readable and avoids ostensible obscurantism (looking at you, Žižek), the tone does sometimes come off as patronising. This is a pity, as it’s a carefully-argued and thought-provoking work, for the most part.

The central point is one that needs constant reiteration until it becomes better understood: that the neutral neoliberal state is a myth. As the book puts it, 'A neutral state state simply hands power to the guardians of capital to manipulate public taste in their interests'. Moreover, economics is not a miraculously neutral discipline, objectively studying human behaviour. As the brothers put it:

Economics is not just any academic discipline. It is the theology of our age, the language that all interests, high and low, must speak if they are to win a respectful hearing in the courts of power. Economics owes its special position in part to the failure of other disciplines to impress their stamp on political debate.

It has not always been the case that public policy research uses econometric methods; today those are virtually the only methods used. Economics has taken over the social sciences, as well as politics. This book gives an interesting account of how this conquest occurred, as part of the wider explanation of why the rich world has so much less leisure than Keynes predicted back in 1930. To be honest, though, the arguments about moving beyond economic growth and considering wider wellbeing weren’t new to me, nor did I need to be convinced of them. They are well expressed here, with the caveat regarding tone that I mentioned earlier. The novel chapters to me were those dismissing two other popular justifications for challenging neoliberal economic ideology: on the basis of happiness and of environmental limits. The former makes some excellent points about the nature of happiness and the great difficulty of measuring it. Whilst these criticisms sometimes seemed to overstate the incompatibility of happiness measurement with the book’s good life ethic, the central points were solid.

The other chapter, on environmental limits, was considerably weaker. The Skidelsky brothers essentially dismiss climate change as a pretext for reconsidering the imperative of economic growth. I cannot agree with their stance, that the seriousness of climate change has been overstated, as it rest on misunderstandings of uncertainty and risk. They argue that the range of potential climate scenarios is wide and disputed and climate science is ‘politicised’. (How it could possibly avoid being so, given its monumental implications, they do not contemplate.) Essentially, without greater certainty about the costs of climate change, the authors don’t think action is justified. I am frankly horrified by this interpretation, which is substantially shared by the discipline of economics. Such thinking ignores, firstly, that the range of potential climate outcomes does not have a normal distribution but a ‘long tail’. This implies a much greater than zero probability of near-infinite costs (in other words, the end of human civilisation). Cost-benefit analysis and other econometrics cope poorly with such a probability distribution. Secondly, the risks of climate change aren’t linear but multiplicative. An unstable climate is a risk multiplier, increasing the likelihood of violent conflict and political instability as well as making disaster response more difficult. This is on top of the more readily understood direct consequences, such as greater likelihood of droughts, floods, and storms. Thirdly, climate change is irreversible on human timescales. Carbon dioxide pumped into the atmosphere now will stay there for around 10,000 years. Coupled with the existence of serious threshold effects, caution appears warranted. Fourthly, it is too easy to be dismissive of climate change in the developed world. It is a problem created by the rich and suffered by the poor, on a global scale. The developing world is already experiencing the effects of climate change. Low income equatorial countries will see the greatest loss of productive agricultural land; coastal cities without the funds for flood defense will suffer most from sea level rise. Fifthly and finally, pleading uncertainty about climate change costs is intellectually lazy. In what other context would risks of such scale require endless niggling over costs? Consider the amount spent annually on nuclear weaponry in the developed world. What is that a defense against, exactly? Those unwilling to sacrifice economic growth to climate change should be able to acknowledge path dependence in their thinking - emissions mitigation seems difficult because it goes against the fossil fuel dependence that has become comfortably familiar in the past few centuries. That does not mean such action isn’t justifiable, merely that it requires more imaginative effort to grasp the practical implications of climate science findings. Climate change is existentially terrifying, which is all the more reason not to disregard or trivialise it in an endless argument over the exact economic optimality of the response.

Subsequent chapters explore what the ‘good life’ requires and how its pursuit could be encouraged. This was clearly explained in terms of ‘basic goods’: health, security, respect, harmony with nature, friendship, and leisure. Such terminology causes slight cognitive dissonance to those accustomed to economics, as in that world goods equal that which is bought and sold. Here, by contrast, ‘The basic goods are essentially non-marketable: they cannot properly be bought or sold. An economy geared to maximising market value will tend to crowd them out or to replace them with marketable surrogates.’ The conclusion then states firmly that promoting these basic goods should not be dismissed as paternalism (basically every new policy has to refute this tired accusation nowadays), reiterating the critical point about mythical neutrality.

I am torn when picking a rating for this book. It was for the most part thoughtful and interesting, albeit a reiteration of material I’d largely read before with a slightly new emphasis. I liked the concept of basic goods, though, and found the critique of happiness accounting valid. On the other hand, the dismissal of environmental considerations in general and climate change in particular is hard to excuse. I’d still recommend 'How Much is Enough?' but in combination with something else that gives climate change its due. The Skidelsky brothers' conclusions are certainly consistent with books on tackling climate change, such as [b:Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto|6411373|Whole Earth Discipline An Ecopragmatist Manifesto|Stewart Brand|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1442547227s/6411373.jpg|6600313], [b:The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability|2411757|The Bridge at the Edge of the World Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability|James Gustave Speth|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328826395s/2411757.jpg|2418934], [b:Heat: How to Stop the Planet From Burning|340289|Heat How to Stop the Planet From Burning|George Monbiot|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1328770104s/340289.jpg|330676], and [b:The World We Made: Alex McKay's Story from 2050|17899465|The World We Made Alex McKay's Story from 2050|Jonathon Porritt|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1378707119s/17899465.jpg|25073551].… (more)