Individual Agency and Systemic Change

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK Imagine buying a toy for your kid. But it doesn't come with batteries. That sucks. But honestly, it's even worse when you buy business software. You end up with fragmented disconnected systems that cost a fortune and don't talk to each other Ohdoo completely changes that. Odu comes fully complete, with all your business apps perfectly integrated and working together seamlessly. It's everything your business needs in one place, saving you time, headaches, and serious money Paying for missing pieces Go to odoo. com That's odWo. com to learn more Our Ramascul las Ivacada project while Cent andi. Our Achina Pento Nunas Alexion de Puertas andradas Santiores personersalis Ss. Adamasur Renta do Aunquid the doos Ramientas the Wolf de Ve Volultos Max Pentos Centae Nueol Ares. Genel Proesqu the laws try to lista the materialisescita and una photo reibuna coticion andinutos A Helizaus prorojectos Mintrasigz orrando Colos, Bostetochoagota resesistance selection by Polulua Before we start, I just want to let you know that next week I will be speaking to Siv Malik. He's a journalist who wrote a book called The Jilted Generation, where he argues that stagnant wages, increasingly unaffordable homes robbed a generation of Britons of their future. But he's now got a huge and very radical idea about well something he could do to fix some of these issues. He has this Extraordinary ambition which is that the UK Do something. it's not done for sixty years which is bed a massive brand new city Division is one of skyscrapers and four hundred thousand affordable new homes surrounded by trees in East Anglia. in what he's calling Forest city. It's a big idea. It's a bold idea. Is it balmy? Well, it's certainly radical. Could it happen? Well, you'll have to listen to the episode and find out. I know you're going to have lots and lots of questions. It could be about related issues, not just forest, city. It could be about the whole idea of urban planning whereere our spirit of development has gone. Please do send them in. What'sApp? zero, three, three zero, one, two, three, nine four eightzero, or you can email radical bbc. co. Uk Now on to this week's episode Hello, it's Amole here. Welcome to Radical. These are cononversations about the big global trends, the deep forces. changing our world and offering a safe space for some radical ideas for the future. Last week, we celebrated our fiftieth guest Ben and Jerry's Ben Cohen That was an ice cream heavy show. How about A of Duts for our fifty first? It is the economist, sustainability expert and human rights activist Rayworth. She is author of the best selling book Donut Economics, and she has helped reshape the debate about the ecological impact and the social good modern economics and she's done so in a very radical way indeed. Why a donoughnut? Eactly? Well, think of two rings, the inner ring represents the minimum standards for human well being and flourishing. Falling short of this leads to deprivation and poverty. The outer ring represents a kind of ecological ring, if you like, Stuff like climate change, ocean acidification, biodiversity loss exceed that ring and the planet is in big trouble. So don't worry if you don't get it. It's a very important idea. It's become very influential. manyany of you have asked for us to invite Kate on and we've responded to your calls. The real expert is going to take us through all of this. in just a minute. It's worth saying that many of the guests on this podcast link the challenges in our world and their radical solutions to economic growth or Rather the lack of it, they say we need to stimulate growth, to make money to pay for things that will improve people's lives, public services and so on What makes Kate Rowworth different What makes her radical is that she wants to abandon or at least radically update the very idea of growth as a marker of economic success, and she thinks that growth for its own sake is economically and morally irresponsible I know we know that a lot of you may well agree with her. Before we begin, a quick reminder if you subscribe to Radical on BC Sounds, you won't miss future episodes including bonus Q and A which is released every Monday, is called yourour RadicalQuestions and indeed, Kate Rayworth He answering your radical questions that will be out next Monday. Right ono this week's episode with the economist, author of Dut Economics, Kate Rayworth Should we do this then guys? We're happy. Happy enough for me to say, hello and welcome to radical Kate Rayworth. Very glad to be here. Are you very glad to be here?. I've gott to tell you something. If we already tease this, I want you to know something which is obviously everything I say is completely true. This is particularly true, Kate you know that you are the most requested guest from our listeners? Wow. Your name more than of all the people in the world that they can request. They requested you. They want you more than anyone. You're here because we listen to them. I feel like there should be an award. Maybe you could have that mug yourour face on it. I would love this. You can have it's a gift. It's a gift as the most request radical I like a quiz, as you may know, and I've got a quiz question for you. Oh no. Are you the most requested guest on Radical? because A, you're Sophie Ra' sister and she's been spamming our inbox by say We want my sister Kaen. O B, because you wrote a book called Donut Economics which was a best selling book. licicated ideas and people say we're dumbing down. No no, don' economics is hard and it's created a really massive cult following for your ideas. I think my final answer is A, because my sister It's all so peaceful. Cara, how can I ask this a go it just go. Were you taken aback by the remarkable success of Donut Economic? Yeah, completely. Good few. Why was that book so successful Mm It really really worked, didnn't it? It resonated. It sold a lot of c. It really did. So I'm going to go one step back from the book. Why is the book successful? I'm going to say well, why is the donoughut contcept of the donoughut successful, right? It sets out a compass for the twenty first century and it says let's aim to meet the needs of all people within the means of the living planet So why was that successful? Because that was successful first and then the book kindind of double that. Where did it come out of the book? The book came out in twenty seventeen and the diagram, the picture of the donut came out in twenty twelve. Okay. So I think people have been yearning for something that just makes sense So many people said to me, So many people said, you know what I used to think there was something wrong with me that I just didn't get economics But when I read this book, I realize that there's something wrong with economics this and it gave people this conviction in their belly. I saw it straight away when I published the donoughnut picture of Cviction in their Belly. This is grounded. This is what we should be aiming for to meet people's needs, live within the means of the planet. That's foundational We're going to the root. That's why I love the name of your podcast. Let's be radical. let's get to the root of the matter Let's start with what truly matters and then ask what kind of economies align with that. And then you can Speak from that place, rather than begging to be heard by the existing system. Show me a business case, come back when the numbers add up. No, I'm going to start with actually what makes sense on planet Earth with respect to human rights And from there we ask what kind of economy works. That's why I think it's been successful I'll add one more thing Lots of people When you say the word economics, they're either intntimidated or bored But when you stick the word donnut in front of it, they know the they know this they know they either think there's a freebie and there's not Or they know there's something playful and different going on. So people are drawn to this and it's like it's accessible and playful. and this is for me. I'm so glad you said that about going to the root of things. The word radical comes from the Latin for root. andadish radish exactly. And to some extent it's been wrenched from its roots to mean sort of different things. I think the word radical is a beautiful word. And it does mean going to the root of things What was the root of the doughut? Wordds I've always wanted to say on a podcast. Where did the donoughnut come from? Is I' been asked that before. What was the root of the donoughut? Had the donoughnut been bubbling away in your imagination for some years? Was it an encounter with a Krispy Kreme? Other brands are available? Where did the idea for the doughnut come from? I'm very pleased to say Krisy Kremes had nothing to do with that? Excellent I studied economics at University, wanted to learn the mother Tongue of public policy frustrated by what I was taught The living world was absent, human rights weren't there. We started with the market and prices. So I walked away from academic economics I worked in Zanibar with entrepreneurs, bare forot entrepreneurs and villages for three years. That really grounded me in a very gritty reality of people's lives. I worked at the UN on human development. Pting human development before economic development I became a mother of twins. I spent a year with twin babies on my lap as the global financial crash happened And the economist came out and said We must rewrite economics to reflect financial realities And I'm ever sitting there with these two babies on my lap thinking be down if' only gonna towrite economics for that. What about climate breakdown? What about just the degradation of the living world? What about human rights and extraordinary inequalities? We need to rewrite economics to reflect all of the extreme realities of the world. So I wanted to be part of a team that was going to rewrite economics came back to work after maternity leave sitting at my desk at Oxfam in this big open plan office. And somebody said, Ohh, here are some big ideas that come out while you're away And one of them was a Big circle bigig red lines radiating out from it And it was this diagram called The Nine Planetary Boundaries written by Earth system scientists in two thousand nine while I was raising small babies And the scientists had said, We believe there are nine critical processes that are the life supporting systems of this planet, like a stable climate, fertile soil like healthy oceans and clean air and a protective ozone layer overhead and we need to stay within these. And so it made a circle, but we're already overshooting some. When I saw that diagram, I remember I just remember vividly sitting at my desk and having this visceral feeling in my body, this rush of adrenaline This is the beginning of twenty first century economics Because this begins with the reality of the planet and scientists and they've expressed the limits, not in dollars They've expressed it in parts per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, or tons of nitrogen fertilizer that can be used I just thought, if this is the outer limit of pressure that humanity can put on the living planet There's an inner limit too Every human's need for food and water and healthcare and housing It' not the jam No, it's not the jam. it's the social foundation. So so there's an inner circle and an outer circle that That's why it's a doughut with a hole. It's not actually need any jam in this Maybe by the end of this podcastel, you can figure out what the jam is. I read your book before it was a bestseller. beforefore I knew that you were a sister of someone I worked with and considerered a friend and a colleague. and I was very, very taken by this attempt amongst other things to to reconcile climate change, which is not really climate change, it's global heating with bigces with modern economics, but you wanted to do something more than that as well. You wanted to kind of put the human Yes back into the heart of it. Why is human rights something that you feel modern economics has sort of lost sight of Oh Because when you study economics, we don't talk about What are the fundamental rights and needs? We' start with that baseline which is the inner circle of the donor, right? It's the social foundation You start with, I ask students around the world, What's the first diagram you ever remember learning and it's supply and demand, crriss Cross of supply and demand. We start That's economic students, notot most students sorry.ost students. I, I was thinking of the first diagrams, I remember were birds and the bees. I mean that's a different thing, but economic students think about supplyand Economic students actually. But the thing is around the world, a lot of people have studied a little bit of economics You see. And so actually that Ecomics one hundred and one, the basics goes into the minds of politicians and journalists and lawyers and doctors and activists and CEOs. so everybody's got a little smattering so it really matters So the first diagram people remember learning, supply and demand. This means we begin economics Literally from the ancient Greek means the art of household management, Eos and Nomos We begin economics with the market. Welcome to the art of household management. Here's the market. And it means that we put at the center of our vision price the moment where supply equals demand. So suddenly economics is the metric that matters is price and it's measured in dollars. And that means anything that wants to enter the economic conversation needs to show up. price and it means that we're now talking about People's willingness to pay People who have no money. may have a high willingness to pay, but zero ability to pay. And there's a real gap in economics and inability to leap across that. When we talked about welfare, we often would say, you know, we're taking initial income distributions as given. how can we improve the outcomes? You think whyy would we do that? Why would we just assume take things as given? Can we improve things without making anyone worse off we a bit about where you think modern economics has gone wrong. So modern economics, you think starts with the price rather than the human. What else is kind of wrong in the way that modern economics has proceded? What else has modern economics basically gotten wrong Wh If you say, showow me the biggest picture of the economy, It usually goes to this diagram that shows money going round and round between households and businesses and also resources going around and around between the two. and The living world is just absent So One of the most foundational changes we can make to economics is to recognize that the economy the means by which we provision for our needs and wants is a subsystem of the living world We draw on Earth's materials we draw in you know timber and fish and all sorts of fossil fuels into our system. We put out waste in pollution And so we're drawing on Earth's capacity. We're putting pollutants out into Earth's If we don't take account of that We're going to run into enormous problems. and I think we can really empathize with philosophers from a couple of hundred years ago like Adam Smith, you know, se seventy six when he wrised the wealth of nations. Maybe it seemed, I think there were around one billion people on eararth at that time. Maybe it seemed like humanity was just So small compared to the world, the sky is so high, the ocean' so vast, you know we couldn't possibly have a sort of Imact Now we're eight plus billion. We are in a completely different era. defefinitely know that we have impacts from the way we draw on Earth's materials and the way we spew out our pollutants. So we have to place the economy within the living world. That's why for me, this planetary boundaries diagram was bang This is the beginning because it starts with recognizing the system on which everything depends. Do you think that we have too high a regard for the idea of economic growth Why I like to think of it as like when we listen to the narrative, and let's just be really clear, we're talking about the Western economic mindset, right? There are many other kinds of economic thinking We' talking about the Western economic mset, which has been exported and is taught in universities around the world. What is the shape of success If you listen to the language and the diagrams of Western economics, it is growth endlessly. So it's compounding, it's this line that goes up,,,, up through the ceiling, compounding three or five percent a year ideally. And yet There's nowhere else in life that success takes that shape So let's just think about growth in living systems. Growth is a wonderful Kelsey phase of life You've got four small kids, right? We love to see our kids grow. And I bet every time your grandparents are, We love to see kids grow. We know that they're healthy and thriving because they're growing. We love to see plants grow It's just a phase of life Everything that we love and that is a living grows, but then it grows up and it matures, right? So I have twins They grew about two inches literally every single year for the first fifteen, sixteen years of their life. Thank God, They've stopped growing. They're now taller than me. I'm the smallest member of the family except for the cat But thank God, they've stopped growing. because if they carried on at that rate two inches a year They literally not be able to fit in the door. They literally not belong at the table. They would not belong in my home natural systems we grow and then we grow up and we mature so that we belong And we deeply understand this in our bodies, right? If I told you My friend went to the doctor and the doctor told her she had A growth. we will go very quiet. We deeply understand that that is not healthy. That's a threat to the health of the whole body and we do everything we can to stop it. When something keeps growing within a healthy delicately balanced system We know it's a threat to the health of the whole So can we take what we deeply know in the human body that there's another end to this metaphor about growth. It's not good all the way And we take what we know in the human body and apply it to the planetary body an economy or economic provisioning for people's needs and wants We need it to grow so that people have food and housing and energy and transport and their rights and education and health But there comes a point where that activity has reached the scale that belongs within this planet And then it needs to balance out and thrive. But if the purpose of economics is not to achieve growth in the end, growth it should not be an end in itself Are you susceptible to the argument from opponents of growth that they would say, no, no no We mean growth as a means to an end You and I, Kate, we believers in human needs and human wants. we both actually want the same thing. We don't want growth for growth's sake. We want growth because it answers the enduring human needs that you care about. human rights, belonging, the ability to feed our families So then I would say let's put that ont the cent on the table. I'm so glad you mentioned human rights because it's been missing from theory all along. Let's now put it on the table. Oh also let's put The integrity of the life supporting systems of the only known delicately balanced living plan in the universe called Plan Earth Here's a picture, it looks like a doughnut So Now can we agree, dear economists, that whatever our economies do and however what grows needs to happen within the constraints that the fundamental goal we have here to meet the needs of all people in the world, bothoth the poor within rich countries and those who are deprived in lower income countries too And it's to do so within the means of the planet. By the way, we are way out of balance right now on both of those. billions of people worldwide short on their very fundamentals, we know that And I can walk out into Oxford Street here and see people sleeping in doorways. and we know across the world there are people without healthcare, without education, without decent food And collllectively, humanity is overshooting Seven of the nine planetary boundaries. we are really pushing on the tolerance of this planet into a far more hostile system. We are pushing on the generosity of the planet to support us. So we urgently need to prioritize these things prioritize those, what kind of economic activity, what kind of policies would lead to that I would challenge you if you're going to tell me that going for growth is going to do that. onene simplified In the last ten years Of all the growth in GDP in the world economy, half of the extra value created has been captured by the richest one percent in the world So really is that going to be a top strategy for meeting the needs of people within the Mans planl? I don't see it. But I guess that gets us into the difference between economic growth, which is then spread out amongst lots of people and the current model of capitalism where It is just true to say that ever more is going in some instances to ever fewer. I mean we're talking in the week of we're about to see the three biggest initial public offerings or floatations of companies in history it's quite pooignant talking to you about all this in the very week that Elon Musk might become the world's first trillionaire Can we just reflect on, I'm going to do in a very beBC way which I'm proud of I'm going to push back on some of my arguments in a moment. Before we do that, can we just reflect on a couple of other underlying economic trends because these really do, I think define our times in some ways and explain some of the politics It is just the case that we should be really open about this that the second half of the twentieth century is based on this bargain between labouror and capital, which was the workers would get a share Whether it's a fair share or not they get a big old share It is just true, isn't it? And I h you this with your economist hat on But for the last thirty years, there has been what economists called the diminishing returns to labour. In other words, the share of national wealth going to the workers has been getting smaller and smaller and smaller If you think of national wealth as a pile, whatever you think of it as actually the people who already have capital get more of it And the people who have assets get more of it That is a kind of fundamental fact of our times, which is that the balance in that bargain between capital and labor, it's been tilting very heavily towards capital for several decades now, right? I say absolutely true. So if you think of a company that's making profits Where do those profits go In simple terms, some of that profit can go into paying the wages of the workers. They benefit from the work they've done And some of that profit can go into dividends for shareholders So as you just described, over the last three or so decades Workers' wages have generally been flatlining. They haven't been getting an increasing share of those profits. whereereas shareholders' returns have risen and isn't. so that gap has absolutely widened So yes The returns to capital for the shareholders, people who bought shares in this company and don't show up and work there every day. They just bought some chas and they're off doing something else or relaxing on a beach Their returns are going up and up and up and up and the people who actually step into the factory step into the workplace and do the work every day are seeing their returns increasing hardly at all.. Why is that? Why is it the case that the workers are getting less? Is it because the work is disappearing through automation of blue collor jobs and we'll get ont to AI and what that might do to white collor jobs? But why is it that workers are getting a smaller share wealth created. I think it differs country by country, but so in the UK, you could say we've seen absolute loss of the power of unions. everver since Margaret Thatcher. but also the loss of industries that are unionized So we have far fewer industries that are labor intensive that have strong need for workers to show up every day who less of a power to demand that wage share So you've seen the loss of industries, you've seen the breakdown of union power fragmentation, work going abroad, moving to service industries Those are some of the reasons and then just increasingly the power of capital. I mean, the power of corpor to say, well, if you won't give us what we want here, if we don't like your national terms, we'll just relocate. We'll go and work in another country. We'll go overseas So the increasing power corporations to dominate over governments. and to ensure that they can extract returns And I'd say they're increasing control over what brilliant theorists called Katerina Pistol called the code of capital. how they will use the legal system and code the legal system to ensure that returns gather and gather rather in their hands. State capture, oligarchy, monopolies. This is the concentration of power in very few hands, and people have financial capital will then use it to exert inflence power over people who have democratic capital Just on that sort of those last three decades, is there a sense in which as you look forward, you worry AI cognitive intelligence through computers is about to do to white collar work what automation did to blue collar work. There's some people who say that if we look ahead we're going to have almost the revenge of the blue collar because craft, human skill, care work is going to actually come back because that's the one thing that AI can't do Is there a sense of which AI could do for white collar jobs what those previous revolutions and trends did for blue collar work I think you'll definitely do it for the white collge jobs that exist today So we've seen that already as you know A I can write a contract, can draft things, replacing many of those the existing version of those jobs and what I see is people saying, right, how do we now learn to in our industry work with AI? So it's going to be a different kind of job. I'm going to be working with AI. How do I reframe what that job is? So I don't know where that's going to end up. I don't think anybody knows right. There will be jobs that we can't imagine today. that there will be new kinds of jobs. I don't think there'll be nearly as many of those new kinds of jobs. And I think it's true we're going to turnurn back to being in each other's presence. What we're going to actually value as humans, and I'm not talking about financial value here I'm talking about value We're going to value being each other's presence. We're going to value C connection C. Being understood, feeling like we belong How will we make those things that we truly value occur in an economy might not give financial value to them And so again, it comes back to who owns the businesses And what do the businesses run for? Are they run for maximizing profit that can be extracted or they run for community Yeah, I mean, I know you were talking to Ben Cohen and Ben and Jerry's last week, right? Exactly about this I think it's a really key issue. The deep design of business itself will determine how AI is used what a business purpose is, whether it's there to extract returns for its shareholders because that's what it's designed to do. And that's why Some people who are proponents of fans of capitalism would say the answer is a more inclusive form of capitism. In other words, I see you Your eyebrow went north as I said back. Why is it not the case that one should respond to what you've just said about the diminishing returns to labour and the ever greater returns to shareholders? Why is the answer to that not sppreading ownership through popular capitalism, I e investment basically. So know Margaret Thatcher would have said, equity is preferable to equality. I'm paraphrasing if there' were a fans of Thatcher listened to this. I know that wasn't her exact quote. but she would say that what you wanted is a nation of shareholders. You wanted to use the public markets to say to everyone that when you have an IPO, this is a great thing because everyone can invest This is the way to save and rescue capitalism is by giving everyone the chance to have skin in the game and to get on that compounding curve early on Why is that not the answer? Nice theory. It hasn't really worked out like that, has it? I mean, the ownership of shares is concentrated in very few hands The vast majority of shares owned by those who are already very wealthy But even if that was the case, I mean, know you can see the appeal if everybody had a little bit of a share and we all owned these companies a little bit I just don't believe that a company that is run with the goal of maximizing share returns is going to be run in all its best interests especially if it's run on kind of quarterly reporting, got to maximize them every quarter right. There's going to be the system that's gaming the system that people who are speculating and trading shares in nanoseconds, not because they really value what this company is doing, but because they can make a return this afternoon I just don't see any evidence, even from the most well intentioned companies and the most well intentioned CEO's, it's not worked out that way at all. It's really concentrated in few hands And you know, there are many other ways of running business. You can have a company that is Bank current. Exactly. You can have a company that's profitable But it's not here to maximize its profits. It's got to make a profit. othertherwise it can't open its doors next week or next month or next year. This is things like investment trusts, mutuals ye Yeah, that sort thing. meanank owned companies or employee owned companies or co ops, you know, other countries in Europe. I mean, I think again, sitting here in the UK We can think, well, they're not, aren't any really feasible alternatives. Go to other countries like in the Netherlands, Rotterdam has an amazing take up of cooperatives that are really thriving in showing that there are very, very competent different ways of running your economy based on different kinds of ecom. really I didn't know that. I didn't know that. A lot of people don't that A lot of labour MP's are actually members of Parliament for Labour and the cooperative partarty. We have a cooperative party here. We've got a big tradition famously John Lewis Wros, but there is a real tradition of cooperatives, which is basically employees have a little share, they might get an annual bonus. And it's interesting to me when the coalition government was in place fifteen years ago or so, when the big society was round as an idea, I sort of wanted to say to a lot of people, the way to reconcile big society with your kind of model of capitalism, there is just think called cooperatives and they sort of went, oh yeah, there is that but it doesn't seem to have I don't hear people talking about that kind of thing very much. When Ben Cohen was sat in that very chair last week, I was thinking I'm not hearing much of this and if I may say, I'm not hearing huge amount about it from sort of Westminster and indeed Labour Party circles. Well, I think we should get outside the UK one of the most privatized countries in Europe. colloeagues of mine across Europe believe that we allowed our water to be privatised. they just find it extraordinary that we would you know, through Thatchered' era, allow water and transport and energy systems just to be held by companies around the world that choose to buy the water provision because it's foundational to our needs, and so it's got no democratic presence. But also there are just other ways of running cities, of running countries, of enabling studeward owned enterpr, of enabling employee owned enterprise I think we've been so trapped in a neeoliberal mindset that's taught in universities, but also that gets lived out in our economy that we lose sight of seeing that there are just other ways of doing things, There are other ways of designing business that could be far more democratic credible. Locally rooted so that those company actually belong in a place This is wonderful. you know, Preston has been really great at community wealth building Nobody's showing up to save us We're going to have to do it ourselves. We're going to have to use the local council budget, schools, hospitals that are here. How can we buy locally? How can we buy from small businesses here We need to bring this kind of inspiration back. and if you put that at the heart of your economic strategy, you won't be going Gross, gross, growross You'll be saying, let's thrive in local communities, let's think of new kinds of enterprise that can belong here and let's learen from not just our European neighbours, but actually all over the world. In India, there are amazing examples of large cooperatives of many, many farmers coming together to sell their milk through co ops that means that they get ripped off becausecause the co op is running their interest and not in some shareholders' interest who never stepped onto the farm Can I'm enjoying this so much. Can I in a very BBC way put some other polite objections to your positions? Go for it, BBC Isn't the strongest argument for growth bigiggest reduction in poverty in human history happened very, very recently in China and India because goovernments in China and India targed economic grow In China In nineteen ninety, eighty three percent of China's population, eighty three, more than four in five Chinese people lived on less than three dollars a day In twenty nineteen It's zero percent and that's where it stayed. That is By some measures, the biggest change in human circumstances in the history of our species In India In nineteen seventy seven, funny enough the year my parents got married in India In nineteen sevty seven, fifty seven percent of Indians lived on less Three dollars a day, fifty seven percent twenty twenty two It was four percent In China that happened because there of something called socialism with Chinese characteristics, which other people call capitalism It was a command economy, centrally controlled by the CCP, but capitalism came into China in a big way. In India, Man Moon singh former finance Minister liberalized India's foreign direct divestment rules in the nineteen ninety one and When his Prime Minister a decade or so more later, he turbo charged that stuff hasas an economic growth reduce poverty in China and India in a way that Everyone should be applauded Absolutely. I don't disagree with you at all. Do what do you like Gs growth? I I didn't say I had anything goods growth, I said Growth is a wonderful, healthy phase of life, and I would say it's a really important phase of economic development. If we were to go to still today, one of the world's poorest countries like Malawi or Bangladesh. So you do want growth for those people I believe those people needed their human rights to be met, right? Let's start at the roots. They need healthcare, education, they need housing, food, water In the process of ensuring that those needs are provisioned, Absolutely. I believe the econy is going to grow. GDP is going to go up because there's going to be more economic activity. It's going to be provided through market interactions, it's going to be provided through the state providing When you measure the value of economic activity, of course it's going to go up So growth is an outcome of meeting people's fundamental needs. Absolutely China needed that growth. to beat people's needs, India too We're sitting in the UK Right? Now here's the conundrum. On paper, this country is one of the richest countries in the history of humankind, as is every European country in North America, in Canada and Japan and Australia 've got four million kids poverty. Yeah, because it's rich, but it's this country, one of the most unequal in Europe That's our probleblem to deal with, right this country has gone through extraordinary growth through colonialism, through been a pioneer of capitalism and industrialization And yet here, quarter of the way through the twenty first century, If you listen to our politicians and their economic advisors, they'll tell us that the solutions to our problems in one of the world's richest countries on paper lie in yet more growth Eless. Nobody ever says, lookook, we just need it for a few more years and then we're done. No, it's endless. It's written in. I think what would you see if you were sitting in Malawi or Bangladesh. and you look at the richest countries in the world that have many, many fold inc cum per capita as your country. And they're saying we can only go forward If we have yet more And by the way, when we grow, we're going to use more of the Earth's resources, we're doing it still using more fossil fuels So this has consequences for every other country too. So what should we doing instead S saying we've got enough wealth, we need to arrange the distribution of it better I mean, yeah, right? We have got enough wealth, surely, we have a lot of wealth. We have historic volumes of wealth. We have colonially acquired huge amounts of wealth Let's recognize that We definitely need to arrange it better and to share it better. I mean, we are one of the most unequal countries in Europe I think we've just think, Well, this is how things are. We've just got a little bit used to extreme levels of inequality that Others still, thank God, come here and find shocking. Couldn't both things be true though? Couldn't it be morally unconscionable that we live in a country with the wealth that we have. This is by the way, something I talk about on the todayay programme all the time. fourour million kids in poverty If you actually look at the poverty levels in the UK over the last twenty years, they've stayed roughly constant, except the thing that's changed within that overall number is the number of people in what we call deep poverty, which is really I would call destitution has increased. And if you think you've got rise in destitution in a country like ours with the wealth that we've got, it's unconscionable. But couldn't it be the case that we ought to do both things? We ought to arrange our affairs internally better but that more growth would also be good because it would allow us to pay for things that we want. For instance, better public services at a time where we've got a population that's aging. Why can't both things be true? Why can't the pursit of growth be reconciled with a kind of a moral kind of disgust at the reprehensible levels of poverty in our country So first of all, I just would always turn away from saying, let's pursue growth and kind of hope that some of it trickles down, right? That just hasn't worked We need to pursue meeeting the fundamental needs of people. We need to pursue getting those four million kids out of poverty And it may well result in some economic growth So I'm making you flip it, you flip it. flippping fixs povertying growth second Yes, but I'm going to add in A bigig clanger, right When we pursue growth. when we say let's grow, grow grow, we are using more construction materials, the way that we are often doing it, more construction materials, more energy, more fossil fuels Remember the donoughnut It doesn't just have a social foundation of getting everybody out of deprivation. The whole point of this dilemma that it brings us is that there is an ecological ceiling. and guess what? the UK, like every high income country is way an overshoot. I really hope you're enjoying this conversation with Kate Rayworth. If you are please do even if you're not, just tell with it, subscribe to this podcast on BB Sounds and that way you won't miss future episodes. And if you do subscribe, please do make sure you've got your push notifications turned on That way you will get an alert whenever we publish a new episode and you'll never miss out. Thank you And now back to Kate Rayworth Some people would say that one of the dangers of the donoughnut and of your approach to economics is that it is a sort of philosophy of limits and There's an obvious response to that, which is if you go to space and turn around and look at this incredible blue marble dangling in the infinite blackness, you'd say, Well there is a limit and the limit is this incredible ball of gas and rock and water that we call the Earth But is there a danger that a bit like Thomas Malalththis two hundred and fifty years old just after seventy ninety eight you wrote his essay on population. A bit like Thomas Maralththus who said that there's going to be this fundamental impossibility of reconciling a growing population with our ability to feed that population approaching things in terms of limits. is actually notot the way to go. that what we should aim for some people on the left in America are now arguing is abundance and that we can have abundance. that actually if we know that's not to justify biodiversity loss, that's not to justify unreasonable extraction of fossil fuels, which puts carbon dioxide in the air and causes us terrible damage. That's not to justify polluting the hell out of poor countries and making ourselves feel better in the process But that actually a philosophy of abundance, building more of the things we want and need within planetary limits is a better way to approach economics So This su. How to wind up Kate Roorth. You know that I'm saying this is a from a? Oh no, I love it. I love it.. In fact, when I first drew the dnut diagram And it has this social foundation and then the ecological ceiling. Some of my American colleagues at Ouxfam said, oh, you know, I'm not sure about this. You know, we Americans like we don't like limits, we don't like. We see a boundary, you want to say G to break right through that boundary. Yeah. you'retingre putting limits on the bound. Yeah, don't lim me. So I offer you this. Imagine holding one of your little children. under one years old A child has a fever, theirir temperature has gone over forty degrees which there many times? Go go go go, You go bak that boundary. Yeah, look at this kid go immediately do everything we can to bring that child's body temperature back within what we know is a safe limit We are alive. because of limits Every day our bodies tell us Hungry or I'm cold or I'm too hot, and our bodies send us little feedback signals all the time I mean, we would know immediately if there was not enough oxygen in this room, right? Our bodies would immediately tell us I'm hitting my limit, whether it's my uer limit or my lower limit. That's why we're alive because our bodies keep us in this zone And it's incredible. All of our bodies are almost exactly the same temperature, our bodies are so good at this Life depends on staying within healthy limits We know this in our bodies Gotta get it about the planetary body is something called Climate stability Earth system scientists are hairing their hairs out, trying to figure out how do we communicate this to people that we are collectively about to push ourselves One point five degrees, two degrees, we are pushing ourselves out of a safe zone From which there will be no chance to say, o whoops, that wasn't so good after was it? Shall we go back? No, We can't go back There are limits of pressure we can live within our bodies. There are limits of pressure we should put on this planet. And anybody who says, Oh, I don't like limits. you know, let's go through it. Just ignoring the fundamentals of human bulgy and planetary integrity and Abundance We can have abundance, but let's be smart about what we want abundance of. Perhaps we could have abundance of care abundance of respect abundance of community, right? These things are available to us. Can we have an abundance of Building endlessly no, because there is a limit of materials and energy systems. and until we figure out how to do this in a far more regenerative and transformative way, We've got to be smart about how we use that. If we want to learn about abundance is one being on this planet who's figured that and that's nature C. It creates conditions conducive to life and natures Extraordinary in the abundance of blossom in spring, in the abundance of clean water in streams and the clean air and the cooling capacities of forests. We need to go and stand in forests and learn wow, look how nature does this. How could we be inspired through biomimicry bring that kind of abundance, but it's held within delicately balanced systems. You don't burst through limits. you will not get abundance. Do you think of nature as a being as gya like James Lovelock? Yeah, I think I do. I think of this planet as Oh interacting system I'm not a religious person But if I have any kind of spirituality any greater thing I believe in. I'm just awed by life. watching a little root grow, watching mycelium grow. It's just like the growing tip of a routot if you watch a close up video, you know L Well, that time lapse material Y ye. Yes. it's in all of us. It's incredible. We're alive planet is alive and we don't know of any other planets in the universe that are alive. it's so extraordinary and we are so cavalier and foolish caught up in our little systems of growth Not understanding the fundamentals that keep us alive, we've got to wake up. We're in the second quarter of the twenty first century And we're still running things on a twentieth century economic mindset based in nineteenth century theories, we've just got to jump into these times and grow up crereate economies that belong now What if some of the consequences of your way of thinking What if they lead to policy decisions which have bad consequences for the very people you want to help We live in a country where there's a very live debate at the moment about whether or not we should drill for oil and gas. The reason we currently don't with these oil fields in the North Sea is because of a policy of net zero carbon emissions by twenty fifty, which the UK government has adopted. And There are lots of people who are saying that's all very nice and well. There's a future ambition because we're concerned about planet limits I The UK is only responsible for one percent of global emissions and B, poor people are suffering right now more than rich people because of the price of energy drill for Northseea oil and gas rather than importing it inoray from Norway and get your prices down isn't the North Sea limitation on drilling, an example of how there can be costs for the very people you want to help from the philosophy of limits that you've outlined So let's unpick this bit by bit North seea oil and gas More were drilled doesn't suddenly become available as a little, you know reservoir for us to use in the UK at low prices So it's just a fiction that this will say It's a really nice convenient story. It sounds good. seon it byy it's ours. Well, you know what? it's other companies again, privatization, it's companies from other countries like Ecquuinor that are going to drill it and sell it on the world market. So it's not going to impact on the availability of oil and gas for the UK. Secondly There are so many other ways providing energy We have Lots of coastline. We have t wind energy. Tal energy, we have wind power, we have solar power, we have air source, heat pumps, there are so many other ways which help you For yourself fromr the rise and fall the crash aroundound of prices on global fossil markets then you're free of the geopolitics of oil and gas prices so that you're actually providing energy for your home or your school or your hospital or your University or council panels on the roof or nearby wind turbines, and then you can have much more democratically owned Eergy systems. now now we're back to who owns the companies Communities can own their own wind turbines, schools can own their own solar panels. we can brring ownership of this back and we're not determined by what some corporation in another country wants to do with the oil and gas they drilled and where they sell it on the world market or which president decides to launch a war against which country and now oil tankers can't get through and people can't pay their household bills because some geopolitics on the other side of the planet, we can be free of that. That's one of the things that people might say about your position though, your economics is there' a very cutting moment when Tony Blair, who was outspoken a few weekso about the future of Labour Party a bunch of interviews and I He seems to say it with a certain relish that Xi JXinping is not sitting in Beijing thinking, I wonder what Edm Miliban's policies on net zero are And I think the point that Blair was trying to land is that, you know, you can have your philosophy of being against growth. in your country, but around the world, other people are just charging ahead. And the countries that will win tomorrow, according to Tony Blair, are the countries that are big enough and rich enough byy the future. And there's a sort of hard headed pragmatism, he would say, about kind of wide growth. is fundamental to Britain being able to you know be a powerful force in the future. So first of all, I'm not against growth Rather than being for growth or against growth, I'm for regenerative And distributive designed the heart of our policies, and I believe those work on this planet Secondly You talked earlier about India and China. Yeah, China went through years where each province was put under huge pressure to deliver on these growth plans seven per to ten percent. Oh now they're turning, right? They've done that And now they're saying actually, They're talking about ecological civilization They're saying actually lower that growth expectation. Now we need quality of life again push is to say we've gone through that big growth phase. It's a phase. Now we're pursuing something else. Now I don't want to be simplistic or naive about China, there are many nuance different kinds of policy going on, but one of those strands is eco civilization And I think the government of China, some parts of the government of China absolutely recognize that if China is going to thrive The next thousand years, let's not talk about tiny cycles of four, five, six years, thousand years China and the rest of the world can only thrive if there's a stable climate. So you've got to look after the fundamentals Is it in your view wrong for the people who provide capital to expect a return, which they can just take as opposed to that return going totally to serving the purpose. For instance, is it completely wrong if venture capitalist gives a million pounds to a small company? and that's small company might have a noble goal, for instance, reducing poverty in a distant part of the world. But in return for doing that successfully, the person who provided a million pounds might take, I know, twenty thousand pounds out of that as profit. Is that wrong this is the heart of the question, right And this is the heart of Exactly. I would say capitalism is an economic system that is designed to drive return to capital Exactly. that R Is that how we want our economy to be run? Is that what we want. But there's also if the VC who's provided a million pounds They might provide the million pounds because they want the twenty grand in return. and if they don't get the twenty grand in return, they might not provide the million pounds In which case a little coffee shop or coffee chain that's doing great work far away might not be able to do its work Isn't the profit motive profit incentive this is what capitalist would say were they in this room and there's many of them. Isn't the profit motive a way of incentivizing the distribution of capital that allows people to grow and do the good things that you want. hold it with your venture capital. I think they want bit more than twenty grand for the million do.. two hundred now. I we're going to come back to that in a But this I want to go to the heart of the matter Is it reasonable? and what is a reasonable return to expect. So let' let us let's go radical, mate To the roots of it, Cital, finance money. it's an invention Right? It's a human invent. It's a story. It's a story. It's a construct. and it works because we believe it. If I give you this piece of paper, you'll give some back, this piece of paper or this digits in my bank account. someomebody else will accept them, credit, you know, I trust. I trust this will work It's invented And it's got a narrative of its own, if you like it and you know Capitalists want venture capital. they say, oh, I want my kind of fifteen to twenty percent returns becomes of market rates ust just jump out of that story and let's just step back into that astronaut looking at this little blue marble floating in space. this delicately balanced planet whose life support systems right now are under profound threat because of the way we're doing business. That is being funded by this ventch capital My question is is, why should an investor teen to twenty percent returns while the earth is crumbling on the basis of what they're doing. in what way is that at all reasonable? That sounds like a bad investor doing bad stuff. What if the investor's got a million pound for a little coffee chain that employs. Okay, let's go crazy UTob. A coffee chain that employys needs and provides incredibly good, meaningful, dignified labour to people who otherwise wouldn't have jobs. That's a good investor. By the way, someone's doing exactly that. That could be a good investor, then I would ask them, what's the return you're requiring from them? Are you requiring market returns? And why I mean because it allows them to buy a nice house and a nice car go on holiday with their family. An one, another nice house and another nice car go even further. So we're talking about people who have a lot, and I'm just really actually deeply fascinated by the psychology. I know I've had the chance to talk to some very, very wealthy people Some who work in philanthropy and they say I want I do impact investment But I want when I do impact investment, I invest in good things like what you're describing. But I want market returns. I want market returns because I want people to know that I'm smart. And I'm really fascinated by this. Why do the super wealthy still need reallyally harvested like what are you collecting this up for? whichich can accumulate again and again and again I've actually can I just go sideways? I've started doing economic circus. I've stopped doing lectures and I actually put on a circus. I've got a red top patter. I'm ringmaster and invite people up on the stage and we Do a circus about the battle between nature and finance, which is what we're mostly talking about today. I'll bring someone up plays Mother Nature Someone comes up and plays the financial system with a briefcase with a big hose on it sucking up all the returns of the world open the briefcase and inside it these three little black masks and I say, oh, did you know Fance? These are the three deepest emotions and motives that are driving you And I asked the audience, what are the three deepest emotions and motives that are driving financial system to keep accumulating and accumulating Over fifty percent of the global financial assets are owned by one percent of people. So finance is accumulating for those who really happy Every single time I've ever done this circus the audience immediately come up with The reasons why finance keeps accumulating greed fear And the third one might be ego or power or separation or loneliness. Some people just want to be rich And richer, richer. so that yeah and richer, but not yeah, okay. Super rich. Super rich and this is really damaging to democracy to economic balance and integrity of social cohesion It's damaging to action on the environment because they lobbying against stopping the industries that are driving this superr So it's deeply damaging and I'm really I really think it's important that there's now a discussion in this country in many about an extreme wealth line, right? We know there's an extreme poverty line below which no one should fall What if they're an extreme wealth line, beyond which no one should go because the harm to the rest of society Isn't it extraordinary in the week that Elon Musk might become a trillionaire? Isn't it extraordinary that we're acting as if it's normal in such an unequal world, whereher the extremes of inequality are so wide? We've got no chance of living in the doughnut with such inequalities. We have to wake up and tackle this issue without just saying oh, the only way out of it is to grow more So at the state level Would you support and if so what kind of a wealth tax Because I mean, wealth tax is such a strange phrase, what does it mean? You talk about inheritage talk capital gains. But do you think that we should be taxing differently and taxing wealth, especially what you might call unearned wealth, which itself is another debate, but taxing unearned wealth more Yes, I think we should be taxing well. What form would that take? Would it be taxes on property, assets, land capital gains, what kind of what kind of things should we be taxing? More that we're not taxing enough or taxing that we're not taxing at all So the movement that's happening now for an extreme wealth tax. What is that? I don't even know what So they're saying look, we've got to go beyond just taxing capital gains Is that income at eighty percent income tax eighty percent or what? Oh, no, they would say people who have more than ten million For example, ten million pounds or euros in wealth. What they're advocating for is saying you should tax two percent beyond that now. It's not going to change much because people who have that much wealth are probably getting six percent to eight percent returns on it anyway. so they're still going to be accumulating. The point is to recognize and act on the extreme level of inequality, but just tapping on this I think we need to go further than just saying, o, there's extremes of inequality. let's tax the super wealthy and we d disbute to the poor. I'm interested in going beyond redistribution of wealth to pre distribution. and then this brings us back to How are things owned? So who owns the sources of wealth creation? This brings us back to what we were talking about earlier. Who owns the land in a country. We know the UK has extremely unequal land ownership held in kind of aristocracy and crazily unequal compared to many other countries Who owns the businesses Are they owned by a few very wealthy people who own the vast number of shares or are they owned in local communities? are they owned locally or by employees? Again, we're back to the design of the ownership of business. Who owns the utilities? Who owns the water supply? Who owns our energy systems? Who owns our transport systems privatizeed the lot. they're owned by shareholders, many of them in other countries own who owns the technologies? And so I want to go back to the deep thinking about the ownership wealth because then you can pre distribute that. And that's why public goods have Okay public education. And I think education really matters. a country that invests, you know, Tony Blair did say a good thing. on education, education, education invvest state education because if there's one moment It gives an opportunity for reset generation to generation, it's kids going to school together Learning together, meeting people who are not like themselves in a classroom, having empathy across society shharing the knowledge and their connections, you create social cohesion and you create some kind of moment quality Can I ask you for two radical ideas? O for the government, radical or otherwise, including the present one A radical idea you would like to see this government enact than a radical thing for our listeners to do today to change their lives. Why don't we come with the radical idea for one of W's treating Angela Rayna or Andy Bernam? My book's subtitle is Seven Ways too Think like a twenty first century economist. So I'm not in the game of sle policy. specific policies. it's just not my space You want to change, you want to change things? I want to change my minds. So I would love the next time a politician wants to say, growth, growth, growth What did they say thrive What would it mean for the UK to thrive? What would it mean to start by thinking about how do we invest in local communities buildilding a sense of belonging and cohesion here, what kind of policies would enable localities be they cities or rural areas and districts and many across the UK, many councils have G got in touch with us at Donut Economics Action Lab and say we're using the tools of Donut Economics to think about how we want to transform our place, right They want to become regenerative and distributed by design If that mindset is at the heart of local policy and I'm going to local policy, not national because I'm seeing a lot more space for innovation there. You often see volunteering at a local level, which answers some of the things you're after here. But also volunteering but also local councils. Yeah. Local council are saying, yeah, this really makes sense to us. We want this place to thrive. So putting that idea of thriving, what would it mean for the UK to become regenerative far more distributive going to the source of who owns the sources of wealth creation. So this is about long term policy change. It's not a quick fix Individual takeaways. I mean there will be so many people that listen to this and I do mean so many people You feel like, okay she is saying stuff. Kate Rayworth is saying stuff that I've been thinking for years and she's doing it with a kind of energy and intellectual confidence of someone who has actually studied it But what do I need to do now to change my life? M. I really like it when people say, oh yeah, I've always thought like this. I've never seen the diagrams before. This book helps articulate the way I've thought. And so I know I've tapped into something that many, many people have been thinking of feeling and I'm really glad if the book Dono Economics helps make that visible and helps them articulate that. because I think it does tap into a very widespread feeling Each of us can think in the same way that city councils have said Across the UK and across the world, like more than fifty city councils around the world have taken the concept of donut economics and put it at the heart of their strategies and their policies We can also do that the scale of neighborhoods. ammazing work going on in Birmingham with a group called Civic Square, who are like demonstrating what it means for a neighbourhood to take these ideas and put them into action street by street. But we can also take it into our own homes and our own lives and say How is the way that I'm living impacting on humanity's ability to meet the needs of all within the needs of the planet So we can start with things that we know we personally can do. How do I eat? What is my diet Can I move towards a more plant based diet that actually is lighter on this planet. How do I travel? How do I get to work what I think is a decent holiday like? How far do I think I need to go? Am I flying? Am I going on the train? A I biking How do I invest my money What bank do I give the privilege? of having my savings. Can I move it to a bank that I think actually cares How do I invest and can I divest? And how do I protest And how do I vote And how do I volunteer and how do I care in my community? There are so many things we can each do, The thing I've really learned The work of Donut Economics Action Lab and seeing it spread is the power of peer to peer inspiration. Exactly, right? So one school girl protesting outside the Swedish Parliament Pe could say Silly girl, go back, you know, go back to school. what are you doing? can kick off kind of awakening and im mobilizing of school kids around the world because people are inspired by somebody like themselves who's doing that thing that You thought was impossible until look, they're doing it. So a school girl can inspire school kids around the world. but a CEO Over quiet point in the pub. Bire another CEO, give them permission, give them courage to do something different. In a way that nobody else can quite get near. A mayor can inspire a mayor And a parent at the school gates can inspire other parents at the school gates, whether to get a kind of mobile free school or let's travel to school differently. So actually all of us have a superpower of who we are there's millions of other people Like us, whether we're a parent or a school kid or a teacher or the latest employee or the CEO or a board member or a local voter Research shows again and again that when we make changes in our lifestyles, it does inspire others. We have a sense of that which I can control. agency. I'm glad that I want to live aligned with the way planet works. and I really want to say big systems that we are forced to be part of that means we can't change everything. I don't want to put all the responsibility on the individual. So also do things systemic,? Do move your money to a bank that gives a dam. Do vote, do show up, do go on marches. do Show that you are part of bigger systems and that you care, move the way your energy is supplied So it's not it's not all about changing just my own behaviour, but can I be part of bigger systemic change Can I ask you a slightly personal question to Pil I had the enormous pleasure of chatting to your sister about the death of your dear dad. I've been there as well. and one of the things that grief can do is it can make you feel this tremendous sense of urgency. It sort of this acquaintance with mortality And listening to you, we've never met before, but listening to you, I do feel there's a sort of enormous Not just intellectual energy but urgency. You seem like someone who's like conscious of the fact that we need to get on and do stuff Does that urgency As I expect is the case predate your dad's illness And how has it changed by the fact that you're losing a parent? Thanks for that Yeah, so my beloved dad, Ricky Rayworth He died on the first of May last year After ten years of experiencing Parkinson's, which is not a kind disease He died at the end of a long L. He was eighty three years old. He died in bed at home surrounded by people love him Given that we all die, it is part of the contract of life comes with birth I think he had a good And it was to me, actually on many levels, a beautiful experience. and we were able to be with him But yeah, having a parent die And also seeing my mother whose health isn't great either, seeing of course, it brings mortality really close to home. I'm fifty five And actually turning fifty five was really it just made me think like fifty five to sixty five Somet something about six like, wow, sixty five. I mean, I think inside me sometimes I think might wait am I thirty two or thirty Oh my God.. fifty five. Where did that come from? But I love it I don't actually feel an urgency to be honest I mean, when I was at Oxfam and we Campaigning within Oxfan, please please, please, can we campaign on climate change? That was in two thousand six I felt an urgency. We've got a campaign or glunch at that You can't live In urgency. You can't live year to year and decade to decade being urgent. It doesn't work. The body can't sustain it and it's not cred. You can't keep telling people it's urgent But I feel this real aliveness and I'm very, very aware of my mortality in a way that I love I will not always be alive, none of us will I'm alive now. I've also alongside my dad's death, I've also had people very, very close to me in life die really prematurely in their lives. And that's a very different matter. and that's always made me think, Who knows what happens tomorrow I'm alive today. I'm going to be alive and I love The opportunity to be alive and to communicate and to bring energy to issues that I care about and the privilege of being able to work on something that I really care about brings me into contact with people who get in touch and say, I'm teaching this in my classroom. I love those teachers. We want to bring this into our company. Great, let's talk about how you can really do that. So yes Mortality the knowledge that death is certain, not you, tax is no. People are brilliant at evading those, But death, yes, for all of us. So what are you going to do right now? that you're alive Kate Rayworf is such an honor to chance you. And you. Thank you so much. Thank you Well, well, well. You wanted Kate Rayworth on. We got her on and didn't she deliver? I thought that was such a huge dose of intellectual energy argumentative clarity and actually just moral fervour A couple of quick sort of takeaways from that. know you heard there at the end her talk about death of her dear dad after ten years with Parkinson's There was something about her answer, which almost I felt didn't match her personality and And I don't say that as an insult at all. I say out of almost you know respect affection really. I did get the impression that Kate Rayworth is someone who feels a sense of what Barack Obama in a very different context called The Fierce urgency of Now. this kind of burning desire and passion to get on with things, to change the world, to be in a hurry because she's acutely aware, not just because of the death of her dear dad, but just because of being a smart person that you know time is all we've got And none of us have very much of it because you know Our time on this Eth is actually very, very brief. intellectually, One of the biggest I always think about what have I been surprised by or what it's kind of what's what someone said that I didn't think they would say And I was struck that she wasn't against growth. I think people who know about donut economics, who've read her book, who criticize her or praise her, often cast Kate Rayworth. as being anti growth. And I was very struck by the fact that she said, no, she's not anti growth She just thinks growth, like in human lives, is a phase. So lots of poor countries, India, China in the most celebrated way because the numbers are just bigger, but around the world today, lots of poor countries do need economic growth, but they need economic growth as a means to an end And I think that that's really what she's arguing for. People including in British public life talk about growth as an end in itself And she's saying, flip it aroundound Don't sort of don't think the end is growth and then other things happen. talkal about the other things that you want to happen and then get to growth. And I think that that idea that what matters is not can we grow C we thrive is just an intellectually interesting way of approaching it and certainly puts her at odds