Post Growth’s Institute Formula for a For-Benefit Future

The Post Growth Institute is an international network of activists committed to analysing the underlying causes of the mess we find ourselves in and to building a broad global movement to create global prosperity that is not dependent on economic growth.

Their crowdfunded book, “How on Earth? Flourishing in a Not-for-Profit World by 2050”, describes how a “not-for-profit” model (as distinct from “non-profit”) for businesses could serve as model for an ethical, sustainable economy. The book will also deal with how existing not-for-profit organizations and collectives can take steps to ensure their sustainability, and inspire others to adopt these new strategies.

In this recent interview by Louisa Clarence-Smith of the Extraenvironmentalist Media Collective, Donnie Maclurcan (co-founder for the institute) describes his vision of a Post-Growth world. It is an astonishingly concise compendium of constructive strategies for a better society and a healed relationship with nature. Summarized this way, the accumulative impact of his suggestions allows you to imagine the sort of society we’re striving for, and its feasibility.

From the interview:

Describe your vision of a Post Growth world.

The exciting thing is that we don’t have to put a vision out there, so much as a formula. The 21st century is about co-designing. So it’s not so much about saying, this is how it should look. Although I think some of key aspects would be:

Re-localisation: a move towards people using the internet and the digital tools available to us to re-localise production and exchange and trade so that you actually know what your neighbours have around you and thereby increase service provision and decrease the distances associated with service provision.

A monetary system which is much more grounded in reality, rather than speculation; that has incentives for maintaining that groundedness, to actual meaningful transactions.

Redistributing business models: As we allude to in our book, we think that the business models would be different, that every business will have a re-distributionary process that occurs with its income and works to increase overall wealth, rather than driving inequity which drives over-consumption.

A participatory approach: the key thing here that I just alluded to is about reducing inequality;  but reducing inequality in a way that also reframes wealth from something of this mindless consumption towards meaningful connection.

You can find the rest of the interview here, at the Extraenviromentalist.

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