Scarcity - A History from the Origins of Capitalism to the Climate Crisis
Oct 14, 2023•Transcript available on Metacast Episode description
In this episode, Robin Mills speaks with Fredrik Albritton Jonsson and Carl
Wennerlind, authors of Scarcity - A History from the Origins of Capitalism
to the Climate Crisis (HUP, 2023). In this book, modern economics is shown
to be founded on a particular view of scarcity, in which human beings are
said to be possessed of indefinite desires. Society must therefore
facilitate endless growth and consumption – regardless of the limitations
of the natural environment. Jonsson and Wennerlind examine the intellectual
origin and context of this vision of scarcity and demonstrate its
historical contingency, even in the age of capitalism. It reflects the
triumph of infinite-growth ideologies at the expense of all other
conceptions of scarcity that sought to live within nature’s constraints.
