Dive into Doughnut Economics: 7 Strategies to Unlock 21st-Century Economic Thinking

Paul(Chester UK): Breath of fresh air, at last a critical view of current economic study. Strongly recommend this book not only to those interested in economics but ecology also.

United Kingdom on Sep 16, 2023

Maine Man: Kate Raworth does an excellent job of making sustainable economics approachable for neophytes like myself. Economics theory and history is discussed throughout but there is none of the advanced calculus that typical university students would have to learn during their studies. While I have never been a "tree-hugger", "greenie", or "crunchy" type of person, I have always appreciated nature and its beauty. Doughnut Economics opened my mind to the possibility of economic changes that could help do a better job of protecting the planet. Admittedly, much of what the author advocates for would take a massive change in not just economics but also politics, global society, and culture. Some critics will dismiss the ideas in this book as socialist drivel, or outright impossible. I am not one of those as I choose to have any open mind to the concepts laid out in this book. Our planet is worth at least considering a "new way to do business". The reason that I took one star away is that the author does let their opinions get a little strong in a couple of places where I almost considered putting the book down for fear that it would turn into a 240-page rant. I am glad that I decided to...

United States on Sep 13, 2023

Amazon Customer: This book was recommended by a friend as a place to start for a discussion group we were starting on modern economics. With a first glance at the table of contents, I was certain I would love the book. Five out of the Seven pillars were ideas I already was passionate about.

In particular,

1) [pillar 3] I've always been suspicious about the "rational actor" idea when applied in Economic thinking.
2) [pillar 4] Scaling behavior in economic systems always struck me as important, and dynamical systems seemed like an intelligent place to begin thinking about Economics.
3) [pillar 6] Regenerative approaches to things like agriculture are very compelling ideas to me, with family having grown up around plantations and presently living within a largely agricultural community.

However, the author fails to put forward coherent arguments for precisely what they are advocating for.

Based on my first reading, only two main conclusions or recommendations are provided.

A) (pg 130) "Income equality is a feedback effect."
B) (pg 149) "Spread out the network." Which I interpreted to mean that wealth and power centralization are generically bad...

United States on Aug 30, 2023

Macular vitamin user: There are three parts to the books propositions.
First, the American monetarist neo con, neo classical world view is destructive. I agree, being a neo classical economics skeptic, I had no problem accepting the authors distress at the narrow, mathematical, and sterile world many economics departments have become. I didn't find her critique shocking or unique and it was carefully set out and well explained.
Second here doughnut.
The idea is that our world is not infinitely tradable and enough people doing enough things to it will destroy the people and the things of value above price. The outside of the ring, is intellectually sound even if difficult to measure.
The inside of the ring a society with minimum welfare standards is a political and social aim to which I subscribe, but it is infinitely variable of interpretation.
Third, the guidence as to the steps needed to achieve inner and outer doughnut balance is (understandably) weak. Redistribution of wealth (fine - how?) Social enterprise, ( yes but co ops or John Lewis or self help groups all good things...and?) no "growth" and land the plane.
It's a well researched interesting read. It is not a plan, not even...

United Kingdom on Jul 13, 2023

Joy: Not really an easy read, but this book is a real eye-opener into how every system is perfectly designed to get the results it gets. Making the world a better place is no easy task, but Kate Raworth gives us a manual for how to get there.

Canada on Jul 09, 2023

David MaywaldDavid Maywald: This book provides a comprehensive refutation of conventional economics. Raworth first drew her now famous Doughnut in 2011. It depicts the “safe and just space for humanity”, located between Earth’s ecological ceiling and the social foundation for human well-being. In this treatise she presents a manifesto for radical change…

Demonstrating a very well-read appreciation of economic history and a thorough approach to analysis, Raworth clearly describes the large challenges that face policy makers this century (which are completely different to the challenges of the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries). The observations are mostly irrefutable, an honest accounting of the failure of economics to incorporate social/environmental outcomes (externalities and market failings). There is an emphasis on moving towards distributive and regenerative pathways.

Where the book really falls down is in the policy proposals and suggested changes. These are incredibly transformational and long-term (looking forward a number of decades to aspirational scenarios of the distant future). Apart from the mini case studies of social enterprises and progressive government...

Australia on Nov 08, 2022

Gary Moreau, Author: This is an incredible book, but what is most incredible of all is that after ten months of availability it currently ranks 40k+ in Amazon’s sales ranking and has only 40 reviews. That still puts it in the top tier of books, mind you, but this book should be in a tier by itself. It is truly transformative. (I only discovered it due to a comment written in response to the review of another book.)

Kate Raworth, who trained in economics at Oxford, has never quite felt comfortable in her chosen field of study. And for good reason. The neoliberal economic model that has guided us for the last three or four decades, based on fundamental assumptions that pre-date us all by several generations, are not so much flawed as they are misaligned, to the point of actual destruction, to the social, economic, political, and environmental world in which we live the 21st Century.

As an economics major myself back in the 1970s, and a corporate warrior who lived, breathed, and trusted the neoliberal creed for four subsequent decades, I am both an unlikely and uber-supporter of Raworth’s perspective and ideas.

The markets and the consumer are decidedly not efficient; as every...

United States on Dec 11, 2017

R.Nanjappa: Economics is the modern secular religion. Economists are its high priests. Organised religions have books revealed by prophets. The economic gospel is written by academics entrenched in universities, and translated into public policy by those entrenched in the officialdom. Academic economists are like the mafia. They guard their territory and will not tolerate those with different ideas.
What does economics teach? Precisely nothing! In 1922, John Maynard Keynes, perhaps the greatest genuine economist of the last century, said: "The theory of economics does not furnish a body of settled conclusions immediately applicable to policy. It is a method rather than a doctrine, an apparatus of the mind, a technique of thinking, which helps its possessor to draw correct conclusions".. But since then economics has become a system of doctrines with different schools fanatically claiming the ultimate status. Whatever the school, they all share 7 common characteristics:
- faith in unending growth, GDP as the index of economic growth and prosperity
- market as a self contained mechanism
-man as a rational economic animal
- economy will return to/ function in equilibrium, left to...

India on Jul 26, 2017