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Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth
In Plenitude, economist and bestselling author Juliet B. Schor offers a groundbreaking intellectual statement about the economics and sociology of ecological decline, suggesting a radical change in how we think about consumer goods, value, and ways to live.Humans are degrading the planet far faster than they are regenerating it. As we travel along this shutdown path, food, energy, transport, and consumer goods are becoming increasingly expensive. The economic downturn that has accompanied the ecological crisis has led to another type of scarcity: incomes, jobs, and credit are also in short supply. Our usual way back to growth-a debt-financed consumer boom-is no longer an option our households, or planet, can afford.Responding to our current moment, Plenitude puts sustainability at its core, but it is not a paradigm of sacrifice. Instead, it's an argument that through a major shift to new sources of wealth, green technologies, and different ways of living, individuals and the country as a whole can actually be better off and more economically secure. And, as Schor observes, Plenitude is already emerging. In pockets around the country and the world, people are busy creating lifestyles that offer a way out of the work-and-spend cycle. These pioneers' lives are scarce in conventional consumer goods and rich in the newly abundant resources of time, information, creativity, and community. Urban farmers, do-it-yourself renovators, Craigslist users-all are spreading their risk and establishing novel sources of income and outlets for procuring consumer goods. Taken together, these trends represent a movement away from the conventional market and offer a way toward an efficient, rewarding life in an era of high prices and traditional resource scarcity.Based on recent developments in economic theory, social analysis, and ecological design, as well as evidence from the cutting-edge people and places putting these ideas into practice, Plenitude is a road map for the next two decades. In encouraging us to value our gifts-nature, community, intelligence, and time-Schor offers the opportunity to participate in creating a world of wealth and well-being.
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First published May 31, 2010
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About the author
Juliet B. Schor
34 books168 followersJuliet Schor’s research over the last ten years has focussed on issues pertaining to trends in work and leisure, consumerism, the relationship between work and family, women's issues and economic justice. Schor's latest book is Born to Buy: The Commercialized Child and the New Consumer Culture (Scribner 2004). She is also author of The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure and The Overspent American: Upscaling, Downshifting and the New Consumer. She has co-edited, The Golden Age of Capitalism: Reinterpreting the Postwar Experience, The Consumer Society Reader, and Sustainable Planet: Solutions for the 21st Century. Earlier in her career, her research focussed on issues of wages, productivity, and profitability. She also did work on the political economy of central banking. Schor is currently is at work on a project on the commercialization of childhood, and is beginning research on environmental sustainability and its relation to Americans’ lifestyles.
Schor is a board member and co-founder of the Center for a New American Dream, an organization devoted to transforming North American lifestyles to make them more ecologically and socially sustainable. She also teaches periodically at Schumacher College, an International Center for Ecological Studies based in south-west England.
from http://www2.bc.edu/~schorj/default.html
Schor is a board member and co-founder of the Center for a New American Dream, an organization devoted to transforming North American lifestyles to make them more ecologically and socially sustainable. She also teaches periodically at Schumacher College, an International Center for Ecological Studies based in south-west England.
from http://www2.bc.edu/~schorj/default.html
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November 27, 2011
Plenitude argues for an "ecological economics" which turns a lot of what we think about wealth upside down. I agree with many of her basic ideas, but a number of details left me uncomfortable.
Schor argues for a view of wealth or "plenitude" which values four things: time, "self-provisioning" (self-reliance), "true materialism" (conserving the environment on which the economy depends), and investments in relationships. Her basic insight is quite important: despite having a lot of "things," we are facing planetary destruction in the form of climate change, species extinction, and depleting natural resources.
Schor argues that there are some things which don’t show up on economic balance sheets which are nevertheless forms of wealth, for example leisure time. Another factor which does show up on the balance sheets — knowledge — is arbitrarily limited by law relating to patents and copyrights. Advanced technology, leisure, and deepened relationships with our neighbors and our communities will leave us better off than we are today.
Schor discusses many environmental issues clearly of great relevance. She discusses the limits to growth, ecological footprint, the failure of conventional economics, and the Jevons paradox (which she calls the "rebound effect"). She vigorously condemns "business as usual" economics. If we learned to share more, we would not only strengthen community but also achieve environmental efficiencies.
This is a valuable book well worth reading. While I agree with Schor’s basic approach, there are a number of questions of detail which leave me uneasy.
1. She never discusses alternatives to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which ecological economists have proposed as means of measuring wealth. Ecological economists often attack the GDP. For example, if someone gets cancer, then it is good for the economy because it increases GDP. It provides employment for doctors, surgeons, and their medical staff. GDP increased, yet that doesn’t mean that cancer is a good thing.
One proposal is the "Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare" (ISEW), which included such things as Schor mentions — leisure time and environmental health. Others talk about the "gross national happiness" or "genuine progress indicators," in which hailstorms and cancer are problems and not benefits. Even though all of this research supports her case, she never mentions it.
2. She seems to lose her stomach for the "limits to growth" thesis as the book progresses and the concept winds up somewhat vague. Does "limits to growth" mean that our standard of living — by any measure — will decline, stabilize, or grow? Is it possible that intensive growth (increases in efficiency, as opposed to increase in resource consumption) would be so dramatic that GDP or the ISEW would still increase?
All of this is left unclear. On p. 90 she says that we need to control "the pace of growth," which implies that conventional economic growth will continue, but will not be quite as great. She seems to be willing to let the reader think that "green economic growth" is really possible, or at least that our standard of living will stabilize by some measure or other. I’m not so sure this is the case, and I wish that she had discussed this further, even if only to say that we don’t know.
3. There is little or no discussion of policy changes or political and social issues that need to be resolved.
For example, should we reform the monetary and banking system which many people argue is promoting economic growth? If the economy doesn’t grow, as she argues, won’t this mean that a lot of debt won’t be repaid and that the whole economy will collapse? Will renewable energy leave us with a lower material standard of living? What about policies such as cap and trade to limit greenhouse gas emissions and to limit resource depletion? What about a progressive income tax, or a "basic annual income" guarantee, to reduce the rampant inequality in the U. S. today? She does suggest that working fewer hours will mean that more people will have jobs (albeit with fewer hours), but this "job sharing" idea is a very different from the basic annual income or the progressive income tax.
At times she seems to leave the impression that this whole shift towards "plenitude" may just be a cultural shift, and wouldn’t require any policy changes at all. I don’t think this is what she wants to argue, but she leaves everything rather vague so it is hard to tell what exactly she wants to see happen.
4. There is scarcely any mention at all of vegetarianism or of food issues more generally. By eating vegetarian or vegan, we dramatically lower our resource use and at the same time improve our nutritional status. Switching to a plant-based diet is exactly and precisely what she is talking about elsewhere, because it is a case where we can use fewer resources and yet improve the quality of the food we’re eating. As a practical matter, I don’t think that humans are going to be able to deal with limits to growth and climate change without plant-based diets becoming the norm. But none of this is discussed.
5. Two of her key points seem to cancel each other out. Part of the idea of "plenitude" is "self-provisioning." Yet another part is "community relationships." This sounds like two rhetorical flourishes headed in the opposite direction, one emphasizing dependence on others, the other emphasizing independence.
6. She believes that we can quantify the economic costs of ecological destruction. This is not just a question of missing details or a vaguely stated thesis, but something which is actually wrong. On p. 18, she discusses putting an economic cost on environmental damage. On p. 94, she speaks of the costs of soil erosion, desertification, species extinction, and other bad things. On p. 147, she speaks of economists who want to correctly value nature.
To fully explain what is wrong here would probably require a separate essay, but here goes my quick explanation. The environment is not part of the human economy; the human economy is part of the environment. This is a basic insight of ecological economics, and shapes the entire discipline, but I don’t think she sees it.
What could be the harm of speaking of the economic value of the environment? The basic problem is one of circularity when you get down to quantifying things. If we speak of the true economic value of oil, for example, we would have to value its services in an economy which . . . is largely supported by oil. The true value of oil, in this analysis, will turn out to be worth, well, whatever it is worth. There are ways of trying to get around this paradox, say by calculating the worth of oil in other terms: natural gas or the number of horses that could provide an equivalent amount of power, for example. But then we’d have to calculate the value of the natural gas and the horses, which would again depend on an economy largely powered by natural gas or horses. Whenever you tried to "do the math" you get wrapped up in circularities.
This can also lead to ludicrous conclusions. For example, what is the economic damage caused by climate change? Some years ago, a study concluded that the effect of climate change on the U. S. economy would be relatively minor, because most of the bad economic effects of climate change are on agriculture, and agriculture is a relatively minor part of the economy. To see why this is ludicrous, imagine that climate change were so serious that it completely wiped out all agriculture, but left the rest of the economy intact. We’d all starve to death even though this is just a small part of the economy.
The truth of the matter is that we have to decide what kind of world we want to live in. For example, it might be, 5 billion people living on a "European" standard of living, or it might be 1 billion people on a vegan diet. But whatever we come up with, we then have to shape our economy — the accounting system that we use to decide how well individuals and society are doing — on the basis of this vision. We don’t evaluate our environmental proposal for a livable world on the basis of our accounting system ("the economy").
The whole idea of "cap and trade" is based on this insight. Yes, the version of cap and trade in Congress a couple of years ago was so ludicrous that it was not even worth debating, but the basic idea is sound. We set limits on the amount of carbon, methane, etc. that we want to put in the atmosphere each year, and then ration out the ability to pollute. (And strictly enforce it.) We set limits on the amount of soil erosion, groundwater depletion, and so forth, which is tolerable in the long run, and then ration out the ability to till the soil or use groundwater.
Many of these points are questions of detail or concerns about vagueness, which will not detract from the book’s value for the typical environmentally concerned reader. Schor has done a good job of describing some of the aspects of this future life — a vision I share, by the way. However, circumstances also demand radical new social and political policies, which will leave not a single aspect of human life on the planet nor a single individual untouched. Someone needs to be talking about these policies and about what kind of planet, in the end, we want to live on and how and whether we can get there.
Schor argues for a view of wealth or "plenitude" which values four things: time, "self-provisioning" (self-reliance), "true materialism" (conserving the environment on which the economy depends), and investments in relationships. Her basic insight is quite important: despite having a lot of "things," we are facing planetary destruction in the form of climate change, species extinction, and depleting natural resources.
Schor argues that there are some things which don’t show up on economic balance sheets which are nevertheless forms of wealth, for example leisure time. Another factor which does show up on the balance sheets — knowledge — is arbitrarily limited by law relating to patents and copyrights. Advanced technology, leisure, and deepened relationships with our neighbors and our communities will leave us better off than we are today.
Schor discusses many environmental issues clearly of great relevance. She discusses the limits to growth, ecological footprint, the failure of conventional economics, and the Jevons paradox (which she calls the "rebound effect"). She vigorously condemns "business as usual" economics. If we learned to share more, we would not only strengthen community but also achieve environmental efficiencies.
This is a valuable book well worth reading. While I agree with Schor’s basic approach, there are a number of questions of detail which leave me uneasy.
1. She never discusses alternatives to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) which ecological economists have proposed as means of measuring wealth. Ecological economists often attack the GDP. For example, if someone gets cancer, then it is good for the economy because it increases GDP. It provides employment for doctors, surgeons, and their medical staff. GDP increased, yet that doesn’t mean that cancer is a good thing.
One proposal is the "Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare" (ISEW), which included such things as Schor mentions — leisure time and environmental health. Others talk about the "gross national happiness" or "genuine progress indicators," in which hailstorms and cancer are problems and not benefits. Even though all of this research supports her case, she never mentions it.
2. She seems to lose her stomach for the "limits to growth" thesis as the book progresses and the concept winds up somewhat vague. Does "limits to growth" mean that our standard of living — by any measure — will decline, stabilize, or grow? Is it possible that intensive growth (increases in efficiency, as opposed to increase in resource consumption) would be so dramatic that GDP or the ISEW would still increase?
All of this is left unclear. On p. 90 she says that we need to control "the pace of growth," which implies that conventional economic growth will continue, but will not be quite as great. She seems to be willing to let the reader think that "green economic growth" is really possible, or at least that our standard of living will stabilize by some measure or other. I’m not so sure this is the case, and I wish that she had discussed this further, even if only to say that we don’t know.
3. There is little or no discussion of policy changes or political and social issues that need to be resolved.
For example, should we reform the monetary and banking system which many people argue is promoting economic growth? If the economy doesn’t grow, as she argues, won’t this mean that a lot of debt won’t be repaid and that the whole economy will collapse? Will renewable energy leave us with a lower material standard of living? What about policies such as cap and trade to limit greenhouse gas emissions and to limit resource depletion? What about a progressive income tax, or a "basic annual income" guarantee, to reduce the rampant inequality in the U. S. today? She does suggest that working fewer hours will mean that more people will have jobs (albeit with fewer hours), but this "job sharing" idea is a very different from the basic annual income or the progressive income tax.
At times she seems to leave the impression that this whole shift towards "plenitude" may just be a cultural shift, and wouldn’t require any policy changes at all. I don’t think this is what she wants to argue, but she leaves everything rather vague so it is hard to tell what exactly she wants to see happen.
4. There is scarcely any mention at all of vegetarianism or of food issues more generally. By eating vegetarian or vegan, we dramatically lower our resource use and at the same time improve our nutritional status. Switching to a plant-based diet is exactly and precisely what she is talking about elsewhere, because it is a case where we can use fewer resources and yet improve the quality of the food we’re eating. As a practical matter, I don’t think that humans are going to be able to deal with limits to growth and climate change without plant-based diets becoming the norm. But none of this is discussed.
5. Two of her key points seem to cancel each other out. Part of the idea of "plenitude" is "self-provisioning." Yet another part is "community relationships." This sounds like two rhetorical flourishes headed in the opposite direction, one emphasizing dependence on others, the other emphasizing independence.
6. She believes that we can quantify the economic costs of ecological destruction. This is not just a question of missing details or a vaguely stated thesis, but something which is actually wrong. On p. 18, she discusses putting an economic cost on environmental damage. On p. 94, she speaks of the costs of soil erosion, desertification, species extinction, and other bad things. On p. 147, she speaks of economists who want to correctly value nature.
To fully explain what is wrong here would probably require a separate essay, but here goes my quick explanation. The environment is not part of the human economy; the human economy is part of the environment. This is a basic insight of ecological economics, and shapes the entire discipline, but I don’t think she sees it.
What could be the harm of speaking of the economic value of the environment? The basic problem is one of circularity when you get down to quantifying things. If we speak of the true economic value of oil, for example, we would have to value its services in an economy which . . . is largely supported by oil. The true value of oil, in this analysis, will turn out to be worth, well, whatever it is worth. There are ways of trying to get around this paradox, say by calculating the worth of oil in other terms: natural gas or the number of horses that could provide an equivalent amount of power, for example. But then we’d have to calculate the value of the natural gas and the horses, which would again depend on an economy largely powered by natural gas or horses. Whenever you tried to "do the math" you get wrapped up in circularities.
This can also lead to ludicrous conclusions. For example, what is the economic damage caused by climate change? Some years ago, a study concluded that the effect of climate change on the U. S. economy would be relatively minor, because most of the bad economic effects of climate change are on agriculture, and agriculture is a relatively minor part of the economy. To see why this is ludicrous, imagine that climate change were so serious that it completely wiped out all agriculture, but left the rest of the economy intact. We’d all starve to death even though this is just a small part of the economy.
The truth of the matter is that we have to decide what kind of world we want to live in. For example, it might be, 5 billion people living on a "European" standard of living, or it might be 1 billion people on a vegan diet. But whatever we come up with, we then have to shape our economy — the accounting system that we use to decide how well individuals and society are doing — on the basis of this vision. We don’t evaluate our environmental proposal for a livable world on the basis of our accounting system ("the economy").
The whole idea of "cap and trade" is based on this insight. Yes, the version of cap and trade in Congress a couple of years ago was so ludicrous that it was not even worth debating, but the basic idea is sound. We set limits on the amount of carbon, methane, etc. that we want to put in the atmosphere each year, and then ration out the ability to pollute. (And strictly enforce it.) We set limits on the amount of soil erosion, groundwater depletion, and so forth, which is tolerable in the long run, and then ration out the ability to till the soil or use groundwater.
Many of these points are questions of detail or concerns about vagueness, which will not detract from the book’s value for the typical environmentally concerned reader. Schor has done a good job of describing some of the aspects of this future life — a vision I share, by the way. However, circumstances also demand radical new social and political policies, which will leave not a single aspect of human life on the planet nor a single individual untouched. Someone needs to be talking about these policies and about what kind of planet, in the end, we want to live on and how and whether we can get there.
April 16, 2019
This is so hard to rate. It basically tries to be three books in one: an economics monograph that exposes the fallacies and dangers of neoliberal trade-off economics; a lifestyle guide that advocates for improving our lives by changing how we consume, produce, and otherwise interact with the market and the environment; and an environmentalist argument for the free circulation of knowledge. These are all critically important projects, with life-and-death stakes; but the unfocused format means that each section gets the short shrift, and it really decreases the impact that this book could have had.
Schor is clearly an academic and the first, more academic section is the most successfully executed (though somewhat dry/boring for the everyday reader). Schor exposes how insanely ideological the mainstream schools of economics are at a fundamental, methodological level. The tendency in economics to over-simplify, to create models that leave out obvious variables, and to flatly ignore counter-evidence, all in blind loyalty to market ideology, is astounding. No other academic discipline could do such sloppy work and call it scientific. Schor shows how some of this is changing with sustainable/environmental economics, but there is still a huge amount of flawed economic thinking dominating our political and environmental conversations. Schor demonstrates what should be obvious--that the economic cost of preventing (or ameliorating) climate change are negligible compared to the cost of climate change itself; nevertheless, we continue to make Earth-killing decisions based on flawed and extremely short-term economic thinking.
The second part of the book is focused more on lifestyle considerations: the takeaway is that living sustainably by re-thinking consumption and shifting toward self-sufficiency will improve not only the environment but also our own happiness. It's a good thing I was already convinced of this, because this book is not all that persuasive. Schor's goal with the concept of "plenitude" is clearly to show that happiness, sustainability, health, and wealth are all complementary, and that once we account for what *actually* makes us happier and improves our quality of life, sustainable living does not require sacrifices (quite the opposite, actually). But the concept of "plenitude" is so vague and encompasses such a wide range of practices that it ends up losing all meaning by the end; this book needed to spend more time establishing and defending this term in order to make it rhetorically effective. Schor also spends whole paragraphs and pages listing and explaining green initiatives that exist: Freecycle! Cragslist! Tiny Houses! Passive heat! Community gardens! Which feels kind of facile.
The final chapter is on the free circulation of information and explains how knowledge exchange is absolutely critical for the future of the planet. This was new for me, and feels revolutionary; I've always been against intellectual property, but sometimes I have trouble articulating why, and this chapter turned on all kinds of lightbulbs. Our planet can't survive unless the knowledge developed by tech firms, pharmacological companies, energy researchers, etc becomes accessible for learners and makers at all levels; another argument for libraries! And piracy, tbh.
So. I do recommend this book because the economic analysis at the beginning, and the intellectual property argument at the end, are both innovative, new, and crazy important. The lifestyle section falters in execution, but is still a good introduction to important ideas; to get a full picture you'd need to supplement with other sources -- my favorites are Movement Matters: Essays on Movement Science, Movement Ecology, and the Nature of Movement by Katy Bowman, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery, and any and everything written by Mr. Money Mustache, especially (forgive my fangirling):
Hedonic Adaptation: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/1...
Happiness is the Only Logical Pursuit: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/0...
How to Make Money Buy Happiness: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/0...
How to be Happy, Rich, and Save the World: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/1...
In short (hah!) this was a case of great idea that doesn't quite live up to it's potential, but I'm very grateful that economists like Schor are working to change the conversation in academia and in politics and helping to push us toward a happier present and future.
Schor is clearly an academic and the first, more academic section is the most successfully executed (though somewhat dry/boring for the everyday reader). Schor exposes how insanely ideological the mainstream schools of economics are at a fundamental, methodological level. The tendency in economics to over-simplify, to create models that leave out obvious variables, and to flatly ignore counter-evidence, all in blind loyalty to market ideology, is astounding. No other academic discipline could do such sloppy work and call it scientific. Schor shows how some of this is changing with sustainable/environmental economics, but there is still a huge amount of flawed economic thinking dominating our political and environmental conversations. Schor demonstrates what should be obvious--that the economic cost of preventing (or ameliorating) climate change are negligible compared to the cost of climate change itself; nevertheless, we continue to make Earth-killing decisions based on flawed and extremely short-term economic thinking.
The second part of the book is focused more on lifestyle considerations: the takeaway is that living sustainably by re-thinking consumption and shifting toward self-sufficiency will improve not only the environment but also our own happiness. It's a good thing I was already convinced of this, because this book is not all that persuasive. Schor's goal with the concept of "plenitude" is clearly to show that happiness, sustainability, health, and wealth are all complementary, and that once we account for what *actually* makes us happier and improves our quality of life, sustainable living does not require sacrifices (quite the opposite, actually). But the concept of "plenitude" is so vague and encompasses such a wide range of practices that it ends up losing all meaning by the end; this book needed to spend more time establishing and defending this term in order to make it rhetorically effective. Schor also spends whole paragraphs and pages listing and explaining green initiatives that exist: Freecycle! Cragslist! Tiny Houses! Passive heat! Community gardens! Which feels kind of facile.
The final chapter is on the free circulation of information and explains how knowledge exchange is absolutely critical for the future of the planet. This was new for me, and feels revolutionary; I've always been against intellectual property, but sometimes I have trouble articulating why, and this chapter turned on all kinds of lightbulbs. Our planet can't survive unless the knowledge developed by tech firms, pharmacological companies, energy researchers, etc becomes accessible for learners and makers at all levels; another argument for libraries! And piracy, tbh.
So. I do recommend this book because the economic analysis at the beginning, and the intellectual property argument at the end, are both innovative, new, and crazy important. The lifestyle section falters in execution, but is still a good introduction to important ideas; to get a full picture you'd need to supplement with other sources -- my favorites are Movement Matters: Essays on Movement Science, Movement Ecology, and the Nature of Movement by Katy Bowman, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design by Charles Montgomery, and any and everything written by Mr. Money Mustache, especially (forgive my fangirling):
Hedonic Adaptation: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/1...
Happiness is the Only Logical Pursuit: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/0...
How to Make Money Buy Happiness: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/0...
How to be Happy, Rich, and Save the World: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2016/1...
In short (hah!) this was a case of great idea that doesn't quite live up to it's potential, but I'm very grateful that economists like Schor are working to change the conversation in academia and in politics and helping to push us toward a happier present and future.
July 28, 2016
One of our current major problems on the Left is that we, for the most part, have a poor grasp of economics, partly because economic debates have become excessively econometric so get bogged down in arcane number crunching, partly because we spent many years in struggles based around identity and cultural politics, partly because economics as a field of work has been overtaken by not just neoclassical economics but by neoliberal economics. As a result, someone like Juliet Schor is all too rare in debates and whose interventions are therefore always worthwhile, even when I disagree. Schor is a social democratic economist whose work draws on Keynesian, Marxist and other unpopular sources of concepts but who has at the centre of her analyses critiques of finance capital and fictitious capital. What’s more, she is an economist who writes superbly well for non-specialist audiences explaining the economic data clearly and lucidly while packing in ‘real world’ examples that we non-specialists can hang on to.
In her previous work she has looked at the moral pressure to work increasingly long hours, the dangers of and pressures leading to excessive consumption and the marketization and commercialisation of childhood. In each of these more popular outings (she also does ‘proper’ academic economic publishing) an essential issue has been the ability of people, their lives and the world they live in to sustain social and material life. In this book she cuts to the chase to explore sustainability economics and in doing so draws on key elements of the other three popular-audience titles.
So much of what I see about sustainability economics seems to rely on one of two options: either a technological fix or a back to nature, hairshirted restraint. One is a science fantasy option where all of a sudden we discover a new piece of technology that solves all our problems (dammit, where did I leave those dilithium crystals?) or we return to the simple lives of our (romanticised) great-great grandparents or Tom & Barbara Goode. Neither is feasible, and then neither are many of the slight retooling of capitalism proposals. At the heart of Schor’s case is a paradox; that as we’ve become more materialistic in terms of acquiring more and more stuff we’ve also become less materialistic in terms of not knowing where our stuff comes from, how it is made or how it gets to use. In short, she has built a clearly argued and rigorous case for downshifting: working less, making more, knowing more about where our stuff comes from (while having less of it) and restoring investments in communities, so in a sense sharing more. This, she argues, is the only viable alternative to business as usual (BAU economics).
The argument is conventionally structured. Two chapters set up the problem – a consumer boom in the post-war era that has taken us close ecological destruction, backed up by a return to and reanalysis of the argument that there are limits to growth. She then shifts tone to focus on the four principles of plenitude:
1. a new allocation of time through reduced hours of market work
2. a shift to high-productivity self-provisioning (here she builds a case that is different to many sustainability approaches – technology is not the problem; it can be used to enhance self-provisioning)
3. the development of a low-cost, low-impact, but high-satisfaction consumer life, and
4. the revitalisation of community and social connection.
Along with this optimistic outlook she takes the discussion beyond the common approach to focus on technology and resources and the limit and solution, to a focus on knowledge. The apex of her argument, then, is that the four principles of plenitude can/should be central to an approach designed to build diffuse, smart and ecologically restorative ways to live. Throughout, she draws on mainstream as well as critical economic and sociological evidence, using the orthodox against itself.
It is easy for us to sneer, suspecting that this is little more than a Whole Earth Catalogue for the 21st century, but without the pictures. We don’t have to go far, though, to find these principles in practice. Across The Netherlands a series of small community shop front centres run repair services for local communities, for free – local residents with skills give a few hours a week each to repair home appliances, equipment and so forth. In South London, and elsewhere, groups of people in the same street collectively buy equipment they may need but seldom use (farmers’ coops have been doing this with harvesting equipment for at least 50 years – my father was, as I recall, a co-owner of a combine harvester when I was young). One of England’s Sunday papers currently (December 2013) has a fund-raising campaign to buy solar powered batteries to provide electric lighting to households in rural Kenya, saving money on oil, saving oil and keeping households safe (from fire).
In other places, entire communities have taken on these kinds of ideas – in Chiapas in southern Mexico the Zapatistas went to war against the Mexican state to secure their autonomy and run their lives on similar ideas. A recent book by Dan Hancock, The Village Against the World , is turning out to be a very popular study of a collective village in Andalusia. We don’t need to look much further than Al Jazeera English’s excellent Earthrise show to see countless examples of the principles of plenitude in action.
Will it work? Now that’s a different story – but even though I kept finding little niggling things that jarred, I also kept finding myself going back to the categories Erik Olin Wright points to in his superb Envisioning Real Utopias and wondering about the desirable, the viable and achievable; the nice thing about these principles is that they can apply as factors for success in all three states. And what’s more, in accentuating the limits of knowledge Schor has pointed to an approach that works in a late capitalist world the stresses immaterial labour and knowledge economies – factors that play a key role in current struggles over the commons; these are conditions that we can work on in the current to build the achievable while keeping the desirable in sight.
This is one of those books that inspires and deserves our attention in our everyday life as well as in our more rigorous efforts to build new ways of being and doing.
In her previous work she has looked at the moral pressure to work increasingly long hours, the dangers of and pressures leading to excessive consumption and the marketization and commercialisation of childhood. In each of these more popular outings (she also does ‘proper’ academic economic publishing) an essential issue has been the ability of people, their lives and the world they live in to sustain social and material life. In this book she cuts to the chase to explore sustainability economics and in doing so draws on key elements of the other three popular-audience titles.
So much of what I see about sustainability economics seems to rely on one of two options: either a technological fix or a back to nature, hairshirted restraint. One is a science fantasy option where all of a sudden we discover a new piece of technology that solves all our problems (dammit, where did I leave those dilithium crystals?) or we return to the simple lives of our (romanticised) great-great grandparents or Tom & Barbara Goode. Neither is feasible, and then neither are many of the slight retooling of capitalism proposals. At the heart of Schor’s case is a paradox; that as we’ve become more materialistic in terms of acquiring more and more stuff we’ve also become less materialistic in terms of not knowing where our stuff comes from, how it is made or how it gets to use. In short, she has built a clearly argued and rigorous case for downshifting: working less, making more, knowing more about where our stuff comes from (while having less of it) and restoring investments in communities, so in a sense sharing more. This, she argues, is the only viable alternative to business as usual (BAU economics).
The argument is conventionally structured. Two chapters set up the problem – a consumer boom in the post-war era that has taken us close ecological destruction, backed up by a return to and reanalysis of the argument that there are limits to growth. She then shifts tone to focus on the four principles of plenitude:
1. a new allocation of time through reduced hours of market work
2. a shift to high-productivity self-provisioning (here she builds a case that is different to many sustainability approaches – technology is not the problem; it can be used to enhance self-provisioning)
3. the development of a low-cost, low-impact, but high-satisfaction consumer life, and
4. the revitalisation of community and social connection.
Along with this optimistic outlook she takes the discussion beyond the common approach to focus on technology and resources and the limit and solution, to a focus on knowledge. The apex of her argument, then, is that the four principles of plenitude can/should be central to an approach designed to build diffuse, smart and ecologically restorative ways to live. Throughout, she draws on mainstream as well as critical economic and sociological evidence, using the orthodox against itself.
It is easy for us to sneer, suspecting that this is little more than a Whole Earth Catalogue for the 21st century, but without the pictures. We don’t have to go far, though, to find these principles in practice. Across The Netherlands a series of small community shop front centres run repair services for local communities, for free – local residents with skills give a few hours a week each to repair home appliances, equipment and so forth. In South London, and elsewhere, groups of people in the same street collectively buy equipment they may need but seldom use (farmers’ coops have been doing this with harvesting equipment for at least 50 years – my father was, as I recall, a co-owner of a combine harvester when I was young). One of England’s Sunday papers currently (December 2013) has a fund-raising campaign to buy solar powered batteries to provide electric lighting to households in rural Kenya, saving money on oil, saving oil and keeping households safe (from fire).
In other places, entire communities have taken on these kinds of ideas – in Chiapas in southern Mexico the Zapatistas went to war against the Mexican state to secure their autonomy and run their lives on similar ideas. A recent book by Dan Hancock, The Village Against the World , is turning out to be a very popular study of a collective village in Andalusia. We don’t need to look much further than Al Jazeera English’s excellent Earthrise show to see countless examples of the principles of plenitude in action.
Will it work? Now that’s a different story – but even though I kept finding little niggling things that jarred, I also kept finding myself going back to the categories Erik Olin Wright points to in his superb Envisioning Real Utopias and wondering about the desirable, the viable and achievable; the nice thing about these principles is that they can apply as factors for success in all three states. And what’s more, in accentuating the limits of knowledge Schor has pointed to an approach that works in a late capitalist world the stresses immaterial labour and knowledge economies – factors that play a key role in current struggles over the commons; these are conditions that we can work on in the current to build the achievable while keeping the desirable in sight.
This is one of those books that inspires and deserves our attention in our everyday life as well as in our more rigorous efforts to build new ways of being and doing.
January 6, 2015
This book was initially published in 2010 under the title Plenitiude. Schorr has a degree in economics from U-Mass Amherst, and currently teaches sociology at Boston College. I first became aware of her when she published The Overworked American in 1993. She writes about work and leisure, consumption and sustainability. This book, written for a popular audience, addresses those topics. The data she presents here, by and large, are not new, but she brings together a lot of information in service of an argument for thinking more sustainably about how we live. I picked the book up at the ASA in August, and stated reading it this fall. The timing coincided with MU’s offer to buy back the tenure of all tenured professors 62+. Her discussion of “temporal impoverishment” hit home, and helped me to imagine how my life could be better with more time and less money, right as I was actually facing that choice. She makes a lot of helpful comparisons between the US and other countries. I love all th studies she cites; for example the one on p 106, where she is talking about how the pace of life speeds up as income goes up. The study compares walking speeds in the 31 cities across the world. One could quibble, but i find it an imaginative way to measure a phenomenon I have myself experienced. I like to think that there are people out there who are already making the changes we want to see. At times, however, she seems a little over optimistic. The discussion of Missouri’s own Marcin Jakubowski and his Factor e farm is a case in point. I also would have liked have seen a better discussion of the knowledge commons. Like many of the things whose existence Schorr celebrates, we don't get much sense of who uses it and for what, and what might inhibit the rest of us from using it more. I think I probably need to read Naomi Klein, This changes Everything, and Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century.
August 10, 2010
I got to interview the author of this book on my Pathways radio show (which is podcast at Divination.com). By a Boston College sociology professor, this is a positive and practical treatment on how we can re-orient our values away from a monetary-based way of thinking (and the “poverty consciousness” that comes with it).
First, the author shows how “business as usual” (which she refers to as “BAU”) is coming to an end, whether we like it or not. There is just no way that five percent of the world’s population will be allowed to consume 25 percent of the remaining oil, for instance — no matter how oversized its military may be.
Because of America’s careless indebtedness for consumption (and war), the developing world (where almost all of the oil is) is gaining relative power. Plus, two billion Chinese and Indians want to be over-consumers like us. Even if we reduce our own consumption (fat chance), the overall consumption is bound to grow with BUA. This is a huge problem because the planet cannot sustain higher levels of over-consumption, not to mention possibly violent competition for energy resources!
What can we do? What can YOU do? Schor’s book provides some new and surprising answers. In addition to letting go of BUA thinking — i.e. in which only things that are measured in dollars are considered valuable – the author encourages us to recognize our “true wealth” — things like the value of time, knowledge, community, creativity and nature. She is advocating for a radical change of orientation that includes less full-time “work” and more of a balanced life, based on real enrichment not consumption.
First, the author shows how “business as usual” (which she refers to as “BAU”) is coming to an end, whether we like it or not. There is just no way that five percent of the world’s population will be allowed to consume 25 percent of the remaining oil, for instance — no matter how oversized its military may be.
Because of America’s careless indebtedness for consumption (and war), the developing world (where almost all of the oil is) is gaining relative power. Plus, two billion Chinese and Indians want to be over-consumers like us. Even if we reduce our own consumption (fat chance), the overall consumption is bound to grow with BUA. This is a huge problem because the planet cannot sustain higher levels of over-consumption, not to mention possibly violent competition for energy resources!
What can we do? What can YOU do? Schor’s book provides some new and surprising answers. In addition to letting go of BUA thinking — i.e. in which only things that are measured in dollars are considered valuable – the author encourages us to recognize our “true wealth” — things like the value of time, knowledge, community, creativity and nature. She is advocating for a radical change of orientation that includes less full-time “work” and more of a balanced life, based on real enrichment not consumption.
December 17, 2012
The key concepts in Plenitude are:
(a) new allocation of time, reduced hours of market work
(b) self provisioning
(c) true materialism, low cost, low (ecological) impact but high satisfaction consumer life
(d) enhanced relationships i.e. revitalization of community and social connection
It argues that the current economic model of ignoring/ downplaying ecological impact is not sustainable and offers a new model of Plenitude.
I also find the following concepts interesting ( that are being discussed in the book):
(a) feedback loop - similar to George Soros' boom/bust model
(b) rebound effect
In my mind, because it's a known unknown ( i.e. the fact that it's been thoroughly researched and argued in the book) as opposed to an unknown unknown, much of the impact/ damage would have been probably been factored in. Or at least it gets the stakeholders to start thinking about this matter.
Precisely because the book is arguing against mainstream economics, at times, I find the arguments (however soundly) hard to swallow. I agree on the devastating ecological impact and a genuine concern that we need to do something about it, but I am still unsure if Plenitude itself can resolve the problems. Nevertheless, new allocation of time (i.e. reprioritizing one's life), self provisioning, true materialism and enhanced relationships are without a doubt, good practices/suggestions to adopt.
(a) new allocation of time, reduced hours of market work
(b) self provisioning
(c) true materialism, low cost, low (ecological) impact but high satisfaction consumer life
(d) enhanced relationships i.e. revitalization of community and social connection
It argues that the current economic model of ignoring/ downplaying ecological impact is not sustainable and offers a new model of Plenitude.
I also find the following concepts interesting ( that are being discussed in the book):
(a) feedback loop - similar to George Soros' boom/bust model
(b) rebound effect
In my mind, because it's a known unknown ( i.e. the fact that it's been thoroughly researched and argued in the book) as opposed to an unknown unknown, much of the impact/ damage would have been probably been factored in. Or at least it gets the stakeholders to start thinking about this matter.
Precisely because the book is arguing against mainstream economics, at times, I find the arguments (however soundly) hard to swallow. I agree on the devastating ecological impact and a genuine concern that we need to do something about it, but I am still unsure if Plenitude itself can resolve the problems. Nevertheless, new allocation of time (i.e. reprioritizing one's life), self provisioning, true materialism and enhanced relationships are without a doubt, good practices/suggestions to adopt.
September 16, 2015
I can summarize as 1. Everyone is bad, 2. Americans are especially bad, 3. There are lots of ways to be good. I appreciated the book for the options that it described to counter some of the negative effects of growth from a green/progressive perspective. I didn’t see many paths to implement the options, though. This was more of a “the world would be better if we just did this” argument. For instance, the author suggests one option is nationalizing patents deemed by the government as important in solving these growth related problems. She mentions that some might not like that, and I think that’s an understatement. Practicalities are sometimes discussed but there aren’t necessarily ways to implement given. This is a long book as is, defining total solutions would have made it an encyclopedia. It’s good at what it does, although I think I read about straw-bale housing as an option more than I ever thought possible.
February 16, 2012
Very interesting. I think she makes some good points but it seems very idealistic to me. She concedes that working fewer hours is not a viable strategy for low-income families or poor countries. She advocates open source information -- I agree it is great, but somehow the people doing research and coming up with ideas have to get paid. They can't work for free forever. She doesn't really discuss how that will happen. I agree that the economic model of "grow or die" is unsustainable. Worth reading.
April 26, 2013
"These, then, are the individual principles of plenitude: work and spend less, create and connect more."
"But Plenitude is not thriving only because it is fiscally intelligent. It is also growing because it repairs our fractured lives, heals our souls, and can make us truly wealthy in ways that have little to do with money and consumption. And as it does, it begins to build, step by step, a better way of human being. In the process, it promises to restore the bounty and beauty of our miraculous planet and all its inhabitants. We should settle for nothing less."
"But Plenitude is not thriving only because it is fiscally intelligent. It is also growing because it repairs our fractured lives, heals our souls, and can make us truly wealthy in ways that have little to do with money and consumption. And as it does, it begins to build, step by step, a better way of human being. In the process, it promises to restore the bounty and beauty of our miraculous planet and all its inhabitants. We should settle for nothing less."
January 1, 2018
I am not sure how people who are not already on board with the idea of minimizing, and constantly struggling with their impacts on the deteriorating environment would feel about this book. But because I am all about minimizing and have terrible guilt about my ecological footprint I loved this book. I found it inspiring and informative, but rooted in economic theory and facts so it actually felt useful.
August 10, 2018
"The question of well-being will begin to solve itself. In addition to, and perhaps more important than, the question of whether we are better or worse off in a quantitative sense - the issue to which the literature is addressed - we will discover that we are different. We will have brought our way of living into alignment with what most of us care about most, promoting health and well-being for humans, other species, and the planet."
"The most revealing fact about the contemporary apparel market is this: clothing can now be purchased by weight, rather than by the piece, and at a price as low as a dollar a pound. That means it's possible to buy gently used, even high-end apparel for less than rice, beans, or other basic foodstuffs. In historical perspective, this is almost unfathomable."
This is a good book.
I took a star off for two reasons: 1. because it occasionally reads like statistics homework, and 2. Schor spends a lot of time talking about "things that people are doing," and that's the extent to which she goes into detail about it. For example, she writes, "more and more of us are acting at the local level, getting carbon commitments from mayors and state governments, fighting for the right to keep chickens or hang laundry on a clothesline, and teaching others how to garden, can, and preserve."
That sounds nice, but that also kind of sounds like my crazy next-door neighbor. Who are these people? Where are they? Where's the evidence that they're happier than I am? Not everyone with shorter work hours also owns chicken coops.
When it comes down to it, though, Plenitude is inspiring because it truly is a breath of fresh air. Schor tells you that the economy is going to collapse, that we're going to run out of fossil fuels, that "business-as-usual" as we know it is a mirage caused by all-time low consumer prices, all-time high income, and unmindful ecological abuse.
But you know what? Things are going to change. Life's not going to be like it was in The Jetsons, but that's okay.
You'll adapt. You'll probably be better off, and so will the earth.
"The most revealing fact about the contemporary apparel market is this: clothing can now be purchased by weight, rather than by the piece, and at a price as low as a dollar a pound. That means it's possible to buy gently used, even high-end apparel for less than rice, beans, or other basic foodstuffs. In historical perspective, this is almost unfathomable."
This is a good book.
I took a star off for two reasons: 1. because it occasionally reads like statistics homework, and 2. Schor spends a lot of time talking about "things that people are doing," and that's the extent to which she goes into detail about it. For example, she writes, "more and more of us are acting at the local level, getting carbon commitments from mayors and state governments, fighting for the right to keep chickens or hang laundry on a clothesline, and teaching others how to garden, can, and preserve."
That sounds nice, but that also kind of sounds like my crazy next-door neighbor. Who are these people? Where are they? Where's the evidence that they're happier than I am? Not everyone with shorter work hours also owns chicken coops.
When it comes down to it, though, Plenitude is inspiring because it truly is a breath of fresh air. Schor tells you that the economy is going to collapse, that we're going to run out of fossil fuels, that "business-as-usual" as we know it is a mirage caused by all-time low consumer prices, all-time high income, and unmindful ecological abuse.
But you know what? Things are going to change. Life's not going to be like it was in The Jetsons, but that's okay.
You'll adapt. You'll probably be better off, and so will the earth.
Read
August 12, 2024This was fascinating to read right after "Ellen Swallow: The Woman Who Founded Ecology". After reading the introduction, I was a little concerned the whole book would be a bunch of confirmation bias for me. Shorter work days, more time for community connections, industry that actually accounts for ecological impact? Sign me up. The rest of the book was about how she saw that affecting economics. I thought some of her ideas were persuasive, others less so. I wish there had been more about the value of community and less about the economic benefits of side gigs. I did appreciate this quote on p.140-141:
"But economic growth undermined the need for community interdependence. When people can afford to purchase services, they ask for favors less often. As people spend more time on the job, donations of labor to friends, neighbors, and extended family members decline. Prosperity itself can corrode community, by undermining our need for one another. This can be seen in the skewness of transfers across income levels. More affluent groups are less likely to engage in reciprocal labor transfers (although they do transfer money within family networks). Dependence also has its drawbacks--it can be constraining or even onerous at the same time it offers the benefits of social connection and economic assets in the form of untapped obligations."
Also, why don't we subsidize industries who make sound ecological plans for the whole lifecycle of their products?
"But economic growth undermined the need for community interdependence. When people can afford to purchase services, they ask for favors less often. As people spend more time on the job, donations of labor to friends, neighbors, and extended family members decline. Prosperity itself can corrode community, by undermining our need for one another. This can be seen in the skewness of transfers across income levels. More affluent groups are less likely to engage in reciprocal labor transfers (although they do transfer money within family networks). Dependence also has its drawbacks--it can be constraining or even onerous at the same time it offers the benefits of social connection and economic assets in the form of untapped obligations."
Also, why don't we subsidize industries who make sound ecological plans for the whole lifecycle of their products?
April 13, 2022
There are some interesting ideas here, and some innovative ways of gathering data, like shipping container weights. I also agree with the ideas in general. There are two significant flaws.
One is just that the information goes in too many directions. Given the scope of what affects and is affected by the topic, that is understandable, but it makes the book less effective. I say that not being sure how I would solve it.
The other thing is that with all the optimism of some of the growing developments at the time of publication (2010), much has gotten worse, including environmentally. The pandemic has made some changes that would have been hard to predict, but so much of what has not succeeded has been related to racism, and its use in the service of corporate and private greed. While racism may have been the key issue in various past elections, right now misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia seem to be doing more of the work, but it all connects.
That has made it very obvious (though I did kind of already know) that no economic or environmental problems are going to be solved without addressing that bigotry. Early in the book I saw gaps regarding under-served populations for every sector that were not addressed.
Therefore, any approach that is not intersectional will be insufficient. Over and over again.
One is just that the information goes in too many directions. Given the scope of what affects and is affected by the topic, that is understandable, but it makes the book less effective. I say that not being sure how I would solve it.
The other thing is that with all the optimism of some of the growing developments at the time of publication (2010), much has gotten worse, including environmentally. The pandemic has made some changes that would have been hard to predict, but so much of what has not succeeded has been related to racism, and its use in the service of corporate and private greed. While racism may have been the key issue in various past elections, right now misogyny, homophobia, and transphobia seem to be doing more of the work, but it all connects.
That has made it very obvious (though I did kind of already know) that no economic or environmental problems are going to be solved without addressing that bigotry. Early in the book I saw gaps regarding under-served populations for every sector that were not addressed.
Therefore, any approach that is not intersectional will be insufficient. Over and over again.
March 2, 2024
This is an academic book, most likely to be assigned to a politics or economics course at a university. Much of the work focuses on environmental considerations as they relate to economics and economic growth historically and in the future. Unfortunately, an academic book that was published more than a decade ago has somewhat limited relevance to the present day. At the time of its release, I have no doubt that it was a star, but it is not a book that I would actively recommend for a current read.
There were certainly some interesting parts about leisure time, part-time work, productivity, and happiness. It's refreshing to know that I can claim to be helping others by my choosing to downshift (reduced unemployment rate, greater opportunities for others to earn more from their efforts, etc), even when I know it's done selfishly for my own happiness. Certainly, it's a blessing to find oneself in a place of enough. If more people arrived and chose in-sourcing and a slower relationship-based way of life, surely our environment would benefit, as well. That's my main takeaway.
There were certainly some interesting parts about leisure time, part-time work, productivity, and happiness. It's refreshing to know that I can claim to be helping others by my choosing to downshift (reduced unemployment rate, greater opportunities for others to earn more from their efforts, etc), even when I know it's done selfishly for my own happiness. Certainly, it's a blessing to find oneself in a place of enough. If more people arrived and chose in-sourcing and a slower relationship-based way of life, surely our environment would benefit, as well. That's my main takeaway.
September 4, 2023
I felt the author explained the economics behind climate change very well. She is a sociology professor from Boston College that has an abundance of knowledge on what action needs to be taken. This was written about 13 years ago but is more relevant than ever. She gives empirical evidence against the current work system. She offers insight on the wealth of time. She argues that working less is one of the answers to save the planet and yourself. I really enjoyed reading her policy suggestions and the work she has already done in environmental economics.
February 8, 2020
An awful lot has happened since Schor's book was first published in 2010. We have both moved forward AND failed to embrace fully the need for a radically new approach to economics. Schor points to the failure of our economic systems to factor in the cost of our business activities on the environment and the need to do so. But her message is far from "hair shirt". She also points the way towards true wealth - organising ourselves around meeting needs. A welcome read.
September 26, 2019
I am on board with Juliet Schor's ideas but thought the book too short. Granted, many of her assertions and insights have been proven true ten years on but I found myself wishing for more. 4 stars for ideas, research and references but 3 stars for overall reading experience.
October 29, 2019
Many of the themes touched in this book have yet to be taken up by main stream society. we, as humans, just don't seem to care very much about our future. Community, minimalism, working less, creating more and trying to be happy are just some of the things covered in this book.
January 19, 2025
This offers some great ideas about building a sustainable and equitable economy. It’s optimism in the face of the 2008 financial crash both makes it a hopeful and fanciful read almost twenty years later.
September 6, 2021
Ideas are interesting on a marco level. Not something an individual can really put into practice.
July 24, 2023
Notizen:
Grundprinzipien der Plentitude:
-Weniger Konsumieren
-Weniger Arbeiten
=>Lebensfreude und schont die Umwelt
Grundprinzipien der Plentitude:
-Weniger Konsumieren
-Weniger Arbeiten
=>Lebensfreude und schont die Umwelt
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 16, 2025
Sometimes you flip the coin and instead of “personal, prescriptive book” you get “professional, descriptive book”
April 8, 2014
The first third of this book seemed a little silly. "Plenitude" was mentioned so often, with a sort of vague definition, that it sounded like a sideshow barker selling snake oil. "What's the idea that will change the world? Plenitude! What's the solution to all our ills? Plenitude!" It got to be a bit much.
Fortunately, that toned down after a while so that the middle third of the book discussed the problems of our current situation. This section was informative, but depressing. The combination of our consumerist mentality with our disposable commodities just cannot end well. Seeing some of the actual numbers of the path we are on, one cannot help but feel a little hopeless.
The remainder of the book tries to show how putting the idea of "plenitude" into action can help curb the current trends. I applaud the effort, and I thought there were good ideas there, but the solutions seemed a little idealistic. Everything seemed to have a white, liberal, upper-middle class lean. There's a lot more to the economic equation than how upper-middle class families spend their money. It reminded me of financial bloggers who suggest saving money by reducing your Starbucks runs to just three times a week. That's not much help for someone who never wastes money on coffee to begin with.
Overall, it was a decent read. The facts and research were interesting, and the ideas and suggestions were good food for thought.
Fortunately, that toned down after a while so that the middle third of the book discussed the problems of our current situation. This section was informative, but depressing. The combination of our consumerist mentality with our disposable commodities just cannot end well. Seeing some of the actual numbers of the path we are on, one cannot help but feel a little hopeless.
The remainder of the book tries to show how putting the idea of "plenitude" into action can help curb the current trends. I applaud the effort, and I thought there were good ideas there, but the solutions seemed a little idealistic. Everything seemed to have a white, liberal, upper-middle class lean. There's a lot more to the economic equation than how upper-middle class families spend their money. It reminded me of financial bloggers who suggest saving money by reducing your Starbucks runs to just three times a week. That's not much help for someone who never wastes money on coffee to begin with.
Overall, it was a decent read. The facts and research were interesting, and the ideas and suggestions were good food for thought.
September 28, 2010
Probably the first book about economics I've read voluntarily, and the only one I'd describe as "inspiring." Plenitude is partly about the need to include the environment in our thinking about the economy (traditionally the two have been entirely separate fields), and partly about very practical ways in which we can do this--essentially, how we can live well and take care of ourselves and the earth now that we've thoroughly messed up the economy AND the planet. Juliet Schor isn't quite this dire, which is one of the things I really liked about the book: it's both realistic about economic/environmental degredation, and quite hopeful, too. Some of her very specific practical suggestions include working fewer hours, which would help deal with unemployment by providing more work for a greater number of people, and would also make most people happier (she cites a number of studies showing that, past a certain level of income, more money doesn't actually contribute to happiness, and that working too much contributes to stress and poor health). She's also a big proponent of divesting from what she calls "the market" (not just the stock market, but really all of business-as-usual Western capitalism) and becoming wealthy in "alternative" ways, through time, creativity, community, and connection.
April 7, 2016
I really enjoyed this book. Plenitude takes on the "Business as Usual" way of economics and proposed as ecological economics model that focuses on re-evaluating our current state of economics and environmental degradation and proposed a number of radical changes that could help alleviate the harm we're causing to our environment and our economy. The book focuses on sustainability and free alternatives to the current BAU ways of production.
School puts a great deal of emphasis on the benefits of the model here, and at times it sounds almost too good to be true. Knowing little about economics, I'm sure there are some downsides to this plan, and from my own knowledge I realize that a good number of these proposals would be difficult, if not impossible, to implement in today's capitalism dominated culture. However, she does shine the spotlight on the current emergence of a number of communities and projects that have adopted these values, giving a light to the darkness of academic speculation that rules the majority of this book.
If nothing else, this book is inspiring in the way that it highlights the ways that some individuals and communities are working around the BAU way of life and trying to integrate a way of life that is both fulfilling and capable of providing a plentiful life without destroying the environment without doing so.
School puts a great deal of emphasis on the benefits of the model here, and at times it sounds almost too good to be true. Knowing little about economics, I'm sure there are some downsides to this plan, and from my own knowledge I realize that a good number of these proposals would be difficult, if not impossible, to implement in today's capitalism dominated culture. However, she does shine the spotlight on the current emergence of a number of communities and projects that have adopted these values, giving a light to the darkness of academic speculation that rules the majority of this book.
If nothing else, this book is inspiring in the way that it highlights the ways that some individuals and communities are working around the BAU way of life and trying to integrate a way of life that is both fulfilling and capable of providing a plentiful life without destroying the environment without doing so.
September 21, 2010
Personally speaking, I see how the principles of plenitude work on an individual level. Although my DH has not cut back his hours, we are into self-provisioning where we can and we do spend time building social capital (read "being involved in the community and/or church, and spending time with friends). We biodiesel, we keep bees, we have a (small) garden, we like to make our own bread when we have time. I really am coming to think that living a plenitude-friendly life helped insulate us from the current economic recession. The concern I have about the book, or rather the principles the author espouses, is in how to shift from a business-as-usual (BAU) model into plenitude. Having people work shorter hours so that more people can work and spending the extra time in self-provisioning and social interaction sounds great. But how do we then as a society afford things like the universal healthcare coverage that Schor recommends? Reducing incomes and increasing government spending doesn't sound like it would work. I would be very interested to see Schor propose a transition program with a budget. I think plenitude is part of the wave of the future, I just don't understand how we'll get there without pain and (potentially) massive upheaval.
August 28, 2011
Perhaps I should stop reading popular economics books, because I seem to always end up disliking them for being popular economics books, which isn't really fair. I was especially disappointed in this book because it treats a number of topics that I find quite interesting, including work hours, optimal scales of production, and self-provisioning. Maybe I would have felt differently if I were not someone already interested in these topics, but it usually felt quite superficial, like a breathless catalog of the shibboleths of hyuppie culture: Urban chicken farming! Cooperatives! Green energy! These things are all well and good, but the book generally read like one of those NYTimes trend stories covering something that everyone's already known about for six months. I also felt myself longing for some more scholarly substance. While Schor is an economics professor, and refers to academic studies relatively often, her clear normative position gave me no confidence that she wasn't just cherry-picking.
Plus, come on, "plenitude" is a super awkward word. I hope Schor didn't think it was going to become a buzzword.
Plus, come on, "plenitude" is a super awkward word. I hope Schor didn't think it was going to become a buzzword.
August 13, 2020
An interesting book to read especially if you wanted to learn about environmental economics. The author stresses on Business as usual (BAU) concept that is a basic foundation of how current businesses are being run today. There are 5 chapters in the book that was covered by the author and how i sum it each chapter based on my understanding.
1.The materiality Paradox.
- Consumer Culture vs. necessities. Do you really need it or do you buy it because it's cheap -- A question that was often ignored by the majority of consumers.
2.Planetary Ecocide
- Human Footprint vs. The capability of planet to sustain the population. We consume in the faster rate but we failed to replenish it in the same rate. Thus, the scarcity is inevitable.
3.Trade-off economics
- Technology optimism and Opportunity cost. Jobs vs Environment, Money vs clean energy, Technology vs. cutting cost. Why not have both rather than have to choose?
4. Self Provisioning
- People has become more aware, they are more conscious and considerate and trying to reduce their carbon footprint.
5. Efficiency and sustainability.
-What we can do in slowing down the damage of the planet because we only got one.
1.The materiality Paradox.
- Consumer Culture vs. necessities. Do you really need it or do you buy it because it's cheap -- A question that was often ignored by the majority of consumers.
2.Planetary Ecocide
- Human Footprint vs. The capability of planet to sustain the population. We consume in the faster rate but we failed to replenish it in the same rate. Thus, the scarcity is inevitable.
3.Trade-off economics
- Technology optimism and Opportunity cost. Jobs vs Environment, Money vs clean energy, Technology vs. cutting cost. Why not have both rather than have to choose?
4. Self Provisioning
- People has become more aware, they are more conscious and considerate and trying to reduce their carbon footprint.
5. Efficiency and sustainability.
-What we can do in slowing down the damage of the planet because we only got one.
September 15, 2010
A book about living a richer, more creative life during a time of ecological and economic crisis. "We devalue the material world bu excessive acquisition and discard of products. The plenitude principle of true materialism reverses this attitude."
The author believes that keeping energy costs high is the key to reducing our consumption of energy. She believes we work way too much. We would all be better off with less hours as businesses could hire more employees. That is not part of BAU (Business as usual) as corporations would prefer to have less employees working more and more hours. That keeps unemployment higher than it should be and we become less efficient the more hours we work. "Throughout the history of capitalism, displaced workers have been absorbed in part through reductions of working hours."
Definitely recommended for those interested in economics, work and sustainability!
The author believes that keeping energy costs high is the key to reducing our consumption of energy. She believes we work way too much. We would all be better off with less hours as businesses could hire more employees. That is not part of BAU (Business as usual) as corporations would prefer to have less employees working more and more hours. That keeps unemployment higher than it should be and we become less efficient the more hours we work. "Throughout the history of capitalism, displaced workers have been absorbed in part through reductions of working hours."
Definitely recommended for those interested in economics, work and sustainability!
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