Season 3, Ep 3: The Economics of Arrival with Dr Katherine Trebeck

The reMAKERs

When it comes to our economy, can we dare to ask the question, ‘when is enough, enough?’ Is it time to be more discerning about what we want from our economy and how we define success, from our personal lives to the world at large?

Political economist, writer and advocate for economic system change Dr Katherine Trebeck is here to guide us through a paradigm shift from the economics of ‘more’ to the economics of wellbeing — what she describes as ‘arriving and making ourselves at home’.

Katherine is co-founder of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. She is a writer-in-residence at the University of Edinburgh’s Edinburgh Futures Institute, Strategic Advisor for Australia’s Centre for Policy Development and sits on a range of boards and advisory groups (including our own). She’s co-authored the essential book, ‘The Economics of Arrival: ideas for a grown up economy’.

Katherine has a talent for explaining big ideas with warmth, passion and clarity. If remaking the economy to better serve people and planet is a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle, where do you start with a puzzle? You start with the corners, which she introduces us to here. It’s a conversation that will change the way you read the news, listen to political speeches, look at business and talk to your friends and family.

“The purpose of this journey could change. We could go from trying to own the world to trying to feel at home in it… And that’s when you take off your shoes, prepared to stay a while.” - Katrine Marçal, quoted in The Economics of Arrival, page 1.

SHOW NOTES

Things we mention

European Commission Eight Environment Action Programme

The Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth report (first published more than 50 years ago)

Stockholm Resilience Centre’s guide to Planetary Boundaries

Prof Serge Latouche, who coined the term ‘consolation goods’

Defensive expenditures and ecological economics

Failure demand

Herman Daly’s ‘uneconomic growth’

Worker cooperatives, Community Wealth Building

Deliberative democracy, citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgeting, Just Transition work

Wealth Tax myths debunked by the Tax Justice Network in the UK

Recommendations and things you can do

Read “The Economics of Arrival: Ideas for a grown-up economy” by Katherine Trebeck and Jeremy Williams.

Check out WeAll.org and join your local chapter.

Check out Katherine’s website, follow her on Twitter.

“Channel your inner three-year-old,” and keep asking why, use your spheres of influence, start conversations.

Encourage governments to flip the script (the economy exists to serve the issues we care about), encourage pro-social business models and get real about environmental crises.

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