Thread by @beth_stratford

*HOT OFF THE PRESS*

My first journal article!

The Threat of Rent Extraction in a Resource-constrained Future

sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

I won't try to shoehorn the whole argument into a twitter thread, but to whet your appetite:

The starting point for the article is the conclusion reached by most ecological economists:

Caps on resource extraction (if commensurate with what is required to avert ecological collapse) are v likely to constrain the scale of total production & consumption as measured by GDP.

NB. You don’t have to accept that ‘green growth’ is impossible to find this article relevant. Only that there's a *risk* that resource constraints, whether voluntarily self-imposed or involuntarily/exogenously imposed, could constrain GDP growth (not a controversial position).

In light of this risk, I wanted to investigate:

Can society adapt to stable, or even lower, levels of economic activity?

Why *does* stagnant/falling GDP tend to result in rising inequality, unemployment and debt?

And is this association inevitable?

The conclusion I reached that it is *concentrated rentier power & widespread rent-seeking* that makes stalling growth so intolerable.

To have any hope of ending the growth-at-all-costs mentality that stands in the way of so many progressive policies we must take on the rentiers.

By rentiers I mean people with power to extract rents. And by rents I mean not just payments to landlords, but any income which is sustained through control over scarce (or difficult to replicate) assets, rather than through one’s own labour or ongoing contribution to innovation.

The rise of ‘rentier capitalism’ - most conspicuous in practices like patent trolling, share buy-backs, debt-fuelled speculation, land grabs, privatization of monopoly infrastructures – has been widely discussed, and widely blamed for rising inequality & financial stability.

I argue that such rent-seeking practices could intensify if we try to impose environmental protections and resource caps without having a parallel strategy to end economic extractivism.

And the results would not be pretty.

So, alongside campaigns for tough environmental protections & #GreenNewDeal investments, I argue that we need be fleshing out a plan to

1) dismantle the power of rentiers starting with landowners, Too-Big-To-Fail finance, tech/pharma giants & energy/transport/utility monopolies

2) capture unavoidable rents (e.g. arising from resource scarcities) to help fund Universal Basic Services (see @Glo_pro reports) and a Common Wealth Dividend.

Such an emancipatory programme would help empower workers to push for a reduction and redistribution of working hours.

This matters because reduced working time, as championed by likes of @Autonomy_UK & @NEF, is not just a nice idea, but the best solution on the table to technological unemployment. I argue that the unequal distribution of rentier power stands slap bang in the way of achieving it.

Anyway, hope I've said just enough to entice you to read the whole thing (it's open access, hurray):
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…

And if not, well, here's the conclusion so you can pretend that you have.