David Fleming (5) (1940–2010)

Not a coherent argument in sight. Author thinks poetry is a valid substitute. He is very sure of what will happen without explaining in any useful detail why, how or when it will happen. At one point he uses a completely fallacious thought experiment to argue for a shorter work week and I was willing to let it go since he clearly is not a person partial to logic but then he uses that same argument multiple times to base his ideas on (I'm taking about the 100 people slowly replaced by robots argument). I find it hard to believe that at no point one of his friends pointed out to him that's not how the economy works.… (mais)

This book came recommended by a friend, and has a catchy title, but took me several weeks to get through. It was actually published posthumously (Fleming died in 2010) and edited by Shaun Chamberlin because Fleming didn't get the chance to finish it. It's hard to summarize because it goes in a lot of directions, but it's essentially about the philosophy of anti-capitalist economics. The problem is that most economists would immediately dismiss it (because Fleming argues that the time for capitalism is over) and most people who are opposed to capitalism don't understand economics (or want to, frankly). That leaves a limited audience. Fleming takes his basic ideas about the "lean economy" we'll be forced to transition to in the coming decades from the concept of lean manufacturing. I am not sure I really understand it but it seems to have to do with leaving "slack" - getting away from the endless growth imperative that is destroying our planet, by deliberately working less efficiently. The carnival comes in when you work fewer hours and have more time to play, but he admits that no one will want to go first (work less and earn less). Fleming's ideas are thought provoking and well researched, but ultimately unsatisfying.… (mais)

I just finished a brilliant book called “Surviving the Future” by David Fleming. A friend got me down this road when she left us her copy of “Lean Logic,” the daunting non-linear tome out of which this much briefer and narratively-approachable “Surviving the Future” was crafted by a young Transition Towns guy named Shaun Chamberlin, along with Chelsea Green.

It’s definitely my favorite book of 2016, and I recommend it to anyone whom is thinking of picking up a new book sometime soon.

The core tenant of the book is about the importance of the informal economy, and the richness of life we’ve lost in our morbid fascination with the market. By no means does David call for us to bring down capitalism; he is quite assured that it is already collapsing under its own weight [and actually holds some nostalgia for capitalism’s golden age]. Instead, as the title implies, he’s deeply concerned about the outlook of humanity over the next century, and lays out a convincing argument that speedily investing in informal [or gift] economics is our only chance of finding existence and meaning.

David outlines a stunningly practical and sweepingly broad set of frameworks. For example: the five varieties of truth: material [literal], narrative [story], implicit [reflective], performative [action], and self-denying [paradox]. Or his Adaptive Cycle, outlining the four stages of regeneration [exploitation, conservation, release, and reorganization]. Also, by no means does he underemphasize the importance of play: carnival is one of the fundamental pillars of informal economics.

There’s so much more I could say about the book, but I’ll leave you with an excerpt from the epilogue, “Mourning the Market:”

"The Great Transformation has already happened. It was the revolution in politics, economics and society that came with the market economy, and which hit its stride in Britain in the late eighteenth century. Most of human history had been bred, fed and watered by another sort of economy, but the market has replaced, as far as possible, the social capital of reciprocal obligation, loyalties, authority structures, cultures and traditions with exchange, price and the impersonal principles of economics.

Unfortunately, the critics of economics have a had a tendency to discuss the whole structure as a tissue of misconceptions. It is a critique that fails. The strength of economics is its considerable, if far from complete, understanding of the flows and comparative advantages that underlie trade, jobs, capital and incomes, and the logic of optimizing behavior, all backed by glittering accomplishments in mathematics. That makes it a powerful analytical instrument, so that just a few misconceptions — such as a failure to understand the formal economy or resource depletion — can have leverage: like a baby monkey at the controls of a Ferrari, they can turn it into an instrument with extraordinary destructive potential. If it were a tissue of errors, it would not be dangerous: it is its 90 percent brilliance which makes it so…

The market’s achievements and answers sound authoritative and final, but what is truly most significant about them is how naïve they are — if the flow of income fails, the powerfully-donning combination of money and self-interest will no longer be available on its present all-embracing scale, and perhaps not at all. And it must inevitably fail, as the market’s taut competitiveness demands ever increasing productivity and thus relies on the impossibility of perpetual growth.

In the meantime, the reduction of a society and culture to dependent on mathematical abstraction has infantalised a grown-up civilization and is well on the way to destroying it. Civilizations self-destruct anyway, but it is reasonable to ask whether they have done so before with such enthusiasm, in obedience to such an acutely absurd superstition, while claiming with such insistence that they were beyond being seduced by the irrational promises of religion. Every civilization has had its irrational but reassuring myth. Previous civilizations have used their culture to sing about it and tell stories about it. Ours has used its mathematics to prove it."

If you’re still looking for delicious morsels, you can reference my tweets on the book at [including a number of quotes]: @willszal #LeanLogic
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