Introduction to Insight Economics

I have titled my substack “Insight Economics” as a very general expression of what my work in this field is about, and what I think is important. It is a concise way of saying, “insight into economics” or “economics in the context of insight.”

My journey of study, reflection, and activism in economics now spans close to 30 years. In the past four years or so I have especially focused on economic justice, and also have been trying to connect that topic with my long background in environmental work, sustainability, and the challenges of climate change. I realized that it is pointless to produce some sort of theory of economic justice in the abstract (compelling as that is) without placing it the times we face, complex as they are.

The result of this bringing together of the economic, social, and environmental challenges of the present-day world, is a book in progress called “Economic Justice in the Climate Endgame.” A book of this sort could be called a “thought system.” It is a matrix of interrelated ideas. The good news is that the thought system is pretty complete. The bad news is that writing an end-to-end narrative that really does justice to this thought system has eluded me. Although I fully intend to complete it, I am starting this substack to bring the key ideas into into readership in short form articles, so as to get feedback from my esteemed friends and begin the process of sharing this particular thought system in the world.

I actually did a similar thing when working on my first book, Civil Endowment, the Transformation of Economic Power (2015). For a year or two I had a blog called “Trickle-in Economics.” The title was something of a riff on “trickle-down” economics, and it implied that the material in the book would come in piece by piece to people over time. I ended up writing quite long articles, which is a mistake in the world of blogging, but it did help my writing process, and I finally finished the book.

This time, I intend to keep my posts quite brief, and make more effort to invite dialog.

So, in keeping with brevity, I will just offer one key point to consider. It is this:

The climate crisis and the economic justice crisis are inextricably linked. To address one we must address the other.

At one level this might seem to make matters even worse: if we have two basically unsolvable problems that can’t be solved without solving them both, that doesn’t sound good. But what I will present going forward is a series of key innovations in the four fundamental economic factors (money, credit, property, and labor) that make solutions to this double crisis possible. For now, I’d like to ask you, my reader, simply to think briefly about this key point: the link between the climate crisis and economic justice. What does it mean to you?