Following up on yesterday’s post, here’s an interview with Bill McKibbon that fleshes out some of his economic ideas a bit more.

McKibbon uses the term “deep economy” (the title of his new book) to describe an economy that

tends to draw in its supply lines instead of extend them. It produces using more people instead of fewer. It’s an economy that cares less about quantity than about quality; that takes as its goal the production of human satisfaction as much as surplus material; that is focused on the idea that it might endure and considers durability at least as important as increases in size.

Essentially his point seems to be that we need more local economies which can, in turn, be regulated more effectively by stronger communities. He’s clearly taking inspiration from thinkers like E.F. Schumacher and Wendell Berry here.

In fact, McKibbon says that tight-knit local communities might be needed for sheer survival:

[I]f you stop to think about it, you start to understand that the communities we need to build in order to slow down global warming are the same kind of communities that are going to be resilient and durable enough to help adapt to that which we can’t prevent. In the not very distant future, having neighbors is going to be more important than having belongings. Membership in a community is going to become important once again both psychologically and physically in the way that it’s been for most of human history.

The point doesn’t seem so much to be that we need to put a stop to growth, but that it needs to be effectively regulated, and that we need to put a check on our appetites. He points out that economic research is discovering what philosophy and religion have known for centuries: that after a certain point more stuff doesn’t make us happier. I think I’d like to read the book to get a better sense of what he’s describing at any rate.