Upstream - Better Lives for All w/ Jason Hickel

Episode Date: August 27, 2024

We’re often told that it would be unfeasible for everyone on the planet to live good lives—that if there wasn’t some degree of poverty—or at least lower living standards—in the rest of the world, then we’d blow right through the ecological limits of the planet. Even if it’s not said explicitly, the argument is that some people need to be poor in order for us in the Global North to live good lives. There’s a lot wrong with this assumption on a lot of different levels, but most importantly—it’s empirically inaccurate. It is possible, in fact, for everybody on the planet to have their needs met and to live a good life and make it happen, in fact, with only 30 percent of current global resource and energy use. That might sound unbelievable, right? Well, that’s capitalist realism for you. Because not only is it believable—it’s based on solid research and empirical data. It would, however, require ending capitalism and moving towards eco-socialism. So yes, it’s possible. But it won’t be easy. To discuss the research behind these exciting findings we’ve brought on economic anthropologist Jason Hickel. Jason is a professor at the The Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and the author of the books The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions and Less is More: How Degrowth will Save the World. He’s the lead author of the paper “How much growth is required to achieve good lives for all? Insights from needs-based analysis” published in the journal World Development Perspectives, and which we’ll be discussing today.  As you may know, Jason is a regular guest on the show and was on most recently to discuss two other fascinating and important papers he recently co-authored, “Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015” published in journal Global Environmental Change and "Unequal exchange of labour in the world economy" published in the journal Nature Communications. What assumptions go into traditional economic thinking and how have they limited the way we conceptualize poverty and how we address it? How do we conceive of good lives—and how does our current economic system limit these conceptions and perpetuate environmental destruction and social immiseration? What would an economic system that is designed around meeting actual human and planetary needs look like? And, perhaps most importantly, how do we get there? These are just some of the questions we discuss in this fascinating conversation with economic anthropologist Jason Hickel. Further Resources: The Political and Economic Determinants of Health Outcomes: A Cross-National Analysis, Hugh F. Lena and Bruce London How to pay for saving the world: Modern Monetary Theory for a degrowth transition, Christopher Olk, Colleen Schneider, Jason Hickel Related Episodes: How the North Plunders the South w/ Jason Hickel The Divide – Global Inequality from Conquest to Free Markets with Jason Hickel International Development and Post-capitalism with Jason Hickel How Degrowth Will Save the World with Jason Hickel The Green Transition Pt.1 – The Problem with Green Capitalism Covert art: Berwyn Mure Intermission music: One Last Wish Upstream is a labor of love—we couldn't keep this project going without the generosity of our listeners and fans. Subscribe to our Patreon at patreon.com/upstreampodcast or please consider chipping in a one-time or recurring donation at www.upstreampodcast.org/support If your organization wants to sponsor one of our upcoming documentaries, we have a number of sponsorship packages available. Find out more at  upstreampodcast.org/sponsorship For more from Upstream, visit www.upstreampodcast.org and follow us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Bluesky. You can also subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.  

Ah... Ah... Right now, under capitalism, the economy is basically geared toward producing whatever is most profitable to capital and that's why we get massive overproduction of things like fossil fuels and SUVs and fast fashion and things like that because these things are highly profitable to capital but we get chronic under production of obviously necessary things like affordable housing and public transit because these things are less profitable than capital or in many cases not profitable at all. So we have massive output, massive production, massive energy and resource use but still people can't meet their basic needs. This is the paradox of capitalism, it's a highly inefficient system. So ultimately the key is to reclaim control of production from

capital and reorganize it around what's most necessary for human well-being and the paper basically demonstrates that with an eco-socialist approach along these lines, we can achieve social progress and ecological progress at the same time. You are listening to Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. Upstream. A podcast of documentaries and conversations that invites you to unlearn everything you thought you knew about economics.

I'm Robert Raymond. And I'm Della Duncan. We're often told that it would be unfeasible for everyone on the planet to live good lives. That if there wasn't some degree of poverty, or at least lower living standards, in the rest of the world, then we'd blow right through the ecological limits of the planet. Even if it's not said explicitly, the argument is that some people need to be poor in order for us in the global South to live good lives. There's a lot wrong with this assumption on a lot of different levels, but most importantly it's just empirically inaccurate. It is

possible, in fact, for everybody on the planet to have their needs met and to live a good life. And we could make that happen, in fact, with only 30% of current global resource and energy use. And if that sounds unbelievable, well, that's capitalist realism for you. Because not only is it believable, it's based on solid research and empirical data. It would, however, require ending capitalism and moving towards eco-socialism. So yes, it is possible, but it won't be easy.

To discuss the research behind these exciting findings, we've brought on economic anthropologist Jason Hickle. Jason is a professor at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, and the author of the books The Divide, A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions, and Less is More, How D-Growth Will Save the World. He is the lead author of the paper How Much Growth Is Required to Achieve Good Lives for All, Insights from Needs-Based Analysis, published in the journal, World Development Perspectives,

and which we'll be discussing today. As you may know, Jason is a regular guest on the show and was on most recently to discuss two other fascinating and important papers that he recently co-authored. Imperialist Appropriation in the World Economy, Drain from the Global South through Unequal Exchange 1990-2015, published in the journal Global Environmental Change and Unequal Exchange of Labor in the World Economy, published in the journal Nature Communications.

What assumptions go into traditional economic thinking and how have they limited the way that we conceptualize poverty and how we address it? How do we conceive of good lives and how does our current economic system limit these conceptions and perpetuate environmental destruction and social immiseration? What would an economic system that is designed around meeting actual human and planetary needs look like? And perhaps, most importantly, how do we get there? These are just some of the questions we discuss in this fascinating conversation with economic anthropologist Jason Hickel. And before we get started, Upstream is almost entirely listener-funded. conversation with economic anthropologist Jason Hickle.

And before we get started, Upstream is almost entirely listener funded. We couldn't keep this project going without your support. There are a number of ways in which you can support us financially. You can sign up to be a Patreon subscriber, which will give you access to bonus episodes, at least one a month, but usually more, along with our entire back catalogue

of Patreon episodes at patreon.com forward slash upstream podcast. You can also make a tax deductible recurring donation or a one-time donation on our website upstreampodcast.org forward slash support. Through your support, you'll be helping us keep upstream sustainable and helping to keep this whole project going. Socialist political education podcasts are not easy to fund, so thank you in advance for the crucial support. And now, here's Della in conversation with Jason Higl. Welcome back, Jason. Good to have you back on the show. Thanks Stella. Yeah, good to be with you.

Let's dive in with a summary of the article that we're going to be talking about today. So you wrote this article with Dylan Sullivan, which the title is, How Much Growth Is Required to Achieve Good Lives for All? Insights from a Needs-Based Analysis. So let's start with a summary. What is this article about? Ben Trevio Okay, so basically, the paper demonstrates that decent living standards can be provided for more than 8 billion people, which is more than the population of the world today. Okay, so basically the paper demonstrates that decent living standards can be provided for more than 8 billion people, which is more than the population of the world today, with a full range of necessary goods and services with only about 30% of the world's existing production.

Okay, so this concept of decent living standards is basically a sufficiency floor, an empirical sufficiency floor that includes nutritious food, modern housing, healthcare, education, electricity, clean cooking stoves, sanitation systems, clothing, washing machines, refrigeration, heating and cooling, computers, mobile phones, internet and public transit, like all the things that people require to live decent lives in today's world. And the evidence that we review shows that all of this can be provided for the whole world's population with only 30% of the energy materials that the global economy presently

uses. And this is quite striking. What it means is that that leaves us with a substantial surplus capacity that could be used for other public goods or scientific pursuits, or maybe we just decide that some of it won't be used at all, so we reduce total production and increase our free time and expend our labor instead on ecological regeneration or whatever it might be. So the reason that this research is important is because right now our world is characterized by really massive poverty and deprivation.

We know that extreme poverty still persists but more than 80% of the world's population today is deprived on at least one of these basic decent living standard dimensions. And what this research shows is this deprivation is totally unnecessary. It can be ended more or less immediately. It doesn't require long time scales, generations, complicated development strategies, etc. It can be done more or less immediately. It can be done while at the same time reducing total energy and resource use to accomplish ecological objectives.

So this is good news, I think. It's a hopeful paper in this respect, but it requires, as you can imagine, totally transforming our economies because right now under capitalism, the economy is basically geared toward producing whatever is most profitable to capital. And that's why we get massive overproduction of things like fossil fuels, and SUVs, and fast fashion, and things like that. Because these things are highly profitable to capital, but we get chronic underproduction of

obviously necessary things like affordable housing and public transit, because these things are less profitable capital or in many cases not profitable at all. So we have massive output, massive production, massive energy and resource use, but still people can't meet their basic needs. This is the paradox of capitalism. It's a highly inefficient system. So ultimately, the key is to reclaim control of production from capital and reorganize it around what's most necessary for human well-being. And the paper basically demonstrates that with an eco-socialist approach along these lines, we can achieve social progress and ecological progress at the same time. And that's kind of it in a nutshell, I guess. Absolutely. And you're right, very hopeful news. So not only is it

possible to provide decent or good living standards for the whole global population, so everyone on the planet, you also articulate how, so the strategy to get there and that it can happen quite quickly and happen with actually less energy and material use than we're using now. So very, very hopeful news. Thank you for that summary. And part of the article takes some unlearning, right? And that's a lot of the work that we do, right? These kind of investigating, challenging, mainstream economic thinking, development economic thinking, and really articulating why it's problematic, why it's not serving human and planetary health, and what could be the alternative. So one of the assumptions underlying mainstream economic thinking is around how we can currently end poverty and achieve good lives for all.

So what is that thing in the paper that you are really inviting us to unlearn and to challenge and interrogate in question around how we actually end poverty and how we achieve good lives for all? Yeah, so maybe it's helpful to start by just by describing the problem that originally inspired the paper, which is kind of an interesting backstory. So several years ago, when degrowth was first becoming a thing in mainstream discussions and so on, researchers were pointing out, like researchers from ecological economics were pointing out that global poverty can be eliminated without aggregate global growth, basically just by redistributing consumption from the richest to the poorest.

And then, okay, so the response from the mainstream economists to this claim was to say, okay, that might be true for very low poverty lines, right? Like if we're talking about $1.90 a day or $5 a day, but that's not good enough. We should be aiming for a higher threshold, right? And I think we can agree on that. So for example, they said, what if we use the poverty line of the high-income countries, which is around $30 a day? So then if you look at the countries that come closest to eliminating poverty at this standard, it's basically the Scandinavian countries. So what that means is that we all, is that we need all countries to increase their GDP per capita to the level of the Scandinavian countries in order to achieve decent lives for everybody, which implies of course massively

increasing total global production by a factor of four or five. Now obviously this would dramatically increase ecological pressure and make ecological objectives basically impossible to attain. So it's a very depressing view of the world. It means that if we want to end poverty, we have to sacrifice ecology. And if we want to achieve our ecological objectives, we have to accept basically perpetual impoverishment of the masses. So it's dark and depressing and horrible. And also it's unrealistic because it assumes that this kind of convergence at high income levels is possible in the world economy. But we know that high income countries rely on a massive net appropriation of resources from the Global South to maintain their high levels of consumption. So

clearly, you know, these levels of consumption, of material consumption, can't be universalized because for global South countries, where would they be doing the appropriation from, right? So, you know, our feeling was that this whole problem is conceptualized incorrectly. To start with, having $30 a day does not tell us whether someone is actually able to access necessary goods and services, right? And for anyone who lives in the USA, which I'm sure a lot of your listeners do, they will know this. It doesn't guarantee that you can afford health care and housing and higher education in the USA. If you're living on $30 a day in the USA, you are miserable.

You're in poverty. But if you live in a country with good public services, like universal public health care and public housing, rent controls, public transit, etc., etc., then you might be able to live a much better life with a lot less income. So the basic lesson here is that instead of obsessing with aggregate GDP growth, the idea is to focus on the specific goods and services like healthcare and housing that we know to be necessary for human well-being. So the objective then is to produce those things in sufficient quantities and ensure that everyone has access to them. That should be the key approach,

which makes a lot more sense, I think, than focusing on these money metrics. Absolutely. Yeah, you write in the article that the mainstream or conventional approach forces us to confront a brutal trade-off between poverty reduction and ecological stability. And you say we don't actually need to accept that trade off. We can actually have well-being for ecology and for people. But it really looks at how are we measuring poverty and how are we you know, what's the goal of the economy? Right. Is it this GDP per capita rate or is it needs-based approach?

Is it meeting of human needs? So let's dive a little bit deeper as well into that piece around how we're measuring poverty. So what is the traditional or conventional measurement around poverty and what is the needs-based approach? How is that different and better to measure it that way? Yeah, I think this is really important. And this is kind of the more technical part of the paper.

So basically the main problem is that we normally measure poverty in terms of money thresholds, right? So we say that once people have a $1.90 a day or $5 a day or $30 a day in purchasing power parity, which is basically pegged to prices in the USA, then they're out of poverty, right? But when you measure poverty this way, in terms of this generic purchasing power, then the solution to poverty is always going to be more GDP growth, right?

Because the goal here is just to increase generic production, because that's what we're measuring, right? So it doesn't matter growth of what, it doesn't matter what you're producing, you could be producing only SUVs, right? which increases GDP and therefore increases the national income. As long as capital increases total production of anything, even if they're destructive and unnecessary things, this reduces poverty basically by definition, right? So it's actually it's actually an insane way of measuring poverty. So because again this doesn't tell us whether people actually

have access to the necessary goods that they need. So you might even end up in a situation, and we know this happens a lot actually, where you have massive growth and people's generic purchasing power goes up, right, their household income goes up, but access to key goods like housing and health care might not improve at all or might even decline if the prices of those things are rising faster than people's incomes, which people experience on a regular basis with cost of living crises, right? So you might have rising income and rising GDP per capita, even in purchasing power adjusted terms.

But if the price of nutritious food and housing and healthcare is going up faster than that, then you are poorer in terms of your access to basic needs. So this is not a good way of measuring poverty. And in recent years, researchers have basically proposed better ways of measuring poverty, which directly assess people's access to the specific necessary goods and services that I've described before, right? And when you do it this way, it totally changes how we think about poverty reduction and how to approach it,

because it helps us basically specify what exactly is it that we need to be producing more of. Instead of saying, let's just grow the whole economy, it's like, what are the specific sectors we need to produce more? Is there a deficit of affordable housing? So produce more of that. Is there a deficit of nutritious agroecological

food? Produce more of that, etc. So it forces us to focus on specific goods and services, but also forces us to pay attention to prices. Because it's not just whether the good or service exists or not, it's whether it's affordable to people. And here this helps us appreciate the power of strategies like de-commodification and price controls and public services, which can dramatically improve people's access to key goods without requiring increased total production and increased income. So again, a person's access to these basic goods in the USA is worse at any given level of income than it is for someone who lives in Finland, for example.

So this is really important to development strategy. It's not just what we're producing, but also whether people can access it. Under what conditions is it available to people? Exactly. Yeah. Do people have access to it? And also how is it being provided? Is it being provided on the free market, quote unquote, and for profit? Or is it decommodified? Is there a public option, et cetera? And one of the pieces, again, from the paper, you give an example, you say, if capital mobilizes production in the global south to increase sweatshop output for Zara or sugar for Coca Cola, this increases GDP and increases PPP income and leads to what

appears to be poverty reduction, even if people remain unable to access decent food and housing. So really looking at this aggregate GDP or PPP income is so flawed because it's not measuring what's really important to us. So what is it though that holds us to this PPP or why was it created? Can you talk a little bit more about that? Because I'm thinking of the whole mathematization of economics and how maybe some of this needs-based approach can maybe feel messier for some. So can you just talk a little bit about PPP, where that came from and why are mainstream economists so beholden to it?

Yeah, this is, it's quite interesting. I don't, I mean, okay, so I can tell you, like, the PPP approach to measuring poverty was developed in basically the early 1990s by the World Bank, and specifically by a couple of economists who were associated with the World Bank who started measuring poverty in terms of a dollar a day in PPP terms, right? Now, originally, that was actually supposed to represent the quantity of money that was necessary to buy a basic subsistence basket in the lowest income countries, right? So like shelter, food, fuel, some cloth, et cetera, et cetera. Like a dollar a day in purchasing power parity was supposed to be able to buy that quantity,

which is the threshold for extreme poverty, right? But then what they did is they took that quantity of purchasing power parity, and then they just applied it to all countries in the world at all times. But then what they did is they took that quantity of purchasing power parity and then they just applied it to all countries in the world at all times. And that's a problem because obviously the prices of those specific goods and services that are in that subsistence basket actually change by nation, right? So it could be that the same amount of PPP purchasing power in any given country doesn't buy the same quantity of necessary goods.

And so you might have three or four dollars a day, but still be unable to buy even bread, right? To say nothing of housing. So it's totally inadequate from that perspective. But yeah, I mean, the history is it basically comes from the World Bank. Now it's interesting because prior to this, in most socialist economies, poverty was conceptualized very much in terms of access to specific goods and services. If you asked anybody in a socialist economy, they would have said that's clearly what the objective should be here, and so they had output targets for

specific goods that were necessary for people, right? But in a capitalist economy, none of that matters, because the objective of the economy is not to meet any kind of social goal or To provision for people's needs the objective is to make profit and so it doesn't matter what you're producing What matters is simply maximizing profit and to do that you maximize production of anything And so in a capitalist economy, it makes sense to measure things in terms of GDP or in terms of PPP incomes That's the way you measure Outputs because it doesn't matter what you're producing. But in an economy that wants to prioritize human needs and ecology, then you

actually want to be focusing on specific needs. Yeah, so I think that there's like an ideological, there's like, there's kind of a deep ideological basis to it that aligns very much with the, you know, the way that capital operates and the kinds of things that it cares about, right? And is definitely not aligned with the way that we would normally think about an economy if we cared about social and ecological objectives. Yeah. And I'm also seeing the importance of this needs-based approach when doing comparison, right? Comparing a system like capitalism and socialism. It's like, how are you identifying progress, success, you know, which one is better? If you look at it from a GDP per capita growth perspective, okay, sure, capitalist economy would grow,

but a socialist economy is one where people's needs are being met and that's where, that's what's being focused on, right? That's what's being prioritized. So it's a really interesting layer as well. Yeah, and there's actually, I mean, there's interesting research on this that's been done already.

And we have a new paper coming out soon that works on this as well, but we have existing data showing very clearly that the socialist economies in the 1980s were able to achieve much better social outcomes at any given level of GDP per capita, right? I mean, this is very rigorously empirically demonstrated. There's a paper by Lena in London that was published in the 1990s that demonstrates this. And even Amartya Sen himself, the beloved economist of the liberal development class, himself repeatedly said this. He was like, look, I mean, if you want a good strategy for poverty removal, then look at what the communist countries are doing.

Now look, this is not to say that everything the socialist and communist countries did was great, right? I mean, you can have your critiques, and certainly there are many of them, and every good socialist does. But the point is that when it comes to converting production into human well-being, they were much more efficient. And the reason is because they were specifically focused on those objectives, in most cases, not in all cases, but in most cases, and that's why they deliver better results, right? I mean, you know, some countries had major problems. Like obviously the USSR got stuck into this massive arms race where they had to focus very heavily on industrial output

in order to compete with imperial powers and defend themselves against imperial intervention and so on. And as a result, human well-being really suffered, but other socialist countries had very different experiences. And so I think there's things we can learn from that history. Absolutely. And so zooming out, you know, when I first heard about this paper and read the abstract of it, what came to mind a couple of things was just the centering of enoughness, sufficiency, even gratitude in post-capitalism, right? It's really changing our addiction to growth, both internally and materially in our systems, but also just that internal practice of enoughness, efficiency, and gratitude. And then also Daniel Kahneman's work around, you know,

what is enoughness on the individual level, you know, like how much income makes one happy, so to speak. And even just knowing that there is a correlation between income and happiness to a certain level and then it plateaus. That's just such a hopeful thing for me to hear that we as humans can have this sense of enoughness where more money doesn't equal more happiness. And then also Manfred Max Neaf, and I know he's referenced in your paper, but this idea of looking at what are our needs, so that needs-based approach, and then how do we meet our needs, right? And which of the ways that we meet our needs are financialized. And then also asking ourselves, how could we meet

these needs in other ways? Maybe solidaristic ways, gift economy ways, trade barter, etc. Like for example, having a childcare collective where children are taken care of in a different home every day, no money is exchanged, and yet there's a sense of community and childcare is provided. So those were just a few of the things that came to mind as I was first reading your paper. I don't know if you have any response to any of those. Yeah, no, I mean, I completely agree. And of course, the work by Max Neaf and others

in that tradition has been really important here. But yeah, look, I mean, I think that some, like we know what human needs are. And then the question is, how do we meet them? Right. So, so humans have a need for mobility. And in our paper, in the DLS, in the Decent Living Standards basket, there's a certain quantity of passenger kilometers that is allocated to everybody, right? And so the question is, like, how is this need provisions? Like, we agree on the need, how's it provisioned? It could be provisioned with SUVs for all, and that's going to be, right, that's going to be a very materially and energy intensive strategy for provisioning. Or it could be provisioned with public transits and active mobility, right, which

is going to be much more efficient. So yeah, so it really depends on the kinds of provisioning strategies you're looking at. And of course, some are more like the SUV strategy is going to be more profitable to capital, and the public transit strategy is going to be less profitable. And so capitalism is going to focus on, you know, the former and exclude the latter. And this is why a post capitalist transformation is so important so that we can actually make sensible decisions about how we provision for our needs. And I think, you know, it's interesting what you say about the childcare. I love that example so much, because we live in this economy where, you know, everyone's obsessed with this idea of, of like labor-saving technology, which is fine, right? I mean, that's great, whatever. But we only get the labor-saving technologies

that are profitable to capital. We don't get labor-saving technologies that are not profitable. So one of the most obvious labor-saving technologies that is possible to imagine is public childcare of some kind, right? And also things like community kitchens. I mean, this would save a massive amount of domestic labor

that's expended every day and reproduced in every household needlessly when it could be collectivized or shared. And this would be like massively transformative for people's lives, for our free time, for our ability to spend our time on other things like care, etc. etc. But we don't get this because right now all of that labor is effectively provided for free by unpaid care labor in domestic environments. And so there's no incentive for capital at all to move away from that kind of model, right?

So it's rational for capital to choose these inefficient forms of provisioning, but it's irrational from a human needs perspective. And I think that's the main contradiction we have to confront. Yeah. And so let's go into this alternative pathway, which you call an eco socialist scenario. And so one element of it, as you're saying, is not prioritizing what is good for capital or what is good for profit generation, but instead organizing our economy around well-being and ecology. What are the ways that that economy,

that eco socialist scenario would be organized? How would that look and feel? Yeah, so in rich countries, it basically requires two things simultaneously. One part of is to reduce the production of unnecessary things, right? So like crucial to this research is the ability to distinguish between what's necessary and what's not. And of course, there's gray areas where things are not strictly necessary, but they're nonetheless pretty important for people's lives, etc. So you need kind of these multiple tiers. But it's also very clear that rich countries have very high levels of aggregate production. And a lot of that is destructive and unnecessary. So things like SUVs and fast fashion and mansions and private jets and industrial beef, et cetera,

et cetera, weapons, like the whole military industrial complex, et cetera, Like all of us can identify forms of production that are destructive and totally unnecessary for well-being. And those things should be scaled down. That's effectively what's, you know, what degrowth research focuses on. So, and strategies for doing that, you know, include things like credit regulation policy, right? Where you basically have industrial policy that curtailails commercial investment in sectors that we identify as damaging and unnecessary. And this is also, by the way, the way you scale down fossil fuels, which nobody's doing right now. If you can believe it, it's wild because fossil fuels are very profitable. We keep producing them. So what you need to be

able to do is to actually curtail commercial investment in these kinds of sectors and actually squeeze them down because they're destructive and have to be phased out. So that's one side of it. The other side is that we have to reorganize production around necessary goods and services. And that strategies for that include things like universal public services, public financing for public works that can achieve things that capital doesn't do because they're not profitable. I mean, again, and here, think about things like agroecology. I mean, almost universally, people agree that this is something we need to achieve our climate objectives and to regenerate the land and biodiversity and so on.

But it's not as profitable as existing forms of industrial agriculture. And so it doesn't get done, but public finance and public works can actually enable this to be achieved, regardless of its relatively lower profitability. A public job guarantee is also important here. This is another key policy that's ecological economists promote because this basically allows people to train and mobilize to participate in socially and ecologically necessary forms of production. So it shifts labor away from service and capital accumulation and towards more necessary objectives. It also at the same time, by the way, ends in voluntary unemployment, etc.

So these are basically the strategies that you would use in a high income country to achieve the simultaneous reduction of unnecessary production and increase in production of necessary things and also an improvement in access to those things as well, right? This is how you produce a like a resilient, efficient economy that meets people's needs with a lot less energy and resources. And then going to the global south, you talk about one of the key elements of that is sovereign industrial development, which you write is the only way the south escapes deprivation and imperialist appropriation. So can you walk us through what would happen for the

global south in this model and what sovereign industrial development means? And why is that so important? Yeah. So here's the first key thing to understand is that while global North countries over consume resources and energy in terms of ecological sustainability, global South countries mostly under consume. They produce a lot, okay, but they're actually not consuming enough in terms of materials and energy that are required to meet decent living standards, which is why you have this massive deprivation in the Global South. So they have to increase their consumption in order to meet human needs. So what's going on here, right? Global South

countries have massive productive capacity, huge reserves of labor and resources and factories, etc. But right now, this productive capacity is organized largely by foreign capital around servicing capital accumulation and consumption in the imperial core. So you mentioned earlier, right, their labor and land and resources are being used to produce things like sweatshop garments for Gap or smartphones for Apple or coffee for Starbucks on a massive scale. This is occurring in subordinate positions in global supply chains, right, where they receive extremely low prices and extremely low wages,

meaning that they're producing a lot, but they're not consuming very much. And what is available to consume is very, is very little in the first place, because what's being produced is not stuff that actually meets their needs. Right? So, so the key goal here is that Global South countries need strategies for remobilizing production around human needs. So remobilizing labor and resources to build housing and hospitals and sanitation systems, and to train teachers and engineers and doctors, etc. And this requires strategies of industrial policy and public investment. Because again, as long as you're relying on foreign capital to mobilize your production, then you're going to be producing things that benefit foreign capital. And that's exactly what's occurring. So what we need is greater capacity for nations to use the national currency to mobilize national labor and productive capacities around national development objectives.

Right? However, this is largely precluded by structural adjustment programs and other constraints imposed by international creditors. So as long as you're basically beholden to international capital and international finance, then you're not able to take the necessary steps that you need in order to achieve development objectives. And so what's needed is actually to kind of delink from this dependency on international capital and substitute necessary imports from the core by obtaining necessary goods from other global South countries as much as possible, through things like swap lines whereby you can trade outside of dominant core currencies, etc. So there's a whole list of strategies global South countries can pursue here. And for this, I definitely recommend people read

the work by Ndongo Sambasila and Fadel Kaboob and other economists from the global South who are dealing with precisely this question. Like, how do you limit your exposure to dependence on international finance as much as possible? You're listening to an Upstream Conversation with Jason Hickle. We'll be right back. I would engage the world as my lie I would engage the world Against jealousy and bitter ambition God only inspires through the tongue and the tear I went down to see the kid and don't believe me It's so dream, about my life It's both with a voice of reason Told me to risk it all With a chance of nothing in return

Isn't that the task of love? Isn't that the task of love It's not the challenge of love today I went down to the sea It's okay if you don't believe it It talked to me about my life It spoke with a voice of reason It told me to risk it all With a chance of nothing but death Why do we make it so hard? Why live our lives in distance?

Why do we make it so hard? I thought life should be a jam To defeat statistics I thought life should be a jam And it's sometimes I don't pursue it But she speaks my best That was My Better Half by One Last Wish. Now back to our conversation with Jason Hickle.

One of the questions that I have around this more planned economy, I can just hear folks wondering, okay, well, but some of these things in our current economies aren't profitable so they're not focused on, right? Like you mentioned ecosystem restoration, or for me, I started my career as a rape crisis counselor and there was no way that we made money, right? We were completely beholden to grants and donations. And so obviously, you know, I think about Dr. Jennifer Hinton and this like not-for-profit economy model, but that still relies on some profit generation of goods and services to be able to fund that work. So that's one way.

You mentioned public investment or public services, but for those people who are saying, okay, but how would we actually fund that, those necessary services and endeavors that do not inherently make money? So I don't know if you want to go into modern monetary theory, if you want to bring that in, but just in general, like how would you work through that question, that challenge? Yeah. Yeah. I think that modern monetary theory or functional finance is really critically important to hear actually. And yeah, it's a deep dive in and of itself, I think. We have a paper that came out I think last year called How to Pay for Saving the World, which explores the necessary synergies between MMT and degrowth, right? Because the question that always arises for people is, okay, so we have all these public services and public

works and job guarantee we want to do to reorganize production around necessary things that are not profitable. How can you possibly fund that? Well, the key insight from functional finance is that states with sovereign money, right, that issue their own currencies, do not face a fiscal constraint in their ability to pay for these things. They face a real resource constraint. constraint. So the government, like say the UK government or the US government right now, can literally just issue currency to pay workers and producers to produce the kinds of things that are required for meeting social and ecological goals. They can do this right now. Now the risk here, of course, is that this new

economic activity, this new demand on the productive capacities could drive inflation if it runs up against the limits of the productive capacity economy. Right. So if all the new production is competing for too few, you know, workers and engineers and, you know, material resources or factories, then this is going to drive price inflation. But the important thing is that you can deal with this precisely by scaling down less necessary forms of production. Okay, so if we're reducing the purchasing power of the rich, if we are reducing production of whatever SUVs and fast fashion, this liberates productive capacities that can be reorganized in other ways. And so effectively, degrowth of unnecessary sectors in real resource terms pays for the increased production of public goods and other non-profitable things. So yeah, so in some ways, like the MMT perspective on the economy is to say, look, you have to

understand that money is simply a representation of command over actual real resources in production. What really matters is real resources and production. What are those being directed towards right now? How can they be redirected? The MMT perspective, the functional finance perspective, is simply saying there are ways that we can shift control over productive capacity from capital to society, to the democratic public,

so that we can collectively democratically make decisions about what we would like our resources and our labor to be mobilized to do rather than waiting for capital to decide how to use these capacities, which is the existing arrangement, right? So, and it's interesting, because you mentioned planning. I want to emphasize here that planning already occurs in our economy, right?

Planners are called CEOs, right? Like at the heights of our economy, in the biggest industries, we have CEOs and boards that plan production of things that are most profitable. And they plan this through extremely complicated supply chains, and decades in advance. I mean, the fossil fuel industry and the car industry do this, for example, right? So there's nothing intrinsically scary about planning. The mean, the fossil fuel industry and the car industry do this, for example, right? So there's nothing intrinsically scary about planning. The problem with the existing economy is not that it's planned or not planned. The problem is that there's planning that occurs in a completely undemocratic way, right? Like whatever capital decides to do, like whatever their plan is,

we are beholden to it. We're mobilized to do all that for them, regardless of whether it's destructive to the environment or useful for human needs or not. So the objective here is to have are beholden to it. We're mobilized to do all that for them, regardless of whether it's destructive to the environment or useful for human needs or not. So the objective here is to have more democratic planning, like a planning of the economy that is more grassroots actually, and more geared towards the public interest and democratically ratified objectives. Like let us organize our production around those things. And this is not to say, by the way, that all production has to be planned centrally. Like some things you wanna plan centrally. Like if you're gonna be doing a renewable energy grid,

you wanna plan that centrally. If you wanna be doing a public transit system, you wanna plan that centrally, right? But if you wanna do production of craft beer or cheese, like that doesn't have to be planned centrally, right? This can be done by private firms, but the private firms should be democratic. This is how you democratize production, is that workers and communities should have a say in what gets produced and how the yields of that

production are distributed. That's what a democratic economy looks like. That's really the antidote to our existing system, because we know that under conditions of economic democracy, people gravitate towards producing what they know to be most socially necessary and necessary for ecological objectives, right? Like we already know what to do. The problem in our existing economy is simply that we don't have power over production to enact what we know is already necessary. So that's the problem that has to be dealt with. Thank you so much for going into that detail around the planning piece. So yeah, I'm hearing that some things could be decided on in the workplace. So whether it's a worker cooperative

or a worker self-directed nonprofit, right, that brings in economic democracy at that level. And then of course, more at the city or county by a regional level, right? There's some decisions that might be useful there, particularly around ecology. And then of course, there's some things like you mentioned, the renewable energy grid that that would need to be at like a very centralized location, such as the country level, right? So it's nested tiers of economic democracy and not just it's full central, total central, like us in the US, it's all our president deciding

everything about our economy, right? That's not what you're saying. And I really hear this because, well, one thing I think of is sports teams here in the Bay Area, we had the Oakland A's and the Oakland Raiders both leave. And it was just solely the decision of like a single owner and the whole community, all the fans, everyone is devastated. And it's like, it's crazy to me to think that that whole sole decision can be made by one person.

So, yeah, this this idea of more people having a say and getting to talk about it and getting to make these decisions together. Thank you for laying that out. Yeah, look, and I think that's really important also because look, I think that one of the mistakes that some of the socialist countries of the 20th century made was that they did not sufficiently enact economic democracy, right? And I think this is where democratic eco-socialism

becomes such an important innovation on that, was that it's know, it's precisely like the nested strategies you're talking about here. Some of this needs to be done centrally, others to be done on a much more local level. And I think that's really the solution to ensuring that production always is geared as much as possible towards meeting human needs and is as responsive as possible to ecological and social realities on the ground, right? I think that's, yeah, that's a crucial point of progress, I think, for us. Absolutely.

And then another thing I can hear somebody kind of wondering or asking as they read this paper is, OK, so do we want to live in a world without maybe designer clothing or Michelin star restaurants or some of the things that do take a lot of input carbon wise and maybe are very expensive. And what I imagine you're going to say is like you talk about how this model would only take 30% of the energy, leaving more time and some energy to things that are creative endeavors or even some luxury goods. So it's not saying, that's not possible, but it's saying,

let's meet our needs, let's reduce our energy and material consumptions. So yeah, this idea of, would we live in this like really aesthetic world where there's no sense of joy? And I don't know, what would be, have you heard that at all? And what would be your response to that? Yeah, I mean, this is why I think that the 30% figure is so exciting because it shows that we can meet these decent living standards and then still have a lot of surplus left over that should be democratically decided upon, right? Like, do we want to allow a certain degree of inequality?

Maybe we do. This should be something we democratically decide, right? And that means that some people might have a little bit more, right? Or maybe we some people might have a little bit more, right? Or maybe we want everyone to have a little bit more in terms of access to luxury. So we wanna have whatever, I don't know, resorts that people can go to for holiday at the beach

or something like that, right? Sure, why not? Or we wanna have public goods, like we wanna have really nice public buildings and beautiful public spaces, and we wanna develop recreational facilities to a very high standard and have the Olympics, you know, a non-corporate Olympics every four years or whatever it might be. All of these should be like this additional capacity that we have to the extent that it

is compatible with our ecological objectives is something that we should be able to democratically decide how to expend. And this is actually a really interesting contribution from Degrowth Research that I think has not been emphasized enough, right, which is this idea of dépense, right? Like we have a surplus. After meeting our basic needs, after meeting decent living standards, including things like laptops and cell phones and washing machines, refrigerators and so on, we still have a surplus. We should expend that in socially beneficial ways, right? Or decide again, like I mentioned before, not to expend it at all, and therefore to reduce total production and reduce labor, etc., etc., which you might want

to do as well. So, you know, it's interesting to think about the kind of modernity that we could achieve with this surplus, right? Like in an eco-socialist scenario, we could also invest the surplus, like the additional labor and resources, in scientific advancements and develop vaccines for HIV and other tropical diseases or whatever it might be. These are things that are within our grasp to do, and it simply requires allocating resources and labor to that. And these are things that we could do if we had collective democratic control over our capacities and over our surplus. So I think that's exciting to consider.

The way I see it is that we live in a kind of a shadow of the world that we could. It could be a lot better. We could have better technologies. We could have better lives for people, even with a lot less energy and resources than we presently use because under capital, it's just completelyocated, right? It's just a complete mess. It's a complete mess of misallocated production and kind of the chaos of profit accumulation. And it doesn't need to be that way. Absolutely. And it also comes back for me to that enoughness or sufficiency as well

and thinking about why we consume, consume. And I just think about myself consuming under capitalism, the sense of stress or precariousness, like what that does to my mental state and what it would feel like if I lived in an economy where my needs were met, where I had enoughness, this decent living. And I think again about Manfred Max Neaf and the idea of satisfiers and our pseudo-satisfiers, ways we attempt to meet our needs but we're not really meeting them. So yeah, I think there's like a more internal layer that can come in to this question too. So one of the feedback or criticisms from your article that I read about was coming

from what might be described as a naro-primitivist perspective. And it was a two-part criticism. And it was really focusing on the global south and consumption on the global south level. And part of it was really asking whether this paper is really fully acknowledging the social ecological polycrisis that we're in and whether we should even be thinking about industrial development of the global south or whether we should really be focusing on mass migration and deep adaptation instead of what this person called techno industrial development. So that's one element that I'd love to hear your feedback on. And then the second was calling into question, as you mentioned, what is a decent living standard

and what are the elements of that? And really asking, are things like refrigerators, washing machines, cell phones, and computers real needs or are they needs that our recent techno modernity has conditioned? So I'm wondering how you feel about that perspective, that anarcho-permanence perspective and how you might respond to that. Yeah, okay. To me, this is actually really interesting. I think that it brings out some important points. So yeah, the first thing is that this criticism is basically saying you're not taking the ecological crisis seriously enough. If we do these things, we're going to run into ecological collapse. Okay. I mean, this is kind of one angle of it.

But the whole point of this approach, of the approach we outlined in the paper, is that it's demonstrating it's possible to provision this standard of living while reducing energy and material use to the extent that we can in fact achieve our ecological objectives, right? Like we know from IPCC reports

that if we reduce global energy use, even just from 420 exajoules, which is what it currently is, down to like, let's say 390 on a global level. So this would be a big reduction for rich countries, but a substantial increase for poor countries. This is compatible with decarbonizing fast enough to stay under 1.5 degrees. Now, of course, that window is shrinking very quickly. And so the conversation will change about that, but that's important.

And then, in terms of the material use, if you cut material use from current levels, even just by 30%, to say nothing of 50 or 60%, right? Or 70%. I mean, this is gonna be a massive improvement in terms of biodiversity. You're gonna actively reverse biodiversity loss. And there's nothing on the table right now from conventional environmental economics and policy that comes anywhere close to achieving that. So this is, I mean, this

is dramatic improvement that allows us to regenerate the planet and achieve our ecological goals. And so I think that that should be acknowledged. This is precisely an approach that allows us to avoid the kind of collapse that the collapsologist types worry about. So then it makes me wonder, are they really worried about preventing collapse or are they more concerned about reversing technological development and dismantling civilization? Maybe that's actually closer to their objective, regardless of the ecology side. Maybe the ecology side is more of a justification for it. Because when they're confronted with this idea that we can have both, you know, they're still upset

and they still want to attack things like refrigerators. Okay, that's one thing. The second thing is, look, in terms of refrigerators and washing machines and cell phones, et cetera, et cetera. Okay, the first thing to say is that the DLS basket, the decent living standards baskets that we use in the paper does not come out of nowhere. We didn't just make this up, right? This comes from a long tradition of empirical research that explores what

people actually need to live decent lives and meets key social objectives. Right? So it's that research that we're referencing here. People can look at the table of goods and services that we lay out and decide for themselves, but, but so it doesn't come out of nowhere. That's one thing to say. The second thing is this, is that it's not really clear to me, right, because these critiques come from people in the global north, or at least people who have things like refrigerators and cell phones and

laptops, so it doesn't really make sense to me why people who have these things think it's a priority to attack the idea that other people who don't have these things should also have them, right? This is bizarre to me. I think it's deeply regressive. And if you care about ecology, if you're truly concerned about ecology, there's clearly bigger fish to fry, right? Go after the SUVs, go after the mansions, go after the private jets, go after fast fashion, I mean industrial beef, anything. Go after the prison industrial complex, why would you start with people's refrigerators? This does not make sense, right? So this is not to say there's not legitimate questions to ask about whether people really need things like mobile phones and computers. I'll get to that in a second.

But let me talk about refrigerators for a second, because this is, I mean, I will die on this hill that this is an essential technology. Refrigerators we know are life-saving. We have mounds of empirical data showing that they reduce malnutrition, they reduce child stunting, they reduce child mortality, because kids die of diarrhea from foodborne diseases, right? They reduce food waste, which has huge ecological benefits. Refrigerators are something that every household actually needs. So that's crucial. Washing machines? Look, again, there's this really interesting evidence that this is interesting. Child development improves when people have

access to washing machines. And the reason is because it means that parents can spend less time on domestic labor tasks and more time on care and teaching and child development stuff. And that's not to say that every household must have a washing machine, but surely they should have access to them. And so if you wanna have communal laundromats, then that's also fine, right?

People should have access to them and however you wanna provision that should be a different question, but access is important. Now, mobile phones and computers, I can certainly see the argument that these things are needs that emerge from our existing technological dependency, right? Like you need a mobile phone to keep in touch with people and to get information. You need a computer to apply for a job or get a government grant or whatever it might be. So these are actual real needs in our existing society. Maybe they are unnecessary from a kind of a broad perspective, like if we organize things differently, we wouldn't need them. But two things come to mind. First, if these are existing

needs, what is your alternative plan for helping people meet them? Right? And the second thing is, if they can be provided for a fraction of existing output without additional ecological harm, right? And in fact, while reducing resource and energy use, then why not? We don't need to cut all production. So we should be having a discussion about this. And I welcome that. But it shouldn't be about saying people shouldn't have these things. It should be a democratic discussion about what are our capacities? What are our ecological objectives? What do we want to be producing and ensure that people actually do have?

And I can guarantee you that 95% of all people on this planet will say that they want refrigerators and washing machines. And so the anarcho-primitives are saying, well, they shouldn't, but to me, that sounds like a pretty totalitarian kind of attitude, like at least let's have a discussion and include people in this discussion, I would say, as a start. Absolutely. And I love what you said, too, about first, are there people who own more than one mansion

that have several refrigerators? Right? Right. We're talking about Global South folks where it's like it would be maybe their only refrigerator. And then also I'm thinking about less is more, your book on degrowth, you talk about planned obsolescence and what if there was a usorship model of some of these. So more like circular economy or things that you could fix the right to repair. Some of these things would be super helpful. And then of course, there's also the

food waste that would come from lack of refrigeration, too. So if it's ecology that we're looking at, that's another element. So yeah, thank you for responding to those. And, you know, so I'm wondering if we think about this paper, which you really, you know, articulate such a hopeful message, right, that it is possible to provide good living standards to the whole global population with less energy and material use. So you've stated it, you have this paper, you have the empirical data, you have all

the papers and people that has supported coming to this, right? So now, what would be the strategy to enact this? Let's say you get a call and they're like, read the paper and we're down. First of all, who would you want to be calling you? So what is the level of implementation that you'd want this to reach or levels? And then also, what would be the first steps or the steps or stages that you would encourage if somebody were to take this paper and really go for it. Yeah, so okay, so governments have the power to enact this with the kinds of policies that I mentioned before, right?

So again, in the global north, credit regulations and other legislative strategies to reduce unnecessary production and also to increase production of an access to necessary goods. And in the global South, obviously, industrial policy towards sovereign economic development. But I think that the key thing here is not so much like, can these things be implemented? Again, this is something that's been discussed and established in other literature.

The real problem here is to recognize that this is going to require a political movement that is capable of reclaiming democratic control over labor and production from capital. So overcoming the current concentration of power in the hands of capital over productive capacities and democratizing that, bringing about a transition to economic democracy.

And this is not going to happen on its own. Like it doesn't matter how many papers we produce showing that it is possible, even showing that it's feasible in terms of policy, even outlining the specific steps that need to be taken, all of which has been more or less done already. Because there's just no way that our existing ruling class will go for this because it's not in their material interests, right? This vision runs against those who benefit so prodigiously from the existing structure of the economy. And I think that's something we just have to face up to on a deep level and start building the political movements that are capable of overcoming that

obstacle. That's it. And I've been on the show before to basically say like, I think one of the key things this requires is alliances between environmentalists and labor unions and other working class political formations, including radical political formations, right? Because like the environmentalist vision that we can do all these things, and all we need to do is spread the facts about it is not an adequate theory of change, right? It requires real political leverage. And I think this is where the environmentalist movement really falls short, because they don't have that, right? They can bring people into the street, you know,

for a protest or to block a bridge or to block a highway, but they can't really bring about the kind of substantive economic transformation that we require, because that requires, you know requires the power of mobilized labor and the power of the strike. And so until environmentalists politics can speak directly to the everyday bread and butter needs of working class communities and unions, et cetera, and until we start developing policy frameworks that meet both objectives together at the same time, then we're going to struggle with this, right?

So we need a mass mobilization, an ecological proletariat, as it were. And for that, we need policies and a vision that can mobilize people. And I think that the ideas that are described in this paper basically get us there, because it shows us that, look, we don't just face an ecological crisis, we also face a social crisis of mass deprivation, even in rich countries, people can't meet basic human needs. So what is our strategy for ensuring that we reverse that problem?

I think that's what needs to be on the table. That's the vision that needs to be advanced. And I think that this has the ability, like the potential, to form the basis of a mass political movement, of a popular mass political movement. And the reason I can say that is because we know empirically that these ideas are popular, right? We know that universal public services are popular, overwhelmingly popular. A public job guarantee is popular.

It pulls 80% in places like the USA and UK and other European countries. I mean, that's, I mean, there's few policies of any kind that pull that well. These are transformative policies that are popular. We know that people want to live in an economy that is organized around well-being and ecology rather than growth and capital accumulation. We know these are popular, but there's no political force that presently advances that vision. And there's no movements that has arisen to meet that objective. And I think that's what has to be built. And that's an urgent task and has to happen now. Like this is work that we have to undertake now, building those alliances, building those

policy platforms, building those narratives, building that vision, building those movements. That's work that has to be undertaken as quickly as possible. Absolutely. So yeah, just to summarize, so I love this vision of an ecological proletariat. And really it's in the name, eco-socialism as well, bridging this divide and not having to see this either or either we address poverty or we address the ecological crisis. It's like it can be a both and with the strategy, a win-win for people and the planet and really building those alliances, as you mentioned, and then also this political movement around the world that you're talking about. And then also the practicing and building of economic democracy in our own communities. That's another thing, whether that's worker cooperatives or worker self-directed nonprofits, that's another thing. Maybe even a more feasible or easier thing for some, but both and the political movement and

the local economic democracy movement. So yeah, thank you again for this hopeful message and folks, check it out, read it, and maybe take it to other folks to have conversations about it and bring it into political organizing, as you said. So last question for you, you mentioned an upcoming paper, but I'm just wondering what's next for you and also what's your like leading inquiry that you're carrying at the end of this paper? Like what's next for you that you're wondering and that you want to be working towards? Well, yeah, just in terms of, I guess, kind of boring technical things, one of the next steps

is to explore more country-specific trajectories. Like how do we get from here to there rather than just this is what the global situation could look like? What happens in the global South in terms of resource use and energy use? What particular forms of production have to be increased, etc.? What happens in the global North? What do these trajectories of convergence look like? We want to reach a world where there is no substantive gap between the north and the south in terms of well-being and in terms of energy use and in terms of material use, etc. What does the trajectory look like to get there?

What does that convergence look like? So that's research that's being undertaken now. We have a couple of papers that are coming out that will... And by the way, this is not undertaken now. We have a couple of papers that are coming out that will, I mean, and by the way, this is not just me. I mean, we have a research team that's based in Barcelona and Lausanne of 30 people that's working on this. And so you're going to see papers coming out on this. And that's, to me, this is exciting. So that's kind of where the research is headed. But I guess in terms of, yeah, just in terms of the broader picture, I think that soon we're going to need to start moving beyond this question of what is technically possible and what are the policies to actually achieve it and think more about the politics of it.

What are the movements that can get us there? What are the lessons we need to learn? What are the strategies that we need to adopt? And so on. So I think that's also really crucial work that has to be done. You've been listening to an upstream conversation with economic anthropologist Jason Hickel. Jason is a professor at the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona and the author of the books The Divide, A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions and Less is More, How D-Growth Will Save the World. Jason is the lead author of the paper How Much Growth is Required to Achieve Good Lives for All, Insights from Needs-Based Analysis, published in the journal World Development Perspectives. needs-based analysis, published in the journal World Development Perspectives. Make sure to check out our most recent episode with Jason, where we discuss two other fascinating and important papers he recently co-authored.

Imperialist Appropriation in the World Economy, Drained from the Global South through Unequal Exchange, 1990-2015, published in the journal Global Environmental Change, and Unequal Exchange of Labor in the World Economy, published in the journal Nature Communications. Please check the show notes for links to any of the resources mentioned in this episode. Thank you to One Last Wish for the intermission music and to Berwyn Muir for the cover art. Upstream theme music was composed by me, Robbie. Upstream is almost entirely listener funded. We could not keep this project going without your support. There are a number of ways in which you can support us financially. You

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