The Talk
Most of us want more, and all the big governments are touting growth. The theory is that if we produce twice as much every dozen or so years (like in China and India recently), the poor will be better off without the affluent and the super-rich having to curtail their soaring, it’s all like a giant airplane taking off. But the Earth is the same size as during the many thousands of years when humankind was about a thousandth as big as now and the modern American way of life didn’t exist. The US president declared in 1992 (when 100+ heads of state went to Rio to talk about climate change) that “The American way of life is not subject to negotiation.” Gandhi said (in 1945) that “the Earth provides enough for everyone’s needs”, but his notion of needs was very modest and didn’t include being better off than your neighbours. What should we do now?
Mark Lindley, Dr
Dr. Mark Lindley is a visiting scholar at the University of Hyderabad and is preparing to teach there a graduate course on “Ecology and Economics”.
Two of his previous professorships have been at the University of Kerala and at Bogazici University (in Istanbul). He has published more than 15 books – about music and about Gandhi as well as about modern economic theory – and more than 100 scholarly articles. Two recent articles (published last year by the Gokhale Institute in Pune and the University of Allahabad) are “Modern Economics as a Would-Be Science” and “The Strange Case of Dr Hayek and Mr Hayek”. His website is http://independent.academia.edu/MarkLindley.
From his Wikipedia page:
Mark Lindley is a noted musicologist and, more recently, a historian of modern India, and a teacher of economics. Born in Washington, D.C., he studied at Harvard University (A.B.), Juilliard School of Music (M.S.) and Columbia University (D. Phil.). He has taught at various universities, including Columbia University, City University of New York, Washington University, University of London, Oxford University, University of Regensburg, Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of Kerala, Istanbul Technical University, Yildiz Technical University, Bogaziçi University, and Samskar Ashram Vidyalayam. He has lectured on economics at Gujarat Vidyapith and at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics, where he is currently a Visiting Professor.
