A couple months back I was introduced to the concept of Buddhist Economics via this article on The Marginalian: Buddhist Economics: How to Start Prioritizing People Over Products and Creativity Over Consumption.

The idea promotes mindful consumption, simplicity, and compassion in economic activities, prioritising human well-being and environmental harmony over unlimited growth and consumption (making it a concept I should have included in my Growth is a mind cancer post last week).

It’s a lovely collection of ideas in principle, and reminds me of Doughnut Economics, but again, for me it feels painfully hard to imagine what it would take to have such ideas widely adopted, beyond ‘policy’ in a basic sense (though creating effective policy is anything but basic).

There are overly idealistic and pessimistic assumptions in the idea also.

Idealistic in the sense that any mass population would accept such selfless and socialist ideas and forgo the enjoyment of their existing levels of consumer consumption.

And pessimistic in my mind as I align more with the Japanese philosophy of ikigai. In my interpretation, this allows individuals to master and enjoy their work and interests for themselves, even while potentially acting as part of a larger economical consumerist machine.

Perhaps my main issue with Buddhist Economics is that it fails to accept the true nature of the majority of individuals within society, in that ego and desire exists, and need to be indulged in some way, and worked with rather than against.

To be fair though, this isn’t really a serious theory meant for practical practice, but rather a thought experiment using the lens of Buddhist philosophy. An economical model for Buddhists, that allows us to question why it wouldn’t work for all.

I’m a big fan of thought experiments like this. Coming up with an idea with a fatal flaw, in order to route out the most thorny and wicked problems.