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List of Figures

1.1 The Creation of the World and the Expulsion from Paradise.
1.2 The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels.
1.3 Our ancestors were fish.
2.1 Food, shelter, reproduction, and safe in a tree. [WMC]
2.2 A largely solitary economy. [WMC]
2.3 The three inputs necessary for production
2.4 Alone on an island – a one-person economy.
2.5 Concrete cancer: capital wears out.
3.1 A social economy: leaf-cutter ants. [WMC]
3.2 In a social economy, you can’t go anywhere you want or use anything you like. [WMC]
3.3 Ownership: it’s his garden! [WMC]
3.4 A kilo of cheese takes more labour to make than a kilo of potatoes, and so costs more.
3.5 We don’t pay the environment for the resources we take from it. [WMC]
3.6 No rules for a castaway alone on an island.
3.7 Lots of rules in modern society.
4.1 A vegetable market. [WMC]
4.2 A list of ingredients – how many of us would read and understand it before eating? [WMC]
5.1 A simple barter or ‘swap’ economy.
5.2 A set of swaps between a farmer, baker and shoemaker.
5.3 A drop in demand by the farmer for bread, lowers production of other goods too.
5.4 Initial level of production before musician arrives.
5.5 The availability of something new to want (music) also increases production of existing goods.
5.6 Using money to carry out swaps.
6.1 As WORKERS we work for others, like this horse. [WMC]
6.2 As CONSUMERS we are served by others.
6.3 As CITIZENS we can influence governance.
6.4 A rare and valued quality.
6.5 The rules of a game affect the outcomes. [WMC]
7.1 High demand for horses. [WMC]
7.2 Robots packing bread. [WMC]
7.3 Dumped tomatoes. [geograph]
8.1 The classical labour supply and demand diagram, with wages on y-axis.
8.2 The classical labour supply and demand diagram, redrawn to put wages on the x-axis.
8.3 Classical labour supply curve, but with wages on x-axis.
8.4 A more realistic labour supply curve for the whole economy.
8.5 What ‘barely enough’ wages looks like. [WMC]
8.6 Working hours by country.
8.7 Hours versus wages for UK employees.
8.8 Coffee price and production.
8.9 Classical labour demand curve.
8.10 A more realistic labour demand curve for the whole economy.
8.11 Employment on a self-sufficient estate.
8.12 Example whole-economy labour demand curves.
8.13 Revised whole-economy supply and demand curves: increasing wages cuts unemployment.
8.14 Revised whole-economy supply and demand: employment level as wages increase.
9.1 Technology creates new things to want. [WMC]
9.2 ‘Wants’ for the rich: watches costing € thousands.
9.3 Cleaning windscreens at a traffic light: a ‘real job’ or ‘underemployment’?
10.1 A large population increases a country’s power but not necessarily its wealth per person. [WMC]
10.2 Capital item: a 1970s mainframe computer. [WMC]
10.3 A 2020s laptop computer: more powerful and a fraction of the price. [WMC]
10.4 19th century engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel. [WMC]
11.1 Economic cycle production peaks are not necessarily the maximum possible.
11.2 Pushing a swing: a positive feedback example.
11.3 Booms and slumps.
11.4 During the 1980s boom and later booms, unemployment remained high.
11.5 UK unemployment in the 20th century
12.1 Rural India. [WMC]
12.2 High-tech Bangalore. [WMC]
13.1 Once we were fewer than one million worldwide with very little ‘stuff’; now we are over eight thousand million. [WMC]
13.2 People in industrialising countries naturally enough, aspire to the consumption habits of the richest countries.
13.3 Derelict opencast mine. [WMC]
13.4 The seas and wild fish: part of the ‘global commons’. [WMC]
14.1 Humans have a hierarchy of needs.
15.1 What is better value: schools, or tobacco & drugs?
15.2 Public property attracts more graffiti than private. [WMC]
15.3 Fine stations were built when the rich had to travel by rail; less so now. [Photos WMC]
16.1 An industry is deemed ‘uneconomic’ if a competitor though less efficient, pays its workforce far less.
17.1 It’s easier to avoid over-grazing if it’s your own field rather than common land.
17.2 Private cars – a ‘tragedy of the commons’. [WMC]
17.3 Children used to play in the streets, but are now denied them by motor vehicles.
17.4 The 1970’s Buy British campaign did little to stem the tide of cheap imports. [WMC]
18.1 How should you divide cooking and cleaning between Lola and Juan, when Juan is slower at both?
18.2 Monoculture: an oil-palm plantation. [WMC]
19.1 Success is more likely with clear decision-making. [WMC]
19.2 Religions can provide a code of conduct.
19.3 An educated population is necessary to understand and use industrial technology. [WMC]
19.4 Technology provides new methods of social control. [WMC]
19.5 Inequality creates a market for luxuries. [WMC]
20.1 Trotsky described how Soviet leaders struggled with the problems of quality control in a planned economy. [WMC]
20.2 Colossus computer: computers, the internet and web, were all developed with public funds. [WMC]
20.3 Cuba: stopping on the motorway to buy plantain.
21.1 Wharncliffe viaduct: built 1837 and still in service. [WMC]
21.2 The Nuclear ‘lifecycle’ versus wind.
21.3 Annual future costs decline to almost nothing when discounted.
21.4 Discounting allows the total costs of work extending far into the future to be cut to a derisory amount.
22.1 More production and more inequality means the rich have more to play with in the finance ‘casino’.
22.2 Wealth is concentrated in few hands globally.
22.3 Within rich countries, wealth is also concentrated in few hands.
22.4 We’re told “the finance sector looks after your pension savings” – but most of us barely have any.
22.5 Profit from doing harm. [WMC]
22.6 The 2008 banking crisis: irresponsible risk-taking? [WMC]
22.7 A Debenhams store. [WMC]
22.8 For once, paying peanuts and getting monkeys, may not be a bad plan.
23.1 Mortgage interest and rents, rise together.
23.2 Across 107 countries, inflation does not appear to be lower where unemployment is high.
23.3 Inflation versus unemployment for 99 countries.
24.1 The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists identifies existential risks such as nuclear war and climate change. [WMC]
24.2 Coronavirus. [WMC]
25.1 “some major cities will be under water”. [WMC]
26.1 Maximising productivity can put countries in a ‘race to the bottom’ in environmental standards and workers’ conditions.
26.2 Only some paths provide employment without destroying the environment.
26.3 Workers needed in the business sector, if it operates alone, i.e. without a publicly-funded social sector.
26.4 The business and social sectors: supply goods we buy individually, and services we buy collectively.
26.5 A War Bond [WMC]
26.6 Abandoned station in Devon, 1968: the UK lost over half of its railway stations.
27.1 Global emissions from car and van traffic could grow sixfold if everyone adopts the usage levels of the USA.
27.2 For most people in the world, the cost of running a car exceeds their income; bicycles however, are affordable.
27.3 80% of the world’s population have never flown. [WMC]
27.4 A carbon allowance would be fairer than rationing by price; a debit card like this mock-up might be used.
27.5 Human and motor-vehicle growth in the UK.
27.6 Limit hunting and fishing. [WMC]
28.1 Access to countryside was a working-class cause during the industrial revolution.
28.2 Shall we build beautiful places to live, or human warehouses? [WMC, Auth]
28.3 Student Accommodation. [WMC, Auth]
28.4 Houses blighted by traffic and tower-block ‘developments’.
29.1 Eating from the tree of knowledge. [WMC]
29.2 A global set of values: the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights
29.3 Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness index. [WMC]
29.4 In a crisis, governments need to seize control. [OGL]

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