Economist: The path to a green economy does not lead through orders | iRADIO

According to the Czech Statistical Office, the domestic economy overall declined in 2023. Gross domestic product (GDP) decreased by 0.4 percent last year. The decrease was mainly influenced by lower inventory formation and a drop in household consumption. Conversely, foreign demand supported GDP growth. What does Tomáš Sedláček think about the inflection of various data and statistics?

Guest: economist and philosopher Tomáš Sedláček. Hosted by Zita Senková

“I’m fascinated by the measurability of progress,” replies the economist. “Of course, I follow the rise and fall of GDP, because it is such a universally recognized measure. Just two years ago, the Czech Republic was in the peloton of post-communist countries, and now, after the post-covid slump, we have fallen six to eight places in the ranking of the richest countries in the world. So, I think the Czech economy is running out of breath. We need to change it to a more modern, lighter, external economy that is no longer so cumbersome.”

Confidence in a better future

According to Sedláček, trust in the economy is essential. “We had such a civilizational divide at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, when we began to believe in a better future. Until then, humanity suffered from the idea that time takes us away from paradise, that the paradise of perfection is somewhere in a mythical time,” explains Tomáš Sedláček.

“At that moment, our faith turned upside down and we began to believe in a better future, that the future will be better than the past. And this belief is probably responsible, according to many thinkers, for the fact that our Western civilization began to grow in an extreme way,” he thinks.

According to the economist, the importance of trust can be easily illustrated with currency. “The currency only works if I believe in it. The Czech crown is kept strong in the same way that the Pope is kept strong. If there was no Catholic faith or Catholic Church, the Pope would be a normal person with a funny hat. Similarly, our banknotes would be just funny paper with pictures if we didn’t trust the currency.’

Resistance to ideology

How do Czech entrepreneurs and companies manage to meet the criteria of responsible, socially responsible business and investment?

“On the one hand, I feel a typical Czech skepticism, which can be healthy because we, as Bohemia, own this thing, a kind of resistance to ideology. So many of them have passed through our territory that we have learned to be resistant to them and either make a Švejkov joke of them, or stand up to them in a Hussy-like way,” answers economist Sedláček.

“But we haven’t learned to work together yet. We haven’t learned to trust those things. We take it as a dictation from somewhere. And countries that don’t care about their environment are often poor countries,” he points out. “The path to a greener and better economy or society is not through orders and regulations.“

“In Finland, none of the businessmen even thought of releasing poisonous water into the river. Here we had 20,000 commissions for this, who were supposed to do nothing but guard the common rivers and pastures. And yet it went wrong here. In every communist or socialist country, the environment has deteriorated more than the capitalist ones. And it’s like that to this day,” concludes Sedláček.

Zita Senková, cat

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