Episode notes
Author, Environmentalist Guy Dauncey Interview.
What If Kindness Were an Economic System? Guy Dauncey argues that this should be the case.
His new book “The Economics of Kindness” will be available later this year. It helps us understand how the world would be if instead of a playground for greedy billionaires, kindness and respect was what brought us together.
In the interview, Guy’s powerful comment on what troubles us is:
“The Power of our Vision must be so much stronger than the power of our Fear”.
He has built his life work around this concept as a futurist, a “practical utopian” (his term), an advocate for the environment, and author of 10 books.
His new book “The Economics of Kindness: A New Ecological Civilization” - available soon from Palgrave Macmillan - took him 10 years to research, when all the others only took three.
There were many things that motivated his research.
Put simply he saw our troubles had origins in the economy. So many issues all driven by how we monetize our world.
Issues like:
- the affordable housing crisis,
- the increase in the number of billionaires,
- ordinary people struggling to live and pay the rent,
- increasing housing and rent costs when private equity continue to buy up homes and look for greater and great returns,
- the climate crisis and assaults on nature.
In the interview, he frames kindness as a structural economic force rather than a personality trait. It’s powerful and not weak.
The founder of the BC Sustainable Energy Association, Guy is also co-founder of the Victoria (Canada) Car Share Cooperative and West Coast Climate Action Network, based in Yellow Point, BC and a Recipient of the King Charles III Coronation Medal (2025)
Kindness as Economics, not Sentiment
Dauncey contrasts“homo economicus” (self-interest as the engine of markets) and what he calls “homo amicus” — a model of humans as cooperative by nature. Visit rural Australia and you will often see that moreso than in our cities.
He is critizal of today’s economy that has become what he calls a “kindness-free zone” where benefits concentrate at the top while nature and people absorb the cost
I was really taken by what Guy had to say. It blended beautifully with Hugh Mackay’s interview (Episode 1) and Hugh’s published books, including “The Kindness Revolution”.
A clear question for all of us (please give me your comments, I’d love to hear).
What would an economy built on cooperation rather than competition actually look like where you live?”
OH DEAR, SHAKESPEARE IS DEAD
Aside from all of the above, Guy writes music, songs and poetry, and thanks to him I discovered, Surprise Surprise and with Deep Grief, that Bill Shakespeare is no longer with us.
However, he channels him very well with this poem, (the full version in the interview):
HAMLET’S ODE TO THE 21st CENTURY
To grow, or not to grow: that is the question,
Whether ‘tis nobler on Earth to suffer
The filth and waste of outrageous production
Or to take arms against a toxic sea of troubles,
and by opposing, end them?