Doughnut Economics is a framework by economist 📝Kate Raworth that replaces GDP growth as the goal of economic activity with a simpler question: are we meeting human needs without overshooting planetary boundaries? The "doughnut" is the safe and just space between a social foundation (food, health, education, equity, justice) and an ecological ceiling (climate stability, biodiversity, clean air).
Introduced in a 2012 Oxfam report and expanded in her 2017 book Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, Raworth proposes seven cognitive shifts: change the goal from GDP to thriving; see the economy as embedded in society and the living world; nurture cooperative human nature rather than assuming self-interest; think in systems rather than equilibrium; design to distribute wealth at the source rather than redistribute after extraction; create to regenerate rather than deplete; and be agnostic about whether the economy grows.
Two principles anchor the structural vision. Distributive design asks who owns the sources of wealth creation — advocating for cooperatives, employee ownership, community land trusts, and open-source knowledge over shareholder extraction. Regenerative design asks how economic activity participates in living cycles rather than degrading them — circular material flows, product-as-service models, and active restoration.
Over 50 cities and regions — including Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Brussels, Nanaimo, and Portland — have applied the framework through the 📝Doughnut Economics Action Lab (DEAL), which Raworth co-founded to move theory into practice. DEAL operates as an open-source network: tools for "City Portraits," community processes, and cross-sector collaboration.
The framework's relevance to 📝MythOS and 📝One Inc is structural: boundaries are not restrictions but enabling constraints that make thriving possible. An economy addicted to 📝growth has no concept of enough — and systems without boundaries inevitably outpace the 📝agreements that would otherwise govern them.
Reflections
"Today we have economies that grow whether or not they make us thrive, and what we need — especially in the richest countries — are economies that make us thrive whether or not they grow." ~ 📝Kate Raworth