If we are going to have a sustainable future we need more poverty, not less. We are already consuming resources at 1.6 the rate the Earth can provide.

http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/aug/12/humans-have-already-used-up-2015s-supply-of-earths-resources-analysis

That means, rather than the rich getting richer and their wealth trickling down to the poor, a rather far fetched concept, we need the rich to get poorer.  The poor cannot get much poorer but the rich can.

But this is anathema to the residents of the rich nations, who have the power. So it won't happen.

Dear Alastair, thank you for participating.

Comments based on the article in the Guardian:

            I read the article, I got the feeling that the authors understand the issue of overpopulation and ecological foot print very well, a problem that started when we were living in the Adam Smith’s traditional market world and a problem that exist still now that we live in an eco-economic world….

I got the feeling that the authors have not noticed what we no longer we live in the pure economy market anymore, which could not deal with that issue because it was assume to be an exogenous issue.  And in the current eco-economic/green market model, still it is an issue assumed as exogenous…. So how can they see “hope” in the recently agreed global warming agenda when the Agenda is to be implemented under eco-economic markets/ green markets who mind about economy-environment win-win situation only….

            The way they described the overpopulation problem should be enough to call for the shifting to sustainability markets so social issues are endogenous issues once and for all… They do not call for that…

            They do not seem to even call for the global warming agenda to be implemented in ways to reduced not only the overpopulation footprint, but also the over production/dirty production footprint…meaning they need to look at the issues from the system point of view….and see if the market structure can deal with those issues or not, and if not, call for changing market structures….

Comments based on your comments:

            You did not clearly said whether there is an assumed “green trickledown theory”, but you understand that the old trickledown thought of Adam Smith should not be expected to work…. I have three comments as food for thoughts Alastair…

            a) I agree “the richer getting poorer” one way to go, which is an optimization issue affecting by what I call ‘the copycat syndrome”…developing countries wanted to become richer….

            I shared ideas in 2009 on what the expected key problems are if we want to move from the most is better paradigm to the less is better paradigm

Substituting The More is Better Paradigm for The Less is Better Paradigm: Identifying Key Transitional Problems

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281276526_Substituting_The_More_is_Better_Paradigm_for_The_Less_is_Better_Paradigm_Identifying_Key_Transitional_Problems

            b) More poverty is needed to be able to jointly maximize economy-environment win-win situations, just as more poverty and more pollution was needed to maximize pure economic profits. 

            I showed in 2009 that it is the embudo effect not the trickledown effect that explains growing economic disparities as development takes place:

How Do Agricultural Development Benefits Actually Spread: Is it the Trickle Down Effect or the Embudo Effect?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281276242_How_Do_Agricultural_Development_Benefits_Actually_Spread_Is_it_the_Trickle_Down_Effect_or_the_Embudo_Effect

            I showed in 2012 that green sweatshops of today may have greater pressures on the poor than the traditional pure economic sweatshops had:

From Traditional Sweatshops to Green Sweatshops: Is This a More Socially Friendly Strategy?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281277722_From_Traditional_Sweatshops_to_Green_Sweatshops_Is_This_a_More_Socially_Friendly_Strategy

            And the ideas on those two papers can be used to make the point that in the eco-economic market/green market the embudo effect will be even steeper as now the poor not only has to deal with the pure economic cost, now they will have to find money to pay for the environmental margin as they will be facing higher prices….as green prices are greater than the pure economic price by the environmental margin…

            c) A shift towards sustainability markets would help to deal head on with critical social issues such as the overpopulation issue/poverty issue the same way that the move from the pure economic market to the eco-economic markets has allowed us to deal head on with critical environmental issues such as global warming…

            This allow for a new way to look at carrying capacity, investment, quantitative scarcity and qualitative scarcity…in a systematic way of thinking…

Eco-economic development under social constraints: How to redirect it towards sustainability?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282828124_ART9c

Thank you for your time Alastair

Article Substituting The More is Better Paradigm for The Less is Bet...

Article How Do Agricultural Development Benefits Actually Spread: Is...

Article From Traditional Sweatshops to Green Sweatshops: Is This a M...

Data Eco-Economic Development Under Social Constraints: How to Re...

Lucio,

I see Adam Smith's ideas as true now as those of Issac Newton, but far easier to misinterpret, which I believe has been done with the invention of the trickle down hypothesis.

Smith pointed out that in a free market, with a multiplicity of supliers, the price of each item would be set at a common minimum price, much to the advantage of the consumers.

However, he also wrote “People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” 

The most effective way they can achieve that is to form a monopoly, and that is what happens in  laissez faire markets. Of course they hide this by renaming their laissez faire markets as free markets, and boasting how they are maintaining the freedom of the populace when in fact they are ripping them off! This has not gone entirely unnoticed with most governments having anti-monopoly legislation, but these days it is pretty toothless in an age of globalization.

The idea of trickle down economics is just another con trick by the entrepreneurs and bankers to justify raising their profits and reducing wages. There argument seems to be if they reduce wages then their increased profits will trickle down to the general population. It is not something Adam Smith ever imagined far less advocated but does fit with laissez faire economics,  not a free market.

Even assuming that the population was not increasing we would have to become poorer, if we are going to live in a sustainable world. If we do not then there will come a time when the population is reduced by wars, famines and epidemics just as it was in the past. The growing world population will only bring that catastrophe sooner.

Dear Alstair, thank you for your comment.  Adam Smith may not have used the world "trickle down" to point how society would benefit from market profits, but the invisible hand was expected to worki magically in such away or a similar way....  The problem with Adami Smith in my opinion is that he assumed that society and environment do not matter in economic systems and because of this assumption markets thrived throut time creating wealth and accumulating social deficits and environmental deficits until they could not be hide anymore and now we have the extreme poverty and extreme environmental crisis....Had Adam Smith assumed economy, society and environment matter and build a sustainability market model from it....the world would be different today?

If someone would to argue today that the economy is independent of the environment and/or society, it would not fly....We should have been operating in sustainability markets since Adam Smith's time if he had stated the structure and goals of sustainbaility markets as the formal economy....Now Adam Smith model is dead, the economy man began a transition to the green economy man in 1987 when the briuntland commission asked for the tradiional market model to be fixed...in 2012 Rio/UNCSD it became formal, the green economy is here and the pure economy/Adam Smith's model is dead.

So now we have to travel towards sustainability backwards as we firt need to correct Adam Smith fully and internalize not just environmental externalities as they have done so far, but social externalities too....I wrote a paper showing we are going backwards in terms of economic thinking towards sustainability markets because of Adam Smith's assumptions....It is shared at the end of this message...

In short we agree if the trickledown theory was a pure economy plot, if there is a green trickledown thought is a green plot....

You may find the ideas in the paper below interesting Alastair, have a nice day.

Did Adam Smith Missed the Chance to State the Goal and Structure of Sustainability Markets in His Time? If Yes, Which Could Be Some of the Possible Reasons Behind That?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286625136_Did_Adam_Smith_Missed_the_Chance_to_State_the_Goal_and_Structure_of_Sustainability_Markets_in_His_Time_If_Yes_Which_Could_Be_Some_of_the_Possible_Reasons_Behind_That

Complex and Man-made Markets: Are We Currently Approaching Sustainability in a Backward and More Chaotic Way in Terms of Economic Thinking?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/281277199_Complex_and_Man-made_Markets_Are_We_Currently_Approaching_Sustainability_in_a_Backward_and_More_Chaotic_Way_in_Terms_of_Economic_Thinking

Article Did Adam Smith Miss the Chance to State the Goal and Structu...

Article Complex and Man-made Markets: Are We Currently Approaching S...

Lucio, I appreciate that it was various 'committees' that have over the past decade declared that economic man is dead and has been replaced by the 'green man' model.  However I have not seen that it has been accompanied by, let alone embedded within, any single and coherent theoretical context of any substance.  I believe that you are of the same opinion and that your question has been posed in more of a 'rhetorical' vein than investigative.  Perhaps with the object of keeping up a steady stimulation of our minds around this issue so that we maintain our 'recent' intellectual focus in this area to maintain its momentum and further development.  An object I fully support, as you too know.

The body of theory within which 'economic man' appeared as a conceptual tool has, over the past 170 years, provided the impetus for the interactive development of the social, economic and political institutions of society and of individual behaviour and morality over that entire period. 

It is well accepted that this paradigm of laissez faire philosophy has at its core the belief that wealth benefits, defined and created within the precepts of that paradigm and in the ownership of a few active economic agents, will and do trickle down at an entirely satisfactory rate and intensity to all individuals contributing work effort into the creation of that wealth. 

The most recent developments in this philosophical paradigm, over the past 70 years, has integrated into the basic model of 'work and reward' the presumption that there will always inevitably exist in society individuals who do, or cannot, work.  It is accepted that this may be due to incapacity, from age (youth or seniority) or ill-health (congenital or of socially systemic origins such work accidents and epidemic) or from lack of employment opportunity or lack of contextually appropriate education. Consequently explicit transfers of wealth in order to support these individuals will occur, to a greater or lesser extent.

Throughout the 20th century to the present time much of the debating effort expired (sic.) upon the translation of the economic paradigm into the political and economic praxis of policy invention and implementation has centred upon how this last issue, that of explicit wealth transfers to those consumers that are 'exogenous' to its fundamental precepts, should and ought to be addressed.  It is only at this level of intellectual debate, within the recognised mainstream of academic contribution anointed within this paradigm, that the political distinctions and gradations are assigned to individual theoreticians along an axis of relative orthodoxy that the labels of Right and Left emerge.  Labels which are endogenous to that paradigm and which have no relevance beyond the boundaries of its anointed 'mainstream'.

At the opening of the 21st century, that mainstream has adopted the premise  that economic man is no longer an appropriate tool ( nor is it useful as in the sense of being 'credible to our audience') and has been replaced by the 'green man' model, just as the need for social welfare transfers of wealth were adopted by them during the 20th century.  In the first cases the declaration of the need for welfare transfers although accepted was never definitively answered at a theoretical and moral level sufficiently definitive as to cause the appearance of a single, unquestioned, basis for all subsequent policy development to emerge.  

What we have seen, over the past 22 years, with the 'green man' model is a similar theoretical stasis.  The basic reason of both of these phenomena is the total lack of congruence between the concept of laissez faire and the concept of control which is the central characteristic of both explicit transfers of wealth and environmental responsibility.

A consideration of all theories of value and wealth that have developed within the 'Smith/Ricardo' paradigm, including those of Marx, share in common, very fundamental, essential elements regarding their treatment of wealth, both as a concept and ( consequently perhaps...) as an object of policies designed to handle and 'process' wealth.  These are few and very basic.

First, both agreed that wealth has its origins in the performance of human work upon resources. Second, this attribute of work, wealth, should - so far as is practically possible - be accumulated so that a 'steady state' can be achieved of continually improving efficiencies of production and the necessarily concomitant expansions of consumption, through the effects of implementing large scale cooperative productive efforts.  And all are agreed that the consumption of large amounts of economic goods defines well-being for all individuals and is consistent with them being in the state of experiencing wealth.  This is the extent and purpose of the trickle down effect at one end of the axis and of the pull-up / push-down process at the other.

Laissez faire, against this background, simply labels one end of an implementation axis within the same paradigm that labels the other end of the axis as Totalitarian. Popularly, in the style of endemic 'misnomerisation', this axis is labelled 'Democracy'.  It is thus labelled for the very good reason that any 'solution' along this axis requires that labour is employed 'efficiently' and therefore at lowest cost per until of production and that all practically realisable excess of value in the production process is removed in processes of aggregation and accumulation to nodal points from which it can be marshalled 'to the public good' by institutions endemic to the particular 'axial flavour' under which the aggregations of work actually take place. 

Across all of these societies, of whatever axial flavour, a 'top strata' of individuals are economically and politically empowered to control and direct this marshalling process, taking for themselves in the process whatever portion of wealth is validly endorsed by the local implementations of the paradigm-determined common institutions which they to large degree themselves control.

It is these 'imperatives', which in reality are THE fundamental characteristics and the very nature of the 'global' paradigm, which cannot be changed.  It cannot be changed by the need to be seen to be recognising the need to support non-workers, nor by the need to be seen to be protecting the environment and thereby not by being seen to be limiting further damage to it nor by the need to be seen to be preventing the eventual depletion of the most critical of our resources that our environments provide.

Since the fundamentals of 'value extraction, aggregation and marshalling' cannot be changed without moving into a completely different philosophical paradigm and since all these needs, from universal welfare to resource stewardship, represent existential threats to it there has to be developed a means to address them in an endogenous manner.

The only route by which this can be done, with minimum threat to the self-interest of those influencing, controlling and benefiting from the paradigm is to increase the proportions of work-value that are being extracted and aggregated, separately or together with increasing the absolute intensity with which product is being produced and therefore consumed so that the absolute aggregate value available to be applied to the needs become available.  Which in itself involves more work, or more effective work, being done at minimum cost.

In translation this requires more work to be done, by the same or more people, under which ever 'axial flavour' of the paradigm as are already doing 'the work'.  This must take place such that those who comprise and are sustained by the institutional elements of that paradigm are not so required to work more for the same or less.

This requires that working towards the satisfaction of these needs, which is as critical to the continued existence of the paradigm as much as it is to the individuals living in the societies shaped by it, is seen to be endorsed by all and is seen by all individuals to be the subject of concerted action and sacrifice at all levels of society.  This is the function of the wide publicity and the high levels of diplomatic and scientific activity.  It is not to bring about a fundamental change to the institutions of the current paradigm nor to the dominance of the paradigm itself.

So Lucio, it is for these reasons that I can say unequivocally that no body of theory lies behind the adoption of the 'green man' model.  The mainstream see no such need.

Jonathon Porritt, Co-Founder of Forum for the Future and long-time UK doyen of the Green Movement, is - broadly characterised - an exponent of 'green' policies which are designed to be non-disruptive to the economic paradigm.  He might be expected to endorse a 'positivist' view and policy advisements that might paint a picture of the future not dissimilar to that painted by me in the first few statements of the following description.

Between an expansion of numbers in the available work force, some further and wider education, the creation of extra jobs in the process of adapting our technologies to enable us to 'manage down' some of the more existential levels of threat,  by reducing levels of physical resource consumption while increasing the efficiency of resource use in the production of an ever widening range of non-basic goods for consumption by the increasing masses of the increasingly least well-paid and through the gradual inflation of prices to pay for the new work being done and also by combating the possible development of perceptions that well-being is in fact dropping through the widespread adaptation and proselytising of the 'never had it so good' political slogans of the 50's and 60's - by all of these things, which amount to more of the same within the 'traditional' paradigm, the world will be saved for a laissez-faire neoclassical future increasingly full of 'well-being' as our total numbers are then likely to drop even as we consume more work value from an ever widening range of goods manufactured out of an ever diminishing absolute input quantity of physical resources that have been recycled or are newly extracted from the environment.  Or the equivalent Totalitarian interpretation of the same. And all 'stops' between.

With such a 'bright' future in store, which commercial or institutional sources of funding will be rushing to pay anybody to fix the bankrupt theory and paradigm that has, does and is expected - by them - to continue to serve their best interests so well?  One which even provides, what it itself deems to be, well-being to an increasing extent to the increasingly large proportion of the global population serving and enmeshed in it.

Those elements that are products and beneficiaries of the paradigm are far more likely to fund the suppression of publicity at the very least for any competing proposals that look like having even half a chance of disturbing popular perceptions of it.  For all its benefits to academic integrity, the peer review system is also a potent tool in this regard.

And so the final part of my conclusion is that no new theoretical paradigm is likely to develop in the future as a result of a wide adoption of the 'green man' model.

This may of course be a blessing in disguise for some of us who continue to work on a complete restatement of theory, synthesis and praxis in the context of empowering a very different socio-economic paradigm.

Rob

Dear Robin, thank you for your detailed comment.....The key aspect of your comment is "So Lucio, it is for these reasons that I can say unequivocally that no body of theory lies behind the adoption of the 'green man' model.  The mainstream see no such need."...

The truth that the mainstream thought that just greening Adam Smith's model was good enough, they miscalculated that the shift  from traditional economic market(T = aBc to eco-economic market(EE = aBC) is a paradigm shift and when there is a pradigm shiift there is a paradigm shift knowledge gap, and that is plagging them....the knowledge gap... The world of the green economic man is different than the world of the economic man and micro-economic  and macroeconomic not longer work....you need green micro-economics and green macroeconomics to deal with green market issues, but they are behind.... for example, where is the theory of the environmentally responsible firm or the theory of the environmentally friendly economy....This is the area I am working on to help the closing of this knowledge gap and help, not disrupt the transition towards sustainability....

You should keep in mind, sustainabilityd theory and sustainability market thinking provides a unique and different way of addressing the same discourse that you described above in a simpler way where academic and non academic audiences can follow.....

I have four papers coming in these lines each geared to clarify the path in very simple ways....next publication I will share will show in simple terms the sustainability gaps that brought down both Karl Marx's model (1991)and Adam Smith model(2012), and hightlight the knoledge gap creating by these two paradim shifts:

a) Marx's model shifted from red socialist to socially friendly capitalism(THIS IS THE FIRST KNOWLEGE GAP from paraidigm shift----Where is the theory of the socially responsible firm or economy?

b) Smith's model shifted from pure capitalist to environmentally friendly capitalist(THIS IS THE SECOND KNOWLEDGE GAP from paradigm shift---Where is the theory of the environmentally responsible firm or economy.

Now if ever there is a shift from any model towards sustainability we should expect another knowledge gap unless you do what I am doing, preparing the ground for just in case paradigm evolution is right and it happens...

Those knowledge gaps affect all universities, big and small, all over the world...and we are implementing global programs, climate change agenda and sustainable development agenda under those knowledge gaps....

Thank you for exchanging ideas....little by little, but surely...

Have a niced day

Hi Lucio,  Thank you for discussing in a bit more detail the direction you are following.  I look forward to reading more and it is somewhat gratifying to be able to position my own investigations as addressing a different facet of the same problem set.

I can see that I should have chosen my words a little more carefully!  My 'conclusion' was directed specifically within the context of the body of work which is produced within and by 'the mainstream' of academia out of which the current paradigm has emerged and developed.  Almost by definition it is from within 'the Heterodoxy' that a new paradigm will emerge.  That movement, with which I identify ourselves - amongst thousands of others - is already well developed and becoming more coherent in their thinking by the day as is evidenced by the discussions that we have been conducting in this forum and the papers which it produces.

I hope that I will have been able to work up some discussion papers by mid-year for comment on RG and  will be able to identify some of the connections between much of what each of us have been discussing.  

As those connections continue to be made, and more of the problem set is addressed, then what we have will truly become a 'body of knowledge' from which credible policy implications can be suggested.  Setting a path for the transition away from the current paradigm will then be possible. A much wider audience may then gain the confidence to set out along having realised it to be far less risky than simply tweaking a failed paradigm based upon false premises.

I will read much more of your material over the next two months..  in some warm sunshine.  The UK winter appears to be finally arriving and it is time to go South.

Best regards, Rob

Lucio and Robin,

I have now discovered that I was wrong and in fact Adam Smith's invisible hand was describing a trickle down scheme.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand#The_Wealth_of_Nations

However, he did not create an economic system.  He described the current economic system.  In that 18th century  class system a large proportion of the working class were non productive servants. It was through the employment of them that the trickle down began from the rich to the poor.  But Smith was aware if the rich spent their money abroad, or put it under their pillows, then the poor would become poorer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand#The_Theory_of_Moral_Sentiments

The system of rich men employing many servants no longer exist and the economic system described by Smith no longer exists. So his trickle down economics no longer applies.  In the western nations that is what is now happening is the rich are spending their "ill gotten gains" abroad and causing unemployment at home. And even worse they are employing robots instead of people. This is spelt out in Al Gore's book "The Future".

If you think that by describing a green economic system you can bring it into existence then I sadly think you are wrong. Smith did not create a system, nor did Marx for that matter. It was Lenin who achieved that!

Alistair,

I entirely agree with everything you say.  It permeates what I have said, or have intimated, in many discussions in RG since November (when I started talking..).

neoclassical economics is no more than a politically correct veneer to a continuing attempt to maintain and justify the 18th century status quo that existed in the UK at least.  The economic system (our paradigm) was built up in the process to do that (even if unconsciously by some of its perpetrators) and merely justified itself by looking back to the 'principles' of that societies 'success' and have been lauded by sucessively specialist mathematicians ever since as the necessary axiomatics basis of their mathematics, under the universal qualification used ubiquitously within the physical sciences in which their mathematics developed 'ceteris parabus' - all things remaining the same.  Well, as we know.... they don't are not likely to.  Not for a minute.

The trickle down effect does work as you say but only under conditions of great inequality of income.  So we have through that a clear distinction between the 'conservative' approach and the 'progressive' approach nicely encapsulated.  The conservatives point out that, and supported by eminent theoreticians (of comparative wealth often times or else 'aspirants', only if business is encouraged and especially big business... as big as we can make it will sufficient profit be made to relabel as wealth and out of which some can be spent and or transferred back to those that need it... the trickle down.  Forgetting to mention that the whole of the cadastral system (to use De Soto's term, that has been justified through that argument is in essence a machine that removes the major part of the product-value produced by the work of the people that are being kidded that that they would not have had if it was not so graciously and magnanimously handed back to them .... under implicit threat if that if they do not work even harder and more efficiently then they will be given even less.

The 'progressives' on the other hand, by and large, just want the value handed back with as few strings attached as possible.  They do not really offer a different economic theory just a different view on the same story.

A new theory, and thus a new paradigm, needs to rest on principles which are more genuinely axiomatic to the human condition rather than to the condition of a particular society at a particular time in its development.  This requires looking inward at ourselves....  in other words we need to look both philosophically and behaviourally at ourselves and also through the eyes of all the other disciplines of natural science at the world and cosmos that we find ourselves in, at where we have been and what we have learned, where we are and our problems and gifts, and at the future as well as we can judge from the insights of all the aspects of knowledge that I have just mentioned.  Miss a trick... lose the game.  Again.

A green 'system' merely addresses one small facet of a very much larger problem set.  A sustainable paradigm involves a great deal more than recycling and minimal use of new resource stocks or limiting thermal and other types of pollution or our consumption or our population.  It has to start with why we bother to live at all.  And to have some consensus on what, given the fact that we do live, what we intend to do about it.  As a species since it is certainly clear to each of us that we do depend upon each other to a greater or total extent, depending on the individual.  None of can say they are totally independent of any other living being  - past or present.  What we are is because of what others before us were.  What we know is because of what others before us learned and passed on.  What our descendants will be will similarly depend upon what we learn and know and pass on to them.

I am working on it....  almost alone at the moment it often seems.  rob

Dear Alastair and Robin: my approach is simple, to bit by bit not just state the theory of sustainability and indices and structure and how they can be applied, but to put them at the centre of the sustainability market....I am there now...

As I know there is a knowledge gap, I am closing little by little that knowledge gap so ideas can easily be exchanged later on or implemented.....If you see all my publications, they are aimed at closing the sustainability/sustainable development knowledge gap from all angles...in a non-confrontational manner, always providing a way how to improve the situation and showing whey fixing is needed.....to achieve general and component system sustainability....every single publication I have so far is linked to the others directly or indirectly....and linked to general sustainability...giving the sense that no matter which way we go, in the end there will be a shift towards sustainability....

I will be sharing these materials soon together with expectation rules on paradigm death or merge....and show how they can explain the death of Karl Marx's model and the death of Adam Smith's model in very simple and logical terms and how they can be used to predict future paradigm mergers or death given the structure of conflicting paradigms.....

Economic thought is a house of cards, Adam Smith, used rightly or not, is the first card and on top of it there are many cards...if the first card falls, we should expect a fall down effect and the other cards will follow....If we need to correct Adam Smith's model now, then we need to correct any other thought based on the first card too.....this has not happen and so this a one of the knowledge gaps in am little by little closing---The shift from pure economy to green economy knowledge gap....,Has anybody ask for example, does the arrow impossibility theory still holds within green markets?...just a question as food for thoughts....

Thanks for sharing your thoughts.

Very interesting discussion.

I almost agree with the statement that we need more poverty.  I would instead say we need more simplicity, be it voluntary or mandatory.  Mandatory simplicity is also called poverty, but the alternative, to choose to do without, does not negatively affect one's quality of life, because the choice exists.  And, in voluntary simplicity, the act of acquiring a want does not automatically cause a risk to acquiring needs.

To the question at hand - trickle down green - not directly.  But, if people can see that their quality of life can be improved by choosing to not spend money in specific ways, there may be a trickle up.  We demonstrate our wealth by what we can afford to waste, so if we can find a way to demonstrate that wealth without wasting resources, and then shame consumers who waste resources as being selfish bastards who are stealing from our grandchildren, then maybe, just maybe, we can all live a little more simply so that we can all simply live.  It will not be the rich who lead us there, but rather the poor.

Dougals, it is an irony...had Adam Smith stated the sustainabiliyt markets as shown in my paper we would have been living simple, optimal  lives since then and we would not have the poverty and pollution problems of today...Now going backwards to sustainability will be more expensive and disruptime especially for the poor....

Have a nice day

Sharing here my most recent publications as food for thoughts:

Adam Smith and Karl Marx Under the Sustainability Eye: Pointing Out and Comparing the Sustainability Gaps Behind these Two Great Simplification Failures

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299885202_Adam_Smith_and_Karl_Marx_Under_the_Sustainability_Eye_Pointing_Out_and_Comparing_the_Sustainability_Gaps_Behind_these_Two_Great_Simplification_Failures

Understanding the Death and Paradigm Shift of Adam Smith’s model: Was Going Green the Only Option? If not, Is This Option the Most Sustainable One?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299882613_Understanding_the_Death_and_Paradigm_Shift_of_Adam_Smith%27s_model_Was_Going_Green_the_Only_Option_If_not_Is_This_Option_the_Most_Sustainable_One

The Unintended Consequences of Paradigm Death and Shift: Was the Arrow Impossibility Theorem Left Behind?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/299879934_The_Unintended_Consequences_of_Paradigm_Death_and_Shift_Was_the_Arrow_Impossibility_Theorem_Left_Behind

Paradigm Evolution and Sustainability Thinking: Using a Sustainability Inversegram to State Paradigm Death and Shift Expectations under Win-Win and No Win-Win Situations

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/298353982_Paradigm_Evolution_and_Sustainability_Thinking_Using_a_Sustainability_Inversegram_to_State_Paradigm_Death_and_Shift_Expectations_under_Win-Win_and_No_Win-Win_Situations

Article Adam Smith and Karl Marx Under the Sustainability Eye: Point...

Article Understanding the Death and Paradigm Shift of Adam Smith’s m...

Article The Unintended Consequences of Paradigm Death and Shift: Was...

Data Paradigm Evolution and Sustainability Thinking: Using a Sust...

Dear friends, here sharing my most recent article which I trust you may find interesting in terms of food for thoughts:

If Going From Free Markets to Non-Free Markets is the Way to Go: Does This Means the End of Rational Decision Making Thinking or Is This Just a Temporary Block of a Perfect Paradigm Shift to Green Markets?

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/312092336_If_Going_From_Free_Markets_to_Non-Free_Markets_is_the_Way_to_Go_Does_This_Means_the_End_of_Rational_Decision_Making_Thinking_or_Is_This_Just_a_Temporary_Block_of_a_Perfect_Paradigm_Shift_to_Green_Mark

Article If Going From Free Markets to Non-Free Markets is the Way to...