Research and teaching undergraduates in economics the myth of endless growth?
Brian Czech, a disciple of Herman Daly, is the president, I believe, of CASSE, the Center for the Advancement of Steady State Economics, http://steadystate.org/ . They have the organization; however, they have not realized yet that the problems with operating a steady-state market economy are insurmountable. David Delaney has written the best explanation I know of for the necessity of growth in a capitalist economy: http://www.dematerialism.net/On%20Capitalism2.html#delaney Last, but I hope not least, my own writing and computation on the subject might be worth looking at. I aim at completeness above all and I may write more than you want to read; but, begin at my blog http://eroei.blogspot.com/ and move on to even fewer words at http://dematerialism.wikispaces.com before looking at the much longer papers in the Energy section of http://dematerialism.net/ I believe "Energy in a Mark II Economy" and "On the Conservation-within-Capitalism" are the best I have done. Also, see the much shorter paper "Energy in a Natural Economy".
http://dematerialism.net/Mark-II-Economy.html
http://dematerialism.net/CwC.html
http://dematerialism.net/ne.htm
There is also Dr Daniel O'Neill at the University of Leeds (http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/people/d.oneill). He is the co-author, with other CASSE members, of the excellent book "Enough is Enough" (http://steadystate.org/discover/enough-is-enough/)
Yes, I read the book. However, there was one thing missing in their program. I discussed this elsewhere; so, I will try to find my old remarks to save time.
I regret that I did not write Brian Czech immediately upon completing the book because I might have phrased my objections more diplomatically. The thing is this: If we have a steady-state economy that permitted competition for wealth in any form, those most adept at such games would soon have all or almost all of the wealth. Well, as it turns out, economic growth is practically zero if not negative; therefore, the rich do control almost all the wealth, except, of course, the scraps that they let fall from the table in order to attract toadies and other supporters. Indeed, like never before, the rich get richer, while, perforce, the poor get poorer. There is nothing in a steady-state economy thatg permits "all boats to rise". Consequently, plain arithmetic backs up my moral objections to societies that permit resource dominance. But, what's that you say? "It goes against human nature." It certainly does, just as the prohibition on wife beating goes against human nature. It is essential to civilized society to prohibit every such mal-adaptive aspect of human nature. As Katherine Hepburn's character in The African Queen said, "Human nature, ..., is what we are put here to rise above."
I guess reading Steady-state economics (SSE) by Herman Daly, remains still very important today. In that book three policies are mentioned in order to achieve SSE: 1) a cap on throughput; 2) measures to staiblise population and 3) a distributist institution (aimed at achieveing a fair distribution of income and wealth). Concerning the first institution (the cap on throughput), I think the "Cap & Share" initiative developed by FEASTA (www.feasta.org) is extremely interesting. The other two policies need to be further specified in order to be manageable. However, there is one policy missing in Herman Daly's book, and that is the reform of the monetary system. The issue is tackled in the book "Enough is Enough", but in this respect I recommend reading the suggestion put forward by Michael Rowbotham in "The grip of death", by the organization positive money (www.positivemoney.org.uk) and by Professor Steve Keen on his blog and/or papers and/or books.
As luck would have it, I recently completed a paper that Dave Kimble laughed at when I said that "we may take land, energy, and time to be a linearly independent set of basis vectors in the three-dimensional vector space of economic value". However, since this is ResearchGate, I'll take a chance and submit the original version, which can be found at http://dematerialism.net/cc1.htm
Dear David, a comment here with all posivite intentions.
When Adam smith stated the traditional market as an economy only driven market he assumed social and environmental externality neutrality. As these assumptions turned to be wrong as they led to over production and over consumption and to the social and environmental crises of today....
Before 1987 it seems there were attempts to address the social and environmental externalities associated with economic growth through environmental economic thining,green economic thinking, and ecolological economic thinking, including the state state approach directed to bring Adam Smith's model to a steady state......lnstead of internalizing issues it seems attention was placed on how to best deal with those externalities....and somehow social and environmental essues became so bad that more direct action was needed...
It was not until 1987 when the brunland commission called for the inclusion of social and environmental issues within economic thinking suggesting the use of sustainable development thinking and means to achieve that.....
In otherwords, the bruntland commission called in 1987 for internalizing social and environmental issues in enocmic models and eliminate once and for all those exteralities assumptions; and make them endogenous issues, and from 1987 to 2012 different sustainable development approaches were followed and proposed; and in RIO 2012/UNCSD if was formally accepted that green markets/green growth based development was replacing the pure economy model of Adam Smith, but internalizing only environmental issues this time.....
We should expect that the shift from Adam Smith's traditional market(A deep paradigm based model) to green markets(a partnership paradigm based model) in 2012 leaves behind ideas designed to correct Adam Smith's model as the green market is a different paradigm, and if those previous ideas can be useful under green markets they need to be updated in order to respect of the theory-practice consistency principle....the reality has changed, our economic theory/thinking must be adapted or abandoned....
In summary, the current market structure, the green market structure needs a new way of thinking or an updated base of thoughts/thinking....
Does not the paradigm shift from Adam Smith's market to green markets affects ideas such as the steady state idea since the shift means that Adam Smith's markets have always been distorted?
Perhaps as part of your program you should introduce your students to the idea of sustainability markets/sustainability theory....If Adam Smith's model would have been fully corrected by RIO 2012/UNCSD then they would have stated a sustainability market to replace Adam Smith's market instead of green markets, but they implemented a partial correction, they internalized only environmental issues, to state the eco-economic market or green market, which later on may need a social correction to make it socially friendly by design.
Wish you have a nice day
