The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered
John Michael Greer
Language: English
Pages: 272
ISBN: 0865716730
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
The Wealth of Nature proposes a new model of economics based on the integral value of ecology. Building on the foundations of E. F. Schumacher's revolutionary "economics as if people mattered," this book examines the true cost of confusing money with wealth. By analyzing the mistakes of contemporary economics, it shows how an economy centered on natural capital—the raw materials that support human life—can move our society toward a more productive relationship with the planet that sustains us all.
The Wealth of Nature suggests public policy initiatives and personal choices that can help alleviate the economic impact of Peak Oil. These strategies must address not only financial concerns, but the issues of resource depletion and pollution as well. Examples include:
- Adjusting tax policy to penalize the use of natural nonrenewable resources over recycled materials
- Placing public welfare above corporate interests
- Empowering individuals, families, and communities by prioritizing local, sustainable solutions
- Building economies at an appropriate scale
Profoundly insightful and impeccably argued, this book is required reading for anyone interested in the intersection of the environment and the economy as we enter the twilight of the Age of Abundance.
John Michael Greer is a scholar of ecological history, an award-winning author, and an internationally renowned peak oil theorist whose blog The Archdruid Report has become one of the most widely cited online resources dealing with the future of industrial society.
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A New Ecology: Systems Perspective
Events. This is much less true in the business world, where predictions have results measured in quarterly profits or losses. Working in a setting where consistently bad predictions would have cost him his job, Schumacher was not at liberty to put theory ahead of evidence, and the conflict between what standard economic theory said and the realities Schumacher observed all around him must have had a role in making him the foremost economic heretic of his time. His economic ideas cover a great.
Nowadays, however, because the metastasis of money throughout the economy has trained nearly all of us to think that if you have enough money you can get whatever you want. The fact that the richest people in the world can put their entire fortunes into health care and still get old and die is one of the few persistent reminders that money cannot overcome the laws of Nature or provide access to goods and services that don’t exist. So how did money get transformed from a convenient yardstick for.
People alike consistently fail to provide useful guidance in the face of some of the most central challenges of our time. This may seem like an extreme statement, but the facts to back it up are as close as the nearest Internet news site. Consider the way that economists responded — or, rather, failed to respond — to the gargantuan multinational housing boom that imploded so spectacularly in 2008, taking much of the global economy with it.1 This was as close to a perfect example of a runaway.
Into play since the beginning of the Volcker era at the Federal Reserve Board, when “fighting inflation” became the mantra of the day; since then we’ve had a succession of crashes as colorful as anything the nineteenth century produced. Thirty years of economic policy dedicated to minimizing inflation have guaranteed a sizable second helping of economic collapse in the years to come. Still, in the longer term, I suspect inflation will also play a major role in the unraveling of the current mess.
About to perish en masse from building too many machines, the first reaction of most people in today’s industrial cultures would likely be to insist that the answer was to build more machines. Thus we will doubtless see plenty of shiny new machines built in the years to come, and they will doubtless do their fair share and more to push industrial civilization further down the arc of its decline. As the ancient Greeks knew well, it’s the essence of tragedy that the arete, the particular.