The Focus is ‘Enough’ Rather Than ‘More’

By Sara Küpfer, Journal by getAbstract

Rob Dietz: Steady-state economics is a sustainable alternative to mainstream or neoclassical economics, which assumes perpetual growth of production and consumption. Such an economy keeps material and energy use within ecological limits, and the unsustainable (and unrealistic) goal of continuously increasing income and consumption is replaced by the goal of improving quality of life for all. In short, the focus is enough rather than more.

What Might We Learn from COVID-19?

By Frederic Jennings, Resilience.org

We make decisions, not on known outcomes but on imagined projections standing on theories of how things work. These projections have an ethical range called the ‘planning horizon.’ The better we understand the world the broader the reach of our anticipations. Conscience serves to measure how well we encompass social effects.

Economists and climate change: Building castles in the sky

By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights

Economist John Kenneth Galbraith once said that "the only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable." Unfortunately, when some economists turn their sights on the economics of climate change, their unreliable methods imperil not just the economic life of humankind but its very existence.

Small Farms don’t Produce Most the of the Worlds’ Food – But they Could Produce All

By Gunnar Rundgren, Garden Earth

The key message is that the potential of small farms for global food production is determined by economic conditions rather than biological, ecological or agronomic limitations.

The lost chances of the Greens, parts II and III

By Brian Kaller, Restoring Mayberry

Interview with the late Rhoda Gilman, one of the early leaders of the Green movement. She talks about the origins of the Greens and Adam Smith's vision of capitalism. "If we were living in Adam Smith’s world, we wouldn’t be doing badly at all; the Greens would be right at home."

On Faiths, Keeping Them and Losing Them…

By Brian Davey, Feasta

Although we may not think that we do, we all live with faiths – ideas that we take for granted that appear so obvious that we do not feel a need to re-examine them – ideas that we do not usually want to re-examine.

An Introduction to Political Economy

By John Michael Greer, Ecosophia

So economics isn’t a science. It also wasn’t founded by Adam Smith. What Adam Smith founded, rather, was political economy. You won’t hear much about that field of study these days, and that’s not an accident. Political economy, as the name indicates, explores the relations between wealth and power in a society. 

Our search for economic growth invites fraud

By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights

In his book "The End of Normal" economist James Galbraith makes a compelling case that our search for a return to the fast rate of economic growth experienced in the United States from 1945 to 1970 has led to fraud--fraud enabled by government actions that sought to "free the economy" from the shackles of "overregulation" and update the regulatory framework to meet "new challenges" such as globalization.

On Surplus, Part 3: How Surplus (Wealth) is Created

By Erik Lindberg, Transition Milwaukee

The foundational industrial and productive, surplus-creating, part of the economy still exists—only now it is mainly out of sight.

Can Economics Guide the Energy Transition?

By Chris Nelder, Energy Transition Show

Is conventional, free-market economic theory really up to the task of energy transition and combating climate change?

Newspapers, running on empty

By Bart Hawkins Kreps, An Outside Chance

There isn’t much news in most community newspapers these days. 

‘Credo’: Economics is a Belief System – and We are Ruled by Fundamentalists

By Paul Mobbs, The Ecologist

Brian Davey's new book, Credo: Economic Beliefs in a World in Crisis, is an analysis of economic theory as if it were a system of religious belief.