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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
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.
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.
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.
By Chris Nelder, Energy Transition Show
Is conventional, free-market economic theory really up to the task of energy transition and combating climate change?
By Bart Hawkins Kreps, An Outside Chance
There isn’t much news in most community newspapers these days.
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.
By Raphaël Souchier, Local Futures/ISEC
Big business is the main destroyer of our environment. But companies—both small and big—may well also be the only entities powerful and creative enough to reverse this trend.