Articles: Economics for a Round Earth – the book
Digression: the Private Motor Car – a Basic Necessity?
The transport policy referred to in the previous post, where everyone is expected to undertake all journeys in their own big car, has become so entrenched in many countries over the last fifty years that it seems impossible to change or modify. … Read more
Limits to Growth?
Current economics assumes a world of unlimited resources, unlimited wealth. No matter how rapidly a resource is used, either (i) “They” will always find more, or (ii) substitute resources will always be found to serve to any required extent as well or better in place of the depleted resource. … Read more
Digression: “So Long As We Profit, Costs Elsewhere Aren’t Our Problem”?
A fault of flat earth economics as practiced in free enterprise economies is that it chops a nation’s economy into sections that are too often treated as being self-contained and independent of other sections. This is not a useful or realistic view. … Read more
Living Standard and Quality of Life
Another indirect adverse effect of environmental degradation on economic well-being arises from the effect of the degradation on people’s perception of their economic condition.
A further illustration of the erroneously perceived conflict between environmental conservation and economic well-being lies in this frequent reaction to some piece of environmental devastation: “Oh, well, at least it creates jobs for some people who wouldn’t have one otherwise.”
Certainly the degradation will keep some people busy for a while, but because of the depletion of the resource on which their jobs depend, there will be a net loss of jobs. … Read more
Borrowing to Invest to Get Rich
Governments in many less perfluent countries have borrowed thousands of millions of dollars in attempting to achieve permanent increases in the level of national economic activity and living standards.
The belief was that by borrowing “wealth” from the “rich” nations, they would be able to use it to generate more “wealth” of their own, enough to pay back the original “wealth” with interest and still leave enough to make their own country permanently wealthier. … Read more
Economic Growth Redefined
A more accurate definition of economic growth would be any change in the relation between the throughput and renewal rates, for a given resource for which throughput exceeds renewal, in which change the ratio of the throughput rate to the renewal rate falls, or conversely the ratio of renewal to throughput increases. … Read more
Consumer-Led Recovery
This post will cross at a different angle, ground covered already.
The belief is still currently widespread, and held by persons of influence in economic affairs, that a general increase in wages will boost the economy, i.e. increase the throughput rate and its derivative by increasing consumer demand. … Read more
Digression: Resource Consumption, Jobs, and Hands Off
Is increasing throughput always bad?
Not necessarily. Many times in these postings, the reduction of throughput is stated or implied to be a benefit. But this only applies to present-day conditions when so many resources are being depleted because they are throughput faster than they can be renewed. … Read more
Discussion of Costs Resumed
Partial Accounting: Another spurious “cost” often used as a basis for policy appears as a result of partial accounting. An urban public transport service might be reduced or eliminated on the grounds that the costs of the service are nowhere near covered by passenger fares, and that costs can be reduced and the nation or city thereby enriched by cutting the service. … Read more
Interest Rates and Ratio Distortion
It is necessary for a lender of money to charge interest because the purchasing power of each money unit is generally expected to fall with time. This has been the trend historically and the very operation of the economy tends to make it so. … Read more