Tag Archives: Economics for a Round Earth – the book
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
Capitalism versus Communism Continued – Towards a Better Economics
To come back to the subject of capitalism versus communism, the real extreme, the true opposite polarity, would be between flat-earth economics and a new economics, round-earth economics. The latter not only assumes the earth’s capacity as a source and sink to be limited, but incorporates these limits as directly relevant and determinative in every sphere of economic life. … 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
Minerals in National Parks – Leave Them in the Ground?
The extraction of minerals often leads not just to the consumption and depletion of the mined material, but also to the unintended but unavoidable consumption and depletion of rich and necessary biological resources, which are quite wasted in the process. This happens when minerals are located in nature reserves and national parks. … Read more
Misconceptions in Practice
The inadequate or wrong concepts of current economics lead to a number of misconceptions, some examples of which will be given.
“Soak the Rich”
The “soak the rich” taxation policy sometimes advocated or practiced by the political left is based on a confusion about the nature of wealth. … Read more
Ends and Means
Good Trends, Not Good Conditions
It is not the intention in this blog to establish a perfect world of perfect conditions. Such a thing has been imagined and described by many in the past, but it must always remain an abstract possibility in the indefinite future. … Read more
When the Boom comes
During the 1970′s and 1980′s governments and people generally in the more perfluent nations were waiting for an economic “upturn” or “recovery” to reduce what had become chronic high unemployment. The underlying assumption was that the high throughput-increase rates, the so-called “economic growth” rates of the 1950′s and 1960′s, were normal and that the more sluggish throughput-increase (TI) rates of latter years were an abnormal phenomenon that could be expected to speed up in time through this or that brilliant policy initiative or going back to the early economics of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; or by eliminating (depending on your point of view) businessmen, unions, migrants, taxes, civil servants, or computers; or just by waiting. … Read more
Oil Price Goes Down – Whoopee
Oil price goes down – whoopee
The price of crude oil dropped dramatically last year. This was not unexpected – supply and demand of this resource are finely balanced, so that any political or economic disturbance can cause large fluctuations.
What happens next is that the lower price flows through to the price of fuel, so demand rises. … Read more
Conclusion
It has not been the aim of these posts to provide detailed remedies for every current problem in or related to economics.
It has only been my purpose to outline a more practical and realistic relationship between the human economy and the world we live in, one which favours life over death, progress and enhancement over degeneration. … Read more
Budget Balancing Methods – Cost or Gain?
Measures to reduce expenditure and increase revenue raising by governments will often be seen in current economic terms as “costs” to the nation. But if seen in the light of the ideas put forward in the post about “Costs – What Really Costs Us and What Doesn’t?” they are economic gains. … Read more