The One Percent: Not Kristallnacht but Lebensraum
The talking points of conspicuous consumers can be just as obnoxious as their purchasing habits.
These are the CASSE blog articles on consumption.
A Journey of No Return, Not a Circular Economy
/9 Comments/in Consumption, Economic Growth, Energy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Jobs and Employment, Population, Poverty, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability, Technology /by Brian CzechBy Herman Daly
The economic process is not a mechanical analog that can be run forward and backward, nor a circular process that can return to any previous state. Rather it is an irreversible and irrevocable process moving in the direction of time’s arrow of increasing entropy [1]. Finitude and entropy guarantee that the economic life of our species will be a journey of no return. Therefore even a stationary economy, in the classical sense of constant population and constant capital stock, is ultimately a journey of no return, because the metabolic throughput of matter and energy required to maintain constant stocks of people and physical capital, in the face of depreciation and death, is an entropic flow from ever less concentrated sources to ever filling sinks – and both sources and sinks are finite.
The Green New Deal: What’s Really Green and What’s Really New
/11 Comments/in Climate Change, Consumption, Corporate Reform, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Environment, Food and Agriculture, Politics, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czechby Brian Czech
Ask Americans what the Green New Deal is all about, and you’ll get two basic answers. Most often you’ll hear, “It’s about moving to renewable energy in order to fight climate change.” You’ll also hear, from a camp further right, “It’s all about socialism!”
Either way, the really green, really new feature is overlooked. What the Green New Deal is really about is the transition to a steady state economy.
Neocornucopianism and the Steady State: Part I
/0 Comments/in Consumption, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Energy, Population, Steady State Herald, Sustainability, Technology /by Brian CzechBy Josh Farley
Perhaps the main reason people reject the need for a steady state economy is some form of cornucopianism, the belief that technological progress will overcome all ecological and physical limits, allowing endless economic growth into the indefinite future. Cornucopianism has several flavors, and I will describe three: mainstream economics, eco-modernism, and singularity theory.
Population and the Steady State Economy
/2 Comments/in Consumption, Environment, Jobs and Employment, Population, Poverty, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian CzechBy Max Kummerow
Sir David Attenborough remarked in a 2011 presidential lecture to the Royal Society that “every environmental and social problem is made more difficult and ultimately impossible to solve with ever more people.” Wherever women’s status has improved and societies modernized, he said, birth rates have fallen. He begged his audience to “talk about population.”
The Poison Beer of GDP
/1 Comment/in Consumption, Steady State Herald /by Brian CzechBy Herman Daly
Disaggregating reported GDP growth to reveal the differences in growth by income class, as per the Schumer-Heinrich Bill, is a good idea. After all, telling us, say, that average income grew by 4% is not nearly as informative as telling us that the richest ten percent received the entire growth increment while the bottom ten percent suffered a decline in income.
No Mere Resolution: The Vermont Legislature and the Steady State Economy
/2 Comments/in Brian Czech, Consumption, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Steady State Economy, The Daly News /by Brian Czechby Brian Czech
Here’s a day to remember: May 6, 2016. That’s the day when, late in the afternoon, the Legislature of the State of Vermont passed H.C.R. 412, “House Concurrent Resolution Honoring the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy for Its Important Work.” In a nation where acts of steady statesmanship – political support for a steady state economy – have only just begun, the Vermont Legislature has offered a perfect and prescient precedent.
Appropriate Scarcity
/8 Comments/in Consumption, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Steady State Economy, The Daly News /by Brian Czechby Robert A. Herendeen
… appealing to people to restrain themselves [by] self-enforced abstinence alone is a waste of time. By and large, we consume as much as our incomes allow…. changes… cannot take place without constraints that apply to everyone rather than everyone else. Manmade global warming cannot be restrained unless we persuade the government to force us to change the way we live.
—George Monbiot, Heat (2006/2009)
The results indicate that the likelihood of paying a positive amount for supporting renewable energy is higher under a mandatory scheme compared to a voluntary payment option in the UK.
Where is Pope Francis on Economic Growth?
/7 Comments/in Consumption, Economic Growth, Environment, Religion, The Daly News /by Brian Czechby David Kane
Those who believe that there is a fundamental conflict between economic growth and environmental protection will find Pope Francis’ recent encyclical, Laudato Si (Praised Be), a welcome addition to the literature; as well as an important tool in helping others, especially Catholics, to understand and accept the limitations of economic growth. Pope Francis explains how the environmental and social crises we are experiencing will require “profound changes in lifestyles,
Would the Steady State Economy Be a Miracle?
/6 Comments/in Consumption, Economic Policy, Environment, Population, Religion, Steady State Economy, The Daly News /by Brian Czechby Herman Daly
Many people think that advocating a steady state economy is like wishing for a miracle. I understand their reasoning and take their point—in the present era of growthism, it does seem rather like advocating a miracle. But that raises the question of exactly what is a miracle? And how many other miracles are we wishing for these days? Of course, science, by definition of its method, rules out the existence of miracles,
