These are the CASSE blog articles on economic policy.
Herman Daly provided the key scaffolding for modern steady-state economic theory. But he built on the ideas of many before him, including Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen, Daly’s key advisor at Vanderbilt University. The term “steady state” is often used to describe an economy where capital stock is steady but growth may persist. But Daly was clear that his steady state was a homeostasis beyond growth,
Lovers of technology tend to love quantitative analysis. But when it comes to the accounting of Earth’s biocapacity and our ecological footprint, these same technophiles are often happy to ignore simple arithmetic. While increasingly rigorous and reliable, the “overshoot” accounting they dismiss does include some difficult-to-measure variables. It will always be imperfect.
But for many nearsighted techno-optimists, this is beside the point. They argue that modern scientists have engineered such technological marvels that we should only expect more,
I’ve lived in Albemarle County, Virginia, for over forty years. Albemarle is a mostly rural county in the Piedmont region. It surrounds the city of Charlottesville.
For decades, the county valued its open spaces and created many policies to ensure their protection. Recently, leadership has taken a pro-development turn, jeopardizing citizens’ quality of life and many of our community’s natural features.
In the 1990s and 2000s,
Many are beginning to sense that there is a diminishing relationship between increasing gross domestic product (GDP) and broad prosperity or “quality of life.” Environmental perils are a big part of this—from dying oceans and freshwater shortages to extreme weather events and epidemics. People readily feel these changes, even without knowing their true extent. Technological advances notwithstanding, there is little doubt that ongoing “growth” only perpetuates and amplifies such perils.
[This is an edited version of the article that first appeared on January 23, 2026. It has been edited for geographic accuracy in the first two paragraphs.]
Pennsylvania is known for its public lands and forests. Beautiful Elk County, Pennsylvania, is no exception. It boasts rugged, forested scenery with rolling hills, deep valleys, numerous streams, and vast woodlands. Part of the Pennsylvania Wilds,
In industrially advanced countries, we have massively overshot the limits to economic growth. Climate change, peak oil, soil erosion, mass extinctions, and groundwater depletion are already biting into our well-being. Economic and social collapse seems to be the default.
We need “simple living”—the voluntary reduction of consumption—but on a massive scale. We need other things too, like social justice and cultural changes. But let’s focus on the economic logistics of simple living.
Today, we see endless suburban sprawl and no shortage of stories about the U.S. affordable-housing crisis. So, why aren’t there enough homes yet?
The story is one of “artificial scarcity,” in which there are plenty of means to close the affordable-housing gap, but scarcity is created by investment companies buying up homes. Investors own 20 percent of single-family homes in the United States. Loopholes in the U.S.
While U.S. federal land management agencies have seldom been bastions of conservationist vision, their level of regulatory capture has reached a new high in the Trump era. From opening up protected areas to oil and gas development to efforts to sell public lands outright, the current administration and Congress are looking to turn over public lands to extractive industry for its private profit.
We are in a new era of public lands mismanagement,
The fight to save Sledge Forest in New Hanover County, covered in the Steady State Herald this past spring, continues in earnest. As reported then, Hilton Bluffs—a massive, 4,000-unit development—pits county residents against Copper Builders, an outside developer. The proposal threatens what locals refer to as “The Last Forest.” The community’s resistance, spearheaded by the group Save Sledge Forest, has continued and grown,
As Edwin Starr once sang: “War, what is it good for?” If we’re to believe the United Kingdom’s Labour Party government, it’s good for boosting GDP and protecting your population from the existential threat of Russia.
But one thing increased militarisation most certainly isn’t good for is the environment. Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently announced his plan to steadily increase the defence budget over the next decade.