Steady State Economy Archives – Page 8 of 18 – Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy

Distinguishing Capitalism from Growth

November 21, 2019/4 Comments/in Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Steady State Herald /by Brian Czech

by James Magnus-Johnston

Capitalism and growth might have similar connotations, but they have important distinctions, too. “Capitalism” has become a clumsy catch-all for any number of value-laden projections—greed, big business, innovation, accumulation, complexity, workaholism. “Growth,” meanwhile, is a landmine of technical and cultural connotations, and I’ll explore just a couple of them here.

Technically speaking, their differences seem straightforward. Growth is a material increase in economic production and consumption. Capitalism is a highly complex term,

Book Review: Falter by Bill McKibben

November 13, 2019/1 Comment/in Biodiversity, Climate Change, Religion, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czech

By Herman Daly

Thanks to Bill McKibben, not just for his new book but for 30 years of honest, eloquent, and insightful environmental writing and activism.

He begins Falter by pointing out that “the human game we’ve been playing has no rules and no end, but it does come with two logical imperatives. The first is to keep it going, and the second is to keep it human.”

[Book Review] Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline

September 19, 2019/4 Comments/in Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Environment, Population, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czech

by Max Kummerow

In Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline (Crown Publishing Group, New York, 2019) Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson argue that population decline will bring many social and economic changes—some good, some bad. They assert that “In three decades, give or take…global population starts to decline.”

Note that their title is a bit misleading. World population will probably rise to over 10 billion before the slow decline would begin.

Keep Our Counties Great – Safe, Scenic, and Sustaining

July 18, 2019/3 Comments/in Brian Czech, Consumption, Economic Policy, Money and Investments, Politics, Population, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czech

By Brian Czech

When you look out your window, do you like what you see? Would you like to keep it that way? Are you afraid the forces of growth will deface, degrade, or “develop” your favorite places? Then Keep Our Counties Great is the campaign for you! This county-level initiative has long been pondered at CASSE, and it’s time to act. This does not mean we’re forgetting about the nation as the focal point of fiscal and monetary policy. Nor are we dropping our obligations and interests in international diplomacy. Rather, Keep Our Counties Great will have synergistic effects, especially with our long-term legislative project.

The World Fertility Transition: Moving Toward a Steady-State Population

May 29, 2019/1 Comment/in Population, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald, Sustainability /by Brian Czech

by Max Kummerow

“There’s just too many of us and no one is talking about it.”
—Biologist Patrick Benson in Meera Subramanian’s, A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis

It is hard to imagine a growing population supporting a steady state economy. “Jobs” and higher incomes for growing numbers of people anchor the platforms of political candidates and economists worldwide.

But what about a different approach?

A Journey of No Return, Not a Circular Economy

April 23, 2019/9 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 Czech

By 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

February 14, 2019/11 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 Czech

by 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

November 9, 2018/0 Comments/in Consumption, Economic Growth, Economic Policy, Energy, Population, Steady State Herald, Sustainability, Technology /by Brian Czech

By 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.

Unfurling the Banner at the Steady State Herald

April 29, 2018/0 Comments/in Brian Czech, Economic Growth, Environment, Herman Daly, Politics, Steady State Economy, Steady State Herald /by Brian Czech

~Steady State Herald Premiere~

By Brian Czech

It’s been quite a run with our CASSE blog, the Daly News. Regular readers will recall a consistent weekly column from March 2010 through late 2015. Then for a couple years it was hit-or-miss, for reasons already explained (in a Daly News entry, naturally.) Now we’re back to blogging regularly under a new banner: the Steady State Herald!

Where Does Inflation Hide?

February 20, 2018/5 Comments/in Banking, Inflation, Monetary Policy, Money and Investments, The Daly News /by Brian Czech

By Herman Daly

The talking heads in the media explain the recent fall in the stock market as follows: A fall in unemployment leads to a tight labor market and the prospect of wage increases; wage increase leads to threat of inflation; which leads the Fed to likely raise interest rates; which would lead to less borrowing, and to less investment in stocks, and consequently to an expected fall in stock prices.

Posts

by James Magnus-Johnston

by Max Kummerow

by Brian Czech