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Requirements for a Future Economics

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Abstract

Bringing the preceding chapters together, this chapter articulates requirements for a future economics in the service of a materially stable, prosperous society. The prevailing Cartesian mindset of the twentieth-century orthodoxy must give way to a participatory perspective. Seeing the purpose of the economy as self-preservation through the regeneration of natural capacity implies the existence of certain social norms in relation to nature and the economy’s place within it. Normative requirements for economics inform a collection of core concepts for a future economics, which in turn suggest ways economists would interact with other sciences, communicate their discoveries to policymakers and the public, and educate the next generation.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Heisenberg (1962).

  2. 2.

    Langer (1957, p. 10).

  3. 3.

    Varela (1992): Afterword to Maturana and Varela (1998).

  4. 4.

    Maturana and Varela (1998, p. 241).

  5. 5.

    Maturana and Varela (1998, p. 245).

  6. 6.

    Maturana and Varela (1998, p. 244).

  7. 7.

    Georgescu-Roegen (1971, p. 59).

  8. 8.

    Maturana and Varela (1998, p. 122).

  9. 9.

    Maturana and Varela (1998, p. 242).

  10. 10.

    Maturana and Varela (1998, p. 245).

  11. 11.

    Berman (1981, p. 149).

  12. 12.

    A growing literature is surveyed by An (2012), Balbi and Giupponi (2009), Farmer et al. (2015), Filatova et al. (2013), Hoekstra et al. (2017), and Patt and Siebenhüner (2005).

  13. 13.

    Galbraith (1973), Kelly (2012), and Daly (1991).

  14. 14.

    Dodd (2014, p. 28), citing Simmel (1900, 1907).

  15. 15.

    Dodd (2014, p. 30).

  16. 16.

    Orrell and Chlupatý (2016, p. 176).

  17. 17.

    As Drengson (1995, pp. 89–90) describes, the philosopher A.N. Whitehead earlier arrived at a similar conclusion (Whitehead 1938). The proposition is similar to the ‘Great Spirit’ of Native Americans or the transpersonal ‘Self’ of Eastern philosophy, yet it is grounded in Western reasoning. It is concrete and not mystical in any way, not necessitating any kind of ritualized transcendence to comprehend.

  18. 18.

    Mathews (1995, p. 127).

  19. 19.

    Drengson (1995, pp. 92–93).

  20. 20.

    Stiglitz (2003, p. 306).

  21. 21.

    Simon (1991).

  22. 22.

    Berman (1981, p. 269).

  23. 23.

    Goodwin et al. (2009, p. 271).

  24. 24.

    Goodwin et al. (2009, p. 252).

  25. 25.

    Goodwin et al. (2009, p. 263).

  26. 26.

    See, for example, in Naess and Rothenberg (1989, pp. 124–125) and Marglin (2008, p. 50).

  27. 27.

    It is commonplace in economics, as in other mathematical sciences, to use the Hamiltonian function, \({\mathcal{H}}\), to describe systems in continuous time having many degrees of freedom. Although the complexity of the system of equations increases exponentially above two degrees of freedom, it remains a useful method for models where many variables are held constant and only a few are allowed to vary, such as in sensitivity analyses.

  28. 28.

    Frank (1999, p. 158).

  29. 29.

    Naess and Rothenberg (1989, p. 123).

  30. 30.

    The term ‘capacitism’, it should be noted, has alternate uses in other areas. It can refer to discrimination against people who are incapacitated by injuries or disabilities, and it has also been used in philosophy to describe an externalist view of evidence and knowledge (Schellenberg 2018, ch. 10).

  31. 31.

    Ponting (1992), cited in Naess (2008, p. 286).

  32. 32.

    See Marwell and Ames (1981) and Frank et al. (1993).

  33. 33.

    Colander (2010, Part 1).

  34. 34.

    Raworth (2017, p. 134).

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  1. San Rafael, CA, USA

    Fraser Murison Smith

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Murison Smith, F. (2019). Requirements for a Future Economics. In: Economics of a Crowded Planet. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31798-0_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31798-0_10

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