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Framework for an Economics of a Crowded Planet

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Economics of a Crowded Planet

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Abstract

To serve a future large, prosperous, materially stable economy, economics needs a new way of thinking. Specifically, it needs to analyze the economy and economic processes as nested subsystems of natural processes. This chapter draws upon complexity theory and hierarchy theory to propose a theoretical framework for a future economics, in which economic and natural processes are treated as homologous, overlapping systems of agents. This ontology has far-reaching epistemological and methodological implications for an economics of the future.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Marshall (1920, p. 27).

  2. 2.

    Diamond (2005).

  3. 3.

    Georgescu-Roegen (1971, pp. 292–298).

  4. 4.

    Marshall (1920, p. 1).

  5. 5.

    There already exists theoretical support for this hypothesis: see Blasch and Ohndorf (2015), for example.

  6. 6.

    See, for example, Vitousek et al. (1986, 1997).

  7. 7.

    See, for example, Odum (1994, pp. 27–35, 43, 57, 105).

  8. 8.

    Eldredge and Salthe (1984), Vrba and Eldredge (1984), and Salthe (2012).

  9. 9.

    Maturana and Varela (1998).

  10. 10.

    Maturana and Varela (1998, p. 74).

  11. 11.

    Some authors have proposed ‘laws’ of evolutionary systems, such as Holland (1975), who was one of the early pioneers in complex adaptive systems, as well as Melanie Mitchell (1996) for genetic algorithms.

  12. 12.

    Beinhocker (2006) p. 14.

  13. 13.

    Boulding (1962), Odum (1971, 1994), and Bennett and Gosnell (2015).

  14. 14.

    Claude Shannon and Ralph Hartley were pioneers in the 1940s; a recent overview is provided by Parrondo et al. (2015).

  15. 15.

    Keynes (1936, p. 376).

  16. 16.

    The nature of barter as largely unreported transactions means that exact figures are hard to come by; however, many estimates place it between about 10% and 25% of GDP.

  17. 17.

    Clements (1916).

  18. 18.

    Odum (1994, p. 443).

  19. 19.

    This self-similarity at different scales of organization is a hallmark of hierarchically contained systems in the sense defined earlier.

  20. 20.

    For example, Begon et al. (2006, ch. 16).

  21. 21.

    Kamijo et al. (2002) documented these stages on the Japanese volcanic island of Miyake-jima from bare lava to mature forest.

  22. 22.

    Holling (1986) cited in Costanza and Folke (1996, p. 14).

  23. 23.

    Costanza and Folke (1996, p. 15) cite some examples.

  24. 24.

    Georgescu-Roegen (1971, pp. 268–269).

  25. 25.

    Schumpeter (1950).

  26. 26.

    Holling and Sanderson (1996, pp. 68–71).

  27. 27.

    Galbraith (1973, pp. 116–117).

  28. 28.

    See Begon et al. (2006, chs. 20 and 21).

  29. 29.

    Stiglitz (2003, p. 271).

  30. 30.

    Dawkins (1976).

  31. 31.

    As Boulding (1962, p. 167) pointed out, “the student of each system must investigate its own laws, and argument by analogy is a sure indication of a weak science.”

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    Fraser Murison Smith

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Murison Smith, F. (2019). Framework for an Economics of a Crowded Planet. In: Economics of a Crowded Planet. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31798-0_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31798-0_9

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