The Wealth

of NatureEconomics as if

Survival Mattered

John Michael Greer

Miyeko InafukuEcological Economics

Spring 2012

Adam Smith – same year as Declaration of

Independence & beginning of British Industrialism Rise of economics not accompanied by improvement

in societies’ abilities to manage economic affairs Ernst Friedrich Schumacher:

Distinction between primary and secondary goods Central role of E among primary goods Cost/worker of establishing/maintaining a workplace Look at basic assumptions/metaphysics of economics

We must “revision” the way we deal with production/distribution of goods/services

A Guide for the Perplexed

The Failure of

Economics The illusion of

invincibility The failure of markets Harnessing hippogriffs The market as

commons E’s rules Lies and statistics Economic superstitions Undead money

“…a world that has nearly seven billion people

on it and a dwindling supply of fossil fuels can do without the assumption that putting people out of work and replacing them with machines powered by fossil fuels is the way to prosperity.”

The Failure of Economics

The power of paradigms Primary and secondary goods Exchange value and nature’s wealth The anti-ecology of money The finance trap Before money

The 3 Economies

The metastasis of money The flight into abstraction The twilight of money The money bubble The end of investment

The Metaphysics of Money

E follows its bliss A crisis of concentration Barbarism and good brandy Working with diffuse energy The economics of entropy

The Price of Energy

The end of the Information Age The economics of contraction The twilight of the machine Toward appropriate technologies Becoming a Third World Country The twilight of the American Empire Survival isn’t cost effective

The Appropriate Tools

“It should be obvious that whether or not a given

technology continues to exist in a time of faltering abundance depends on three economic factors:” Are the things done by the tech. necessities or luxuries?

If they are necessities, just how necessary are they? Can the same things, or at least the necessary portion of

them, be done by another tech. at a lower cost in scarce resources?

How do the benefits gained by keeping the tech. supplied with the scarce resources it needs measure up to benefits gained by putting those same resources to other uses?

The Appropriate Tools

Remembering what worked Defending the commons Taxing the right things Housebreaking the corporations A crisis of complexity Back to the future A future of victory gardens After retirement

The Road Ahead

Small is Beautiful

Age of abundance is over Monasteries “Mvmts away from an obsession with material

wealth are in fact very common in civilizations that have passed the Hubbert peak of their own core resource base…In a contracting economy, it becomes easier to notice that the less you need, the less vulnerable you are to the ups and downs of fortune, and the more you can get done of whatever it is that you want to do.”

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