Recontexualizing Economics for Sustainability (and other topics)
By Chip Pitts [originally posted in Choose Privacy Week] The American Library Association’s current celebration of “Choose Privacy Week” highlights the diminishing scope – yet increased importance – of this choice. After all, privacy...
Every time someone asks me what econosystemics is, I find I tell it a little differently. I guess that’s the honest mark of an evolving paradigm; it gets a little clearer the more you...
When it comes to commenting on the world energy situation, Gregor MacDonald stands out as exceptional. If you haven’t been following Gregor.US, you should put that on your regular reading list — especially if...
by Chip Pitts The Fukushima nuclear disaster gives rise to many consequences, for the people and country of Japan, but also globally: consequences for the nuclear power industry, for energy more broadly, and for...
With the industrial revolution, beginning around 1775, large flows of energy and resources began to bypass the majority of humans under control of the higher sociopolitical layers. As represented by the dark arrows, fossil fuel and mineral resource flows fed a rapidly developing “high-technium”, implemented by engineers, architects, and managerial talent, and controlled by “capitalists” or political leaders. The lower social majority had to find a way to serve the Technium as “labor”, or continue basic subsistence largely outside the transformational processes of the Technium.
An IBM supercomputer named Watson easily defeated the two most successful past winners of the popular game show Jeopardy. Meanwhile, there are three billion brains out there trying to survive on $2.50 per day. What if we could tap into it? Could we figure out a way for the poor to earn income through brainwork rather than begging or back-breaking labor?
World population growth and rapid economic development in the less developed countries has put inexorable pressure on the value-chain economy. Over the past 40 years we have recognized that we are exhausting our fossil fuels, mines, soils, forests, and fisheries. The value chain economy is dyin
GDP is killing us. What we call Gross Domestic Product is an attempt to sum all the value added, in every step of production, of every monetary good or service within our national economy. But GDP doesn’t measure the standard of living of anybody. And that’s where it fails us and leads us into ruin.
A slideshare presentation introducing Econosystemics as a discipline of study merging economics and ecology in pursuit of sustainability.
We are used to cheap oil and inefficient consumption, so we have trouble seeing a higher value in that gallon of gasoline.
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