Brian Romanchuk — Equilibrium And Steady State In SFC Models

Noah Smith had already observed that "equilibrium" is an ambiguous term in economics. Brian delves into specifics.

Bond Economics
Equilibrium And Steady State In SFC Models
Brian Romanchuk

Herman Daly — The Dualist Economics of Fredrick Soddy

Herman Daly gives a brief account of the philosophical basis of Fredrick Soddy's Cartesian (dualistic) approach to economics. 

Soddy, a (real) Nobel prize winner in chemistry, held that entropy is a chief limitation and that credit is not capable of creating perpetual motion, given finite real resources and the mathematics of compound interest. He was an opponent of economists' unlimited growth model and an advocate of 100% reserve banking under the gold standard of his day. Today he is better known as the founder of steady state economics, the forerunner of the economics of sustainability.

Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy
Dualist Economics
Herman Daly

Clive Thompson — Nothing Grows Forever

On moving from an unlimited growth to a steady-state model.

Read it at Mother Jones
Nothing Grows Forever
By Clive Thompson
(h/t Kevin Fathi via email)

Tom Murphy — Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist

Humorous as well as informative as physicist Tom Murphy proves that unlimited growth indefinitely over time is physically impossible.

Read it at Do the Math
Exponential Economist Meets Finite Physicist
by Tom Murphy | Associate Professor of Physics, University of California, San Diego

David A. Jones — Economic theology

I consider mainstream (neoclassical) economics a kind of modern day theology, and the question about angels is akin to the question, “How much economic growth (GDP growth) can our ecosystems cope with?” For the economic “theologians” the answer is once again “as much as you like,” because economic growth can supposedly be decoupled from physical impacts.

First a reminder about what GDP is. GDP stands for gross domestic product. It’s a measure of the total market value of the goods and services produced within a nation’s borders during a year. The basic formula for calculating GDP is:GDP = private consumption + gross investment + government spending + (exports − imports)

One way to calculate GDP in practice is to track the monetary exchanges that occur when final goods and services are purchased. GDP, therefore, measures how frantically money is flowing among people, companies, banks, and other players in the economy. And so the dancing angels become monetary exchanges, the pin becomes the Earth, and the “theological question” becomes, “How many monetary exchanges can fit on the Earth?”

Mainstream economists argue that a constant rate of GDP growth is desirable. In other words, monetary exchanges are supposed to grow exponentially and forever on a finite planet. This is only possible if an increasingly small component of GDP growth relates to physical impacts (i.e., a smaller and smaller number of activities that add to GDP produce any environmental impact). Otherwise the physical impact of our economies will grow exponentially too — a truly impossible scenario. You cannot have an infinite number of people dancing on the head of a pin! Unlike angels, people are corporeal beings.

Read the rest at The Daly News | Steady State Commentary and News
Economic theology: Angels dancing on the head of a pin
by David A. Jones