NATURAL ECONOMICS
LIVING with SENSITIVITY & RESPONSIBILITY — PLACE & PEOPLE CONNECTED
What is our relationship with the world that sustains and nourishes us, and how do we act and interact in a healthy and productive way?
The second of three pamphlets outlines a possible and internally consistent economic system based on the patterns and processes of nature, where we are one part of a much greater whole.
It starts with the following prologue:
There should be less spending on weapons of war and more on humanitarian development.
There should be enough food in the world to feed everyone.
There should not be any poverty.
Kids should not go to school barefoot and hungry in an affluent society.
There should be a restraint on the use of fossil fuels, and a reduction in our output of carbon to the atmosphere.
We should reduce our ecological footprint and protect the habitats of other species.
Food should be nutritious and healthy.
We should be able to swim in our rivers and fish in our seas.
Governments should listen to their people.
Legal systems should be just.
There are lots of ‘shoulds’.
But wishing or desiring is not reality, and is not realising.
There are good reasons why things are the way they are, and much of it has to do with the economy.
“It’s the economy, stupid.”
But it is a rapacious and highly exploitive economy with an in-built driver of economic growth.
An economy controlled and managed by corporations for private profit, where everything is a commodity to be bought and sold.
An economy driven by financial power, to give excessive wealth to a few from unearned income.
Without fundamentally changing the way the economy works, all attempts at social redress and a fairer sharing will, sooner or later, fall flat. Repeatedly.
There is a disconnection between our way of life and the economy that provides it, and the ways of nature and life on planet Earth.
To understand an economy that allows and encourages us to live in partnership and with respect and responsibility, we have to understand nature.
This means we have to reconnect.
Then we can envision a natural economics, of healthy sustenance and good living for all.
An economy that is constructive and regenerative, providing sufficiently for our needs, while maintaining the ecosystems and habitats of our environments.
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