Alternative economics (First of three parts)

The past weeks were quiet interesting after I came out with an article on the theory of “steady state economy.” Aside emails of compliments and appreciation, I was also elated to be invited to contribute to their web journal to write about alternative economics in which I politely refused for my lack of credentials. It was flattering and honoring nonetheless to have been mistaken for an academician in this field.

Although I did study economics in college as a requirement for students in the social sciences but my real encounters with economics were obtained through private readings, personal acquaintances with economists and authors as well as my attendance to conferences from here and abroad. My being a regular contributor to this paper's trade and industry section for the last ten years and my exposure to the business community also prompt me to diligently do research on many of its rudiments.

What makes economics an endearing subject for me is its past affair with philosophy in which, admittedly, I am more enthused to discuss the whole time than economics.

Economics is a difficult and exasperating field of study. It is laden with paradox and conjectures where its immutable property is its lack of constancy and certainty. It is indifferent and insensitive to moral criteria since it is tethered to the satisfaction of the precepts of production or supply and demand than to the causalities of such precepts for which they are actually tied to -- the human behavior.

It is for such reason, too, that I am averse to calling it a discipline. And if religion is the most heavily argued subject, economics comes third in my list after politics. Incidentally, these three top in our history books as the cause of all the world's past troubles. And today, economics still form part of the same unholy triune that disturbs this planet's equilibrium.

And for so long as we tie economic progress to setting new highs in our GNPs and GDPs, such economy only portends our own doom. 

This is also the general view of the emails I received recently. For the most part, and to my surprise, many of them come from students of economics in Europe. There seems to be an emerging advocacy out there for alternative economics in the wake of growing awareness and concern for the environment that’s under duress by the whims of industrialization and consumerism.

Herman E. Daly and Joshua Farley author of “Ecological Economics” writes "As this is written, there are news reports of a group of economics students in French and British universities who are rebelling against what they are being taught." The rebellion seeks to send a strong statement against perpetuating current economic archetypes in schools as contrary to natural law and conscience.

Thus, the formation of a Society for Post-Autistic Economics which is bent on lobbying against the teaching of economics based on fantasy than reality. The members decried it tersely as "abnormal subjectivity." For the Society, what is currently taught and held as ideals of economic well being i.e., the relentless pursuit for perpetual growth, is impractical and pointless. 

Daly and Farley also supports that the "Current 'canonical assumptions' of insatiable wants and infinite resources, leading to growth forever, are simply not founded in reality." In other words, it is contrary to common sense to espouse for infinite growth knowing that we live in a finite planet.

Ecological Economics presents itself not as an alternative but foundational to the study of economics. “It seeks to ground economic thinking in the dual realities and constraints of our biophysical and moral environments.” While its authors accept more of traditional economics than they reject, but they do certainly reject some of the things for which most of us were taught in school.

(To be continued…)

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