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Steady-state economics




What’s the most environmentally-damaging thing that a human can do?

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This question is really important for us at Lowimpact.org, because we’re all about providing information and other resources on ways that people can live in a less environmentally-damaging way. So I was very interested to see that researchers at Lund University in Sweden recently put the hours in

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Just some of the huge number of cars in the world

In a perpetually-growing economy, what will limit the number of cars in the world?

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I come back to the subject of economic growth reasonably regularly, or to be more specific, the concept of perpetual, constant, infinite growth. And I’ll keep doing it until this absurd idea is consigned to the same historical category as phlogiston or a geocentric universe.

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How money causes poverty (plus war and ecological destruction), and what could replace it

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Exchange has always been part of the human story, whether between individuals, tribes or nations. Some people have what others don’t, due to geography or skill, and exchange is a means of getting what you don’t have, and giving what you have a surplus of.

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Time to ditch the corporate sector in favour of the solidarity economy

Why an economy that’s not dominated by the corporate sector would be much better for individuals, communities and nature

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Lowimpact.org is an organisation that was founded by two people in 2001 because of concerns about ecological damage and what that might mean for the future of humanity. The focus has always been on individual lifestyle change

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'Feeding the beast': is democracy obsolete?

Is democracy obsolete, and can we ever achieve it as long as we have to keep feeding ‘the beast’?

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In the West, there’s a word that usually accompanies ‘democracy’, and that word is ‘liberal’. Liberal democracies – that’s what we have in the West. That’s liberal, as in liberty / freedom; and that’s certainly what classical liberalism stood for in its infancy.

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On the Wealth of Nations by P.J. O'Rourke

How to misrepresent Adam Smith: review of P. J. O’Rourke’s ‘On the Wealth of Nations’

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I don’t know if you’re familiar with P. J., but he’s an excellent writer, and he’s extremely, acerbically funny. With this book, as with his Give War a Chance, several times he made me spit my tea out and have to stop to wipe tea off the page.

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Is the quest for perpetual economic growth the witch-burning of our times?

Is the quest for perpetual economic growth the witch-burning of our times, and could this be the year we start to challenge it?

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Johannes Kepler was one of the major figures in the 17th century Scientific Revolution. In his day, people were grappling with the question of whether the earth was the centre of the universe, as the Church said it was, or whether it was just another planet, revolving around the Sun

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obama

Obama says we’ll be ‘at the back of the queue’ for TTIP if we leave the EU; that’s the best argument I’ve heard for Brexit

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Trade deals (and in fact, the EU) exist to maximise growth and to orient our economies towards exports. From an environmental perspective, this is the exact opposite of what we should be doing.

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money-visualisation

What’s the relative value of the world’s gold, Bitcoins, banknotes, derivatives, stocks & shares, property etc. See this incredible visualisation

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Do you have any idea of the value of all the Bitcoins in the world, compared to, say, the value of all the silver in the world, or compared to the wealth of Warren Buffet, or compared to the amount of global debt etc.?

Read more about What’s the relative value of the world’s gold, Bitcoins, banknotes, derivatives, stocks & shares, property etc. See this incredible visualisation