ECONOMICS
Most people accept things as they are and don’t think to ask WHY..?
A few dream of things that never were and ask
WHY NOT..?
OΔCities could be the ideal platform – and catalyst – for an economic system not based on ever-increasing levels of debt, boom and bust cycles, vast quantities of waste, and obscene wealth-gaps. The ideal of a STEADY STATE ECONOMY combines the best elements of socialism and capitalism and rejects the fantasy that endless economic growth is the ultimate solution to all socio-political problems. SSE may be the long sought for “middle way” – the Holy Grail of economics and politics.
OΔCities could be the ideal platform – and catalyst – for an economic system not based on ever-increasing levels of debt, boom and bust cycles, vast quantities of waste, and obscene wealth-gaps. The ideal of a STEADY STATE ECONOMY combines the best elements of socialism and capitalism and rejects the fantasy that endless economic growth is the ultimate solution to all socio-political problems. SSE may be the long sought for “middle way” – the Holy Grail of economics and politics.
OΔCities will become a reality when influential people get excited about their economic potential
OΔCities will become a reality when influential people get excited about their economic potential
The present highly-leveraged debt-based system of continuous (even infinite) “growth” based on the extraction of ever more natural resources and the mass-production of disposable goods, built-in obsolescence, and the obsession with “creating jobs” and “growth” and “housing ladders” is clearly unsustainable. We all know deep down that one day – perhaps very soon – the whole system will collapse like a pack of cards, but we try to put that thought to the back of our minds because nobody knows what to replace it with.
The present highly-leveraged debt-based system of continuous (even infinite) “growth” based on the extraction of ever more natural resources and the mass-production of disposable goods, built-in obsolescence, and the obsession with “creating jobs” and “growth” and “housing ladders” is clearly unsustainable. We all know deep down that one day – perhaps very soon – the whole system will collapse like a pack of cards, but we try to put that thought to the back of our minds because nobody knows what to replace it with.
Politicians and economists talk about “GROWTH” as if it were ALWAYS a good thing, with the implication that “any Growth is Good” so therefore a lot of growth must be very good…! But too much growth can be bad, think of cancer cells.
GDP (the usual measure of an economy’s size) is merely a summation of ALL economic activity, even the DESTRUCTIVE type…
UK motorway pile-up – good for the economy though..!
Nobody would dare claim that destructive events, like a big motorway pile-up for example, are a good thing – yet when they happen they boost the economy due to all the extra economic activity – the money spent on ambulances, tow-trucks, road repairs, vehicle repairs, hospital bills, funeral costs, insurance payouts, court cases, lawyers, police, reporters, etc, etc. All of this expenditure, none of which would have occurred without the crash, is added to the numbers, and thus becomes “growth” and therefore “good” for the economy..!
Nobody would dare claim that destructive events, like a big motorway pile-up for example, are a good thing – yet when they happen they boost the economy due to all the extra economic activity – the money spent on ambulances, tow-trucks, road repairs, vehicle repairs, hospital bills, funeral costs, insurance payouts, court cases, lawyers, police, reporters, etc, etc. All of this expenditure, none of which would have occurred without the crash, is added to the numbers, and thus becomes “growth” and therefore “good” for the economy..!
For the sake of both the environment and human relations it would be preferable to have a STEADY-STATE ECONOMY that does not rely on endless growth generated by huge debt, huge speculation, huge expenditures, huge profits, huge losses, huge quantities of waste, and huge wealth-gaps. I sincerely believe that OASIS CITIES could deliver that very objective….
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