Herman E. Daly - Steady-state economics (1977)

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It is imaginable that someday we will discover how to create materials from nothing, how to achieve perpetual motion, how to reverse time's arrow, and so on. But to take such science-fiction miracles as a basis for economic policy would be absurd.

Herman E. Daly
There is something fundamentally wrong with treating the earth as if it were a business in liquidation.

Herman E. Daly
Presumably, technology has made man increasingly independent of his environment. But, in fact, technology has merely substituted nonrenewable resources for renewables, which is more an increase than a decrease in dependence.

Herman E. Daly
If economic reality is actually so complex that it can only be described by complicated mathematical models that add epicycles to epicycles and externalities to externalities, then the reality should be simplified.

Herman E. Daly
Current economic growth has uncoupled itself from the world and has become irrelevant. Worse, it has become a blind guide.

Herman E. Daly
Once we have replaced the basic premise of more is better with the much sounder axiom that enough is best, the social and technical problems of moving to a steady state become solvable, perhaps even trivial.

Herman E. Daly
Organisms cannot survive in a medium consisting of their own final outputs. Neither can economies.

Herman E. Daly
Malthus has been buried many times, and Malthusian scarcity with him. But as Garrett Hardin remarked, anyone who has to be reburied so often cannot be entirely dead.

Herman E. Daly