| Publication | Page(s) | Quote | Keywords |
|---|
| Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy |
9 |
The closed earth of the future requires economic principles which are different from those of the open earth of the past. For the sake of picturesqueness, I am tempted to call the open economy the "cowboy economy," the cowboy being symbolic of the illimitable plains and also associated with reckless, exploitative, romantic, and violent behavior, which is characteristic of open societies. The closed economy of the future might similarly be called the "spaceman" economy, in which the earth has become a single spaceship, without unlimited reservoirs of anything, either for extraction or for pollution, and in which, therefore, man must find his place in a cyclical ecological system which is capable of continuous reproduction of material form even though it cannot escape having inputs of energy. |
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| Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy |
9 |
In the cowboy economy, consumption is regarded as a good thing and production likewise; and te success of the economy is measured by the amount of the throughput from the "factors of production," a part of which, at any rate, is extracted from the reservoirs of raw materials and noneconomic objects, and another part of which is output into the reservoirs of pollution. ... The gross national product is a rought measure of this total throughput. ... By contrast, in the spaceman economy, throughput is by no means a desideratum, and is indeed to be regarded as something to be minimized rather than maximized. The essential measure of the success of the economy is not production and consumption at all, but the nature, extent, quality, and complexity of the total capital stock, including in this the state of the human bodies and minds included in the system. |
GNP economics |
| Environmental Quality in a Growing Economy |
10 |
Does economic welfare involve having nice clothes, fine houses, good equipment, and so on, or is it to be measured by the depreciation and the wearing out of these things? ... On this view, there is nothing desirable in consumption at all. The less consumption we can maintain a given state with, the better off we are. |
GNP economics |
