Month: May 2012
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Debating Capitalism as if it exists
In my earlier post I said that my hobby of analysing capitalism from a sustainable point of view has got me to the point where I see that capitalism is actually a grammar describing the language of money. I said that there is an intellectual class paid to talk about these issues but, like linguists who have spoken a…
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CAPITALISM HAS FAILED. Remind me; what is it exactly?
In the excellent blog, CAPITALISM HAS FAILED, on Bill Totten’s site, Sara Robinson, MS, APF points out the shortcomings of what she calls “the model”: The problem, in a nutshell, is this: The old economic model has utterly failed us. It has destroyed our communities, our democracy, our economic security, and the planet we live on.…
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Putting a price on emissions using ecological maturity impact
The price mechanism does not provide perfect information and does not necessarily lead to a perfectly efficient distribution of resources. Many argue that the low cost of externalizing pollution to the community is leading us to create a fossil-dependent infrastructure that will be obsolete before it has paid for itself. This briefing from the Swedish Sustainable economy…
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Emission fees simulations
Increasing emissions from industrial activity threaten climate stability and to upset eco-systems to a degree that not only puts continued industrial activity at risk, but also the very conditions for a reasonable life for citizens in both the industrialized and industrializing worlds. These emissions are seen by many as a failure of market forces, which…
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New course in sustainable living 27 – 30 Sep.
People seek a sense of connectedness to nature. Many want to live in a way that is light on the earth and does not require huge amounts of debt and energy to function. They want to invest in a way of life that they can believe in, economically and morally. Since the 1980’s, systems ecologist…
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Sweden’s plans for energy intensity transition look shaky
I promised in my last blog in the series capitalism: a hobby to delve into the status of Sweden using my ideas of capital value. Before I do that, however I need to give readers an idea of the over-riding plans that Sweden has for energy intensity reduction. We saw from previous analyses that oil…
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Economic growth in the sustainable community: can we or can’t we?
In this next foray into capitalism I want to explore the question of growth. Note that I still have not defined what capitalism is. Instead, I have taken the idea of capital and explored how the concept of capital works together with sustainability and resilience. This time I want to consider economic growth.We hear different…
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The secret to turning capital into something sustainable and useful
This is interesting. I started out to make capitalism my hobby and have got stuck posting about what capital is. My revelation from the last post was if you add up all the debt in the world, and then you add up all the money people possess in the world you get – zero. This is…
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If Mother Nature does most of the work, why is she not paid?
Still on the subject of a sustainability-interested layman’s hobby of delving into Capitalism, and before I define Capitalism, I would like to stay on the subject of what Capital is, or rather not what it is worth but how it is used. DEFINING NATURAL CAPITAL Natural Capital is easy to define in terms of ecological…
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How can the world owe more than the total value of its assets?
Last time I went through the different types of capital and the two types of financial capital: own capital, called equity, for example the money put in by owners as shares, and foreign capital, money the organization has borrowed. Before I get any further on my understanding of Capitalism, I need to take one more…