In his new book Jeff Rubin continues to demonstrate that he has a very good sense of the broader dynamics of the current changes underway in the global economy, including the balance , broadly sharing in the same world-view as Niall Ferguson (The Ascent of Money) and Ian Morris (Why the West Rules - For Now: The Patterns of History, and What they Reveal About the Future).
Based on his talk at the Toronto Metro Reference Library (and hence my
impression of the new book which I've not yet read) is that Rubin is (one of) the first
neo-classical economists who appears to be starting to reach the same conclusions
as the "steady-state" ecological economists - i.e. he's starting to sound like
he believes in what Ecological Economists call Strong Sustainability*. BUT his
reasons for doing so, i.e. price signals based on supply and demand in the
monetary economy are deeply flawed.
I
believe Rubin will eventually start to see the flaws in his thinking. Hopefully someone will give Jeff a copy of Peter Victor's book excellent "Managing without Growth, or get him to
listen to Peter lecture or discuss the important differences in their thinking.
- Victor, P. A. (2008). Managing without growth : slower by design, not disaster. Cheltenham, UK ; Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar.
Aside: In the interests of transparency, Prof. Peter Victor was my Ecological Economics prof at York (ES/ENVS6115) in the winter 2011 (You can read my Term Paper: How Will Firms React to Limits on Bio-Physical Flows - An Exploration of Possibilities).
A summary of Peter's book, that uses systems dynamics models to explore the impact of strongly sustainable macro-economic policy decisions on the Canadian economy, can be viewed in the presentation Peter gave at the 2010 NetImpact conference at Schulich. Click here for the slides which accompany this presentation.
Also Peter participated in CBC Radio 1 Ideas debate broadcast (from UofO) "Green Growth or no Growth" can be found here: http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/episodes/2011/02/02/green-growth-or-no-growth/ (it was sponsored by this interesting group: http://www.sustainableprosperity.ca/debate - a video of the debate is available on this page).
* "Strongly Sustainable" is a term used by Ecological Economists to indicate the
impossibility of substituting natural capital with human, manufactured, social
or financial capital in time frames which might help mitigate the worst effects
of climate change and other anthropomorphic impacts as described by the IPCC and
other bio-physical science. This implies the need for organizations to balance
the achievement social, environmental and monetary goals.
- Neumayer, E. (2010). Weak versus strong sustainability :exploring the limits of two opposing paradigms (3rd ed.). Cheltenham, UK ; Northampton, MA : Edward Elgar
