[PEN-L:4795] Enough is best

["Dale Wharton" <dale@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

STEADY-STATE ECONOMICS

by Herman E. Daly. Washington DC: Island Press, 1991 (second edition
with new essays); 297 pages include bibliographic references, index.
LC call # HD82.D31415 1991, ISBN 1-55963-071-X, alk. paper, USD19.95.
   --reviewed 1995 04 22 by Dale Wharton, Montreal <dale@xxxxxxxxxxxx>

SSE denies that "more is better." It rejects growth as the cure for
society's ills. Herman Daly lends the conservation movement rigourous
support in, for example, Chapter Five, "A Catechism of Growth
Fallacies." The chapter's title suggests the tone of the book.

How large, asks steady-state economics, should an economy be, relative
to the ecosystem? (It is the main question to SSE, because while an
economy may grow in size, the ecosystem cannot.) Standard economics
answers, "Who cares?" Daly thinks it will take a gestalt switch to
convert sceptics. SSE's appeal is bound to increase "as the growing
weight of anomaly complicates...the growth paradigm" (p. 126).

Constant (but not static) numbers of people and things make a steady-
state economy. People die, newborns replace them. Things break and
wear out, production replaces defunct things. Does SSE want to hold
everything constant? No; knowledge, technology, and quality of life
can progress. Distribution of income and resources can change.

SSE aims to keep intake and output rates equal and low. This way
people's life expectancy and things' durability can stay high. The
intake of matter-energy can equal output when numbers of people and
things stay constant. The two flows merge to one idea: throughput.

"In deciding the scale of throughput, we are...making two kinds of
value judgments: (1) how far to base our economic system on the
takeover of habitats of other species [they have instrumental value
to us], and (2) how far to base it on the drawdown of geological
capital that, if used now, is not available in the future" (p. 221).

Throughput starts with depletion. Production and depreciation follow.
Finally, pollution returns wastes to the environment. SSE maintains
itself by throughput as an organism does by metabolism. Both economies
and organisms live by taking in from the environment matter-energy
(raw materials) with low entropy and putting out to the environment
matter-energy (waste) with high entropy. SSE limits the scale of
throughput so it will not swamp the ecosystem's capacity to
regenerate intake and assimilate output.

What is entropy? It is a perverse concept from a branch of physics.
Entropy is something like disorder or chaos. Low entropy implies
structure and availability. The rule that entropy increases (the
second law of thermodynamics) decrees that events tend to slide
irreversibly toward a state of equilibrium. "Low entropy is the
ultimate means, and it exists in two forms: a terrestrial stock
[limited in total amount available] and a solar flow" (p. 21). "Food,
unlike coal or petroleum, is a renewable resource--a means of
capturing the continual flow of solar energy" (p. 10).

The first edition of the book (1977) arranged eight chapters as two
parts. Part I was theory, Part II was debate. The second edition
repeats the pattern, adding nine chapters as two new parts. Part III
is exposition and analysis, Part IV is argument and scholarly polemic.
The author recycled these added chapters, which first appeared as
monographs and articles in learned journals. His style is compelling.
The table of contents does not mention the book's eight graphs and
diagrams (G). Here is a list to cut and paste to page x:

G Page Subject
1  19  Ends-means continuum places economics as middle discipline
2  28  Economic growth: how benefits and costs relate to inventory
3  35  Flows of services from natural ecosystem and from human economy
4  66  Auctioning depletion quotas: five terms (demand, supply, etc.)
5  67  Auctioning depletion quotas as nonrenewables play out
6  85  Market balances on adjustable fulcrum of relative prices
7 181  How steady-state economics contrasts with standard economics
8 212  Three alternate strategies to integrate economics and ecology

This truth table construes     | Birth  |        |
a hybrid view of tendencies    |control |Property|
in political economies'      --+--------+--------+--------------------
fertility (reproduction),    A |  yes   |  yes   |  Stable overclass
property (production), and   --+--------+--------+--------------------
social differences. Case A   B |  yes   |   no   |
is unlikely to fall into     --+--------+--------+  Mobile middleclass
the proletariat. Case D has  C |   no   |  yes   |
little chance of rising.     --+--------+--------+--------------------
Cases B and C may be in      D |   no   |   no   |  Stable underclass
transition (p. 156ff).       --+--------+--------+--------------------

Author Daly studied at Rice University and at Vanderbilt, where he
took the Ph.D. He has worked in research and teaching at Yale and
Louisiana State, also in Brazil and Australia. Other books include FOR
THE COMMON GOOD--coauthor John B. Cobb, Jr. (Beacon Press, 1991) and
VALUING THE EARTH: economics, ecology, ethics--coauthor Kenneth N.
Townsend (MIT Press, 1992).

At his current employer's last anniversary, numerous people and groups
declared "50 years is enough!" Herman Daly observes, "...we all have
to make a living somehow, and my present livelihood as a World Bank
[environment department] economist has to date given me somewhat less
cause for shame than my previous livelihood as a university professor
of economics" (p. xiv). Of SSE's prospect he glumly allows "...it will
probably take a Great Ecological Spasm to convince people that
something is wrong with an economic theory that denies the very
possibility of an economy exceeding its optimal scale. But...it is
still necessary to have an alternative vision ready to present when
crisis conditions provide a receptive public" (p. 194).
##
%A  Herman E. Daly
%C  Washington DC
%D  1991
%G  ISBN 1-55963-071-X
%I  Island Press
%K  conservation development ecosystem energy entropy environment \
    fertility growth production renewable reproduction resource scale
%O  Second edition with new essays; includes bibliographic \
    references, index. Library of Congress call number \
    HD82.D31415 1991. Printed in USA on recycled, acid-free paper, \
    paperback USD19.95.
%P  297 pages
%T  Steady-State Economics
##