Governance

[Editor’s Note: The Steady State Press has a new title. Gag-Ordered No More: The 800-Pound Gorilla in the U.S. Government (by Brian Czech) has gone to print. If the preface isn’t enough to whet your literary appetite, see the blurbs on the back cover (embedded below). And, be one of the first to order the book.]

Preface: They Wanted Me Out; Now I’m Out

They say the ironies never cease.

The post Preface to Gag-Ordered No More (by Brian Czech) appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

by Dave Rollo

Think about the county where you live. Picture your favorite streets, event spaces, scenery, or terrain. If you’ve lived there awhile, chances are you know what makes it great: the natural, cultural, and commercial places whose characteristics make your community special to you and your neighbors.

Your connection to them becomes part of your sense of place. You delight in taking visiting family and friends to these special sites and you lament changes that threaten or despoil them.

The post What Makes a County Great? appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

Gregory M. Mikkelson

The speed of economic growth hinges to a large extent on the supply of fossil fuel, especially of oil and gas, which depends in turn on pipeline capacity. Thus, if we are to turn the tide against economic growth, pipelines are a good strategic place to start. In what follows I focus on the fight against one pipeline in particular.

Spiderwebs of pipelines hold six continents in thrall to climate-wrecking,

The post How to Take out a Pipeline appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

"If it is safe, dump it in Tokyo! If it is safe, test it in Paris! If it is safe, store it in Washington! But keep our Pacific nuclear free!"

by Daniel Wortel-London

A chapter in the U.S. Code entitled “Statements to accompany significant regulatory actions” contains a critical directive. It declares that any notice of proposed rulemaking by a federal agency that may result in expenditures of $100,000,000 or more must be accompanied by an estimate of that rule’s effect on economic growth.

Take out your editor’s pen. Imagine amending this code by replacing “economic growth” with “economic stability.” How might this simple change transform the purpose and operation of federal laws?

by Daniel Wortel-London

The economy of the USA, like that of any other nation, depends on natural resources—minerals, timber, fossil fuels, land, and a host of other renewable and nonrenewable assets. It couldn’t function without these resources any more than you or I could survive without air. So you’d think that determining whether our country’s demand for natural resources exceeds the environment’s supply would be of the greatest importance to politicians.

The post Who Tallies the Resources? appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

by Brian Czech

Limits to growth are all around us. Global heating, resource shortages, and biodiversity collapse are linked at the hip with stagnating productivity, inflation, and crippling debt. Little by little, citizens and politicians are waking up to ecological limits and the economic linkages.

The awakening is painfully slow for those who have long lamented society’s obsession with growth. After all, economic growth entails a growing human population and ecological footprint,

The post Steady-State Talking Points for Democrats and Republicans appeared first on Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy.

by Ben Clift* Political economy has long taken a keen interest in the politics of economic ideas, but considerably less attention has been paid to the politics of economic method. Method gets neglected as the technical realm within which, it is assumed economic ideas, once established, are implemented in straightforward fashion. In fact, economic method […]

"Some of Fiji's best journalists left the industry as a result and the media still carry the mental scars today from that very disturbing period."

"(The government) can run media organisations to bring its own message out, but it should never exert control over the entire industry."