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>Jim, > >With all due respect, Phoo . . . there you go again! please read my comments to John Foster. > >Here is the primary argument of the paper. The authors argue that another >constraint for the environment should be added to the optimization process >that say a social planner would optimize. Yeah I know that is cryptic as >hell and you are probably tempted to hit the delete key...but wait, I'll >attempt a translation. > >Think of it this way a decentralized market economy can also be depicted >as an optimizaiton problem for a social planner who has access to all the >appropriate information. So, not only would you have constraints on how >much labor you have, your production technology, etc. But you'd add in a >constraint for environmental degredation. That is only a specific amount >of degredation is allowed (I assume the idea here is that ecosystems can >recover from a certain level of damage, but too much damage destroys the >system or renders it incapable of recovering to pre-damage levels). >Hence, there is not growth at any cost. > >Now, the authors also point out that using a market economy would be >helpful. The reason is, that markets are essentially a whole bunch of >people coordinating their decision making in a decentralized manner. >Hence, what needs to be done is institutions need to be put in place that >would give the various actors in the economy (consumers, firms, even >governments) incentives to take sustainable policies. > > Well, all that might just as well have been written in Esperanto; if anything up there made any sense, it certainly flew by me. Sorry. [log in to unmask] - Tallahassee, FL - who suspects that the much worshipped "maret economy" may be at the root of our ecological problems. ________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%