Cohousing-L Mailing List: Re: Cohousing and The Economic Crisis

[John Faust (wjfaust]

Of course the most remarkable thing about this story is that it is coming
from a mainstream journalist (Friedman) and it is appearing in the
mainstream press. A number of economists have been pointing out the obvious
for some time now, most notably Herman
Daly<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herman_Daly>and Kenneth
Boulding <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_E._Boulding>. Boulding is
famous for the quote:

Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world
is either a madman or an economist.

Herman Daly is regarded as the father of ecological (or steady
state<http://steadystate.org/Index.html>)
economics and is is co-author of the book *For the Common Good*
(1989), *Steady-State
Economics* (1991) and *Beyond Growth* (1996). If you have never heard of
either of these men, the reason is put succinctly by George Orwell:

At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is
assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. ...
Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with
surprising effectiveness.

And of course, that is what Daly and others have been doing -- challenging
our most sacred economic paradigm, unending economic growth.

Sadly, none of these economists with alternative views have a seat at
Obama's table. What we will first do is try to resurrect the economy as we
know it at great expense to us.

Thanks to Zev for bringing this important issue to this list and to Charles
for his always-interesting perspective on cultures new and old, familiar and
obscure.

John Faust