What does Post-Monetarism Mean?

[Rynn]

Hello, I happen to be the author

Hello, thanks for dropping by.

I do not necessarily see accumulation of capital as a problem, but the current ecological situation - driven by the needs of increased economic growth - is preparing for a mass extinction.

Accumulation of capital results in wealth inequality if there is not sufficient growth. To paraphrase Capital by Piketty: wealth inequality rises when capital grains exceed economic growth. I'm not defending growth as a necessary and would like to see a steady-state system implemented (where growth occurred when desired and appropriate rather than as a means to keep the whole system going) but you need a check on the accumulation of capital. It becomes increasingly easy to make more money and accumulate more capital the more you have, not always of course but as a general rule. If your economy isn't growing then this means the owners of land and industry will steadily accumulate a larger percentage of the whole.

We need to base our calculations not only on the laws of supply and demand, but we need to have a system that by default includes the "externalities".

I don't think many people would dispute that, what type of system would you suggest exactly? Whilst I agree with the sentiment of your blog the lack of substance was my main criticism.

If we would have a closed loop system with a monetary exchange system in place, wealth would become deflationary instead of inflationary, and lead to decreased social mobility and thereby heightened social conflicts.

Why would a closed-loop (and I presume steady state) system necessarily lead to wealth being deflationary? Also it seems like you're arguing for a closed-loop system but then saying here that it would be a bad thing.

Therefore it is important that a sustainable system is not only ecologically, but also economically and socially sustainable.

http://eoshorizon.wordpress.com/2013/09/...ccounting/

I've heard of similar proposals for tying economies directly to an aspect of the biosphere. A big problem though seems to be exactly how to measure the biosphere in a way that can be distilled to a simple numerical, especially given that the biosphere is constantly changing despite mostly being in equilibrium. Furthermore as a small critique production only when people order something would be very inefficient unless we posit some big advances in technology. A company predicting that it can sell 10,000 products and so mass producing 10,000 is more efficient due to economies of scale if it sells close to that number. Producing 10,000 products separately if and when a customer orders them will not likely benefit from this. Also the idea that there will be no advertising is overly simplistic and fails to recognise that without advertising people will have no idea what products are out there. There needs to be regulation on the industry sure and a cultural change with regards to consumption but a blanket ban is unworkable and undesirable.