It's the Economy,Friends: Understanding the Growth Dilemma
Ed Dreby, Keith Helmuth, and Margaret Mansfield, Editors
It's the Economy, Friends: Understanding the Growth Dilemma is the fifth in the series of pamphlets from the Quaker Institute of the Futureand published by Producciones de la Hamaca, Caye Caulker, BELIZE - 114 pages (2012)
In times of crisis, profound questions sometimes emerge in straight-forward and clarifying ways. With the world’s dominant economic system now struggling to recover from near collapse,
it is important to ask: “What is the economy for?” It is no longer coherent to say, “for increasing material wealth through unlimited economic growth.”
In 2009 Quaker Institute for the Future (QIF) published the book Right Relationship: Building a Whole Earth Economy which concluded that “the purpose of the economy is to preserve
and enhance the integrity, resilience, and beauty of the whole commonwealth of life.”
This fifth QIF Pamphlet, It’s the Economy, Friends, is in collaboration with the Growth Dilemma Project of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting (Quakers). The Growth Dilemma Project website states that “humanity faces a profound dilemma. The economies of virtually all nations require growth to function. Yet more growth makes the wealthiest even wealthier, while unemployment, hunger, and violence are widespread, and human economies, in aggregate, are already larger than Earth’s
ecosystems can continue to support.”
It’s the Economy, Friend is aimed at understanding the dilemma that the unremitting drive for growth creates within the limited ecosystems of Earth. While it has been prepared for use within the Religious Society of Friends, it will also be of interest and use to anyone who is seeking to understand both orthodox and ecological economics and how this growth
It's the Economy, Friends: Understanding the Growth Dilemma can be ordered from Keith Helmuth <ekhelmuth@mindspring.com>, QuakerBooks, Amazon, and local bookstores. QIF Pamphlets can be downloaded <quakerinstitute.org>.