- an economics of regeneration

“We must restructure our economy from a foundation built on consumption to regeneration and maintenance,” say Rebekah and Stephen Hren in the Huffington Post this week.
It’s a plea for ‘ecological economics’ — and one we EarthQuakers pretty much share.
Any hope it will come with the Obama administration?  Not a huge amount, but we might move [...]

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- after Krugman, Wendell Berry!

Farmer-poet Berry has this stanza in his poem ‘Some Further Words,’ published in his recent collection ‘Given.’
When I hear the stock market has fallen,
I say, “Long live gravity! Long live
stupidity, error, and greed in the palaces
of fantasy capitalism!” I think
an economy should be based on thrift,
on taking care of things, not on theft,
usury, seduction, waste, [...]

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- a new ‘Limits to Growth’ . . .

In the last few years we’ve seen little opposition to the idea that economic growth, however defined, is what national economies should be aiming for above all else.  That’s long concerned us EarthQuakers — we both challenge the ways in which economic costs are usually calculated and wonder how the earth can sustainably support its [...]

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- more on consumptive parents

Salon has an interview this weekend with Pamela Paul, author of the new book, “Parenting, Inc.” It’s a must read for anyone interested in the consumer culture of affluent Western parenting.
Paul tells Salon:
“I think that we have professionalized parenting, and in a consumer society that becomes translated into buying a lot of things. Parents [...]

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- is ideal parenting all about consumption?

Here at EarthQuaker’s suburban world headquarters we like to keep in touch with the world of hip, urban parenting, so we receive a daily email digest from Babble.com, the New York-based online parenting magazine.
That’s how we learned recently that even hipster parents find parenting a costly business these days.
Quoting parent Allyson Mazer, writer Melissa Rayworth [...]

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- economists get smart to human behavior

Mainstream economics is built on a convenient untruth: that humans act rationally when it comes to money.
Over the last couple of decades, however, behavioral economists have been showing how that’s simply not always the case. In making many of our financial decisions (and we’re talking significant ones like which car to buy, where to [...]

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- can you be a green consumer?

Green shopping is quite the fashion these days. No newspaper ‘home’ section goes a week, it seems, without an article on ‘green living.’ Magazine publishers are launching ever more eco-consumer titles, nourished by advertising budgets devoted to ever-growing lines of ‘eco-friendly’ products.
Much less often, though — in fact almost never — does [...]

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the economics of repair versus replacement

As befits advocates of ’slow’ living, here at EarthQuaker we’re just now working our way through last year’s New Yorker magazines.
Back in May, Steven Shapin reviewed books about technology and innovation. One interesting point he discusses is the connection between technology and maintenance.
The importance of maintenance becomes even clearer if we take a global [...]

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