The Sustainable Development Theory: A Critical Approach, Volume 2: When Certainties Become Doubts (Palgrave Studies in Sustainability, Environment and Macroeconomics)

This book explores the present conflictual relationship between the economy, the environment, and society. The current mainstream economic model is analysed from the perspective of the founding economists to review its suitability to tackle issues of sustainable development. The problems of redistribution and social justice are debated at length; alongside those concerning the giant state, degrowth, and a vision of sustainability that is founded on the idea of a self-regulating free market economy. Business cycle sustainability, anti-crisis therapy, technological unemployment, the natural rate of interest, and the Bruntland matrix are also examined. This book aims to present a holistic approach to sustainable development where social, ecological, and economic components are balanced. It will be relevant to students and researchers interested in this topic. Introduction Contents 1 First Steps in Perverting Sustainability. Keynes—A Good Omen? 1.1 A Founding Obsession on the Path to Sustainability 1.1.1 The First Step Towards Unsustainability! Menger: Money Does Not Measure Anything! 1.1.2 Mises Versus Keynes at the Crossroad of Money That Does Not Measure Anything 1.2 Sustainability of Anti-crisis Therapy: Keynes Versus Hayek 1.2.1 Keynes: A Revelation and an Unclogged Road for the Problem of Sustainable Business Cycle 1.2.2 Hayek: When the Sustainability of the Business Cycle Rests on Shaky Premises 1.2.2.1 Searching for Sustainability in the Hayekian Analytical Labyrinth 1.2.2.2 Are Our Expectations Too High? 1.2.2.3 Attempt of Improvement 1.3 Concluding Remarks References 2 In Search of a Lost Lesson 2.1 Exploring the Outskirts of the Business Cycle Sustainability 2.1.1 “Heresies” of the New Austrians on the Topic of Business Cycle Sustainability 2.1.2 On the Sustainability of the “Monetarist” Cycle 2.1.3 Irving Fisher: Over-Indebtedness—Deflation—Monetary Injection. And if You Are Poor, Chances Are You Remain So! 2.2 Renowned Interpreters in Search of a Sustainability Deprived of Real Sources 2.2.1 Mason and Butos: Keynesianism Is Sustainable, Monetarism Not at All! 2.2.2 The “Minsky Moment”: An Erudite Analysis Lacking Sustainable Message 2.3 Can We Find Sustainable Ideas at the 2008 Crisis Theorists? 2.4 Concluding Remarks References 3 How to Conceive the Brundtland Agenda in the Context of the Nominal Economy’s Imperialism 3.1 How Would an Economic and Sustainable Up-to-Date Agenda Look like If Conceived According to the Bruntland Matrix? 3.2 Three Delicate Areas Where the Recourse to the Founders Would Lead the Way Towards Sustainability and Resilience 3.2.1 Playing with Money When Dealing with Inflation and Distribution 3.2.2 Masters of the Economy. From Instrument-Actors to Masters that Set the Rules 3.2.3 Achieving Sustainability Through the Natural Rate of Interest—A Necessary Synthesis of Ideas 3.3 Post-Wicksell and Postcrisis. Current Metamorphoses of the Natural Rate of Interest 3.4 Instead of Conclusions: Why Does the Central Bank Refuse the Sustainability of the Natural Rate of Interest? References 4 Social Pressure—The Risk of Invalidating the Lesson on What Makes an Economy Sustainable 4.1 Can Social Tensions Shift Causalities and Undermine the Logic of Sustainability? 4.2 Economism and Anti-Economism—Ideologies at the Borders of Sustainability 4.2.1 A Brief History 4.2.2 New Characteristics of Anti-Economism 4.2.3 GDP Statistics—Between Economism and Anti-Economism 4.2.4 Who Criticized and Still Critiques Profit? 4.3 From Anti-Economism to the Court of Distributive Justice 4.3.1 From Arithmomorphism Towards Dialectics and Distributive Justice 4.3.2 Distribution Before Production. The Illusion of Distributive Justice 4.3.3 The Poison of Profit and Productivism 4.4 Pikettism—The Zeal of Quantitative Levelling 4.5 Concluding Remarks References 5 Degrowth—A Logical Inadequacy? 5.1 The Source of the Confusion: Consolidating Scientific Props! 5.2 New Meanings in a New Language 5.3 Degrowth in Search of a Credible Fixture 5.4 Degrowth Between Yes and No 5.4.1 From the Puzzling Suggestion that Degrowth Is An Invitation to Stop by Continuing to Run 5.4.2 From the Contrast Between the Results Promised by Degrowth and the Utopian Character of the Project 5.4.3 Because of the Lack of Coherence in the Remedies for the Developing World 5.5 The Scenario-Manic 5.6 Concluding Remarks: Between the Natural Rate and 2° Celsius! References 6 Nature – The Highlight of the Theory of Sustainability 6.1 The Dialectics of a Fundamental Relationship: MAN - NATURE - MACHINE 6.2 Substitution in the Vision of the Theorists 6.2.1 Strong Sustainabilists: Natural Capital is Indestructible! 6.2.2 The Solow Approach—self-Development Through Ability À La Brundtland 6.2.3 Can Sustainability Be Nourished from the Solow-Daly Querella? 6.3 Nature Versus Institutions. The Institutional “creative Destruction” 6.4 Marx’s “Machines” and Contemporaneity 6.4.1 Substitution Supported by Perverse Dialectics 6.4.2 From Marx’s Machines to Its Highness, the GENERAL INTELLECT. The Multifactor Productivity 6.4.3 Sustainability in the Era of the Technological Unemployed 6.5 Is There Need for a New Science to Achieve Strong Sustainability? 6.6 Sustainability and the World of Animals 6.7 Concluding Remarks References 7 General Conclusions Index