The Next Evolution in Economics: Rethinking Growth – HBR Now – Harvard Business Review.
Stan Stalnaker uses an organic metaphor to suggest that growth-centered economic behavior is cannibalizing the whole of our economic interests but that change is in the offing.
Stalnaker’s article on systems optimization is notable primarily because it appears to be associated with HBR. His central idea — that the growth-centric economic model is metastatic and inherently unsustainable, is hardly revelatory. The logic of his position is sound and stands out in bold relief in our new technological age in which the interconnectedness of everyone and everything becomes increasingly apparent — and problematic.
Where Stalnaker errs, (and this is not a trivial error) is in suggesting that the transition from a growth model to a sustainability model is an “evolutionary” process and essentially naturalistic. This image of natural laws at work is misleading and destructive. The issues at hand are those of human intention in which the intentions of those committed to personal gain are pitted against those who intend to make a better world for the community as a whole. Regattably, current events indicate that the former group of “intenders” continue to hold the upper hand.
