Daly comments in his chapter on Georgescu-Roegen that the grandmaster of physics-based economics was his professor at Vanderbilt. I recall reading in one source about the importance of his time in Brazil for his developing insights. This book contains one chapter on Brazil, where Daly reflects on some aspects of population growth and the economy there.
I read this book in a grad school course, having an undergraduate degree in biology, much practical activism, and some minor graduate background in some economics. I needed to outline some chapters to really grasp his discussion and terms. As Jared Diamond mentions in his book Collapse, the removal of any tree, fish, or living thing inherently disrupts ecosystems. While I have found organic foods and green products to be fundamental to creating a sounder activist lifestyle, and perhaps there is some part of me that bridles at the role of economics in subjugating ecosystems. Of course, Daly is a valiant intellect in service of aligning nature and human economics, and I am glad to find it is essential and rewarding to grasp his terms and reasoning.
His chapter 1 on moving to a steady state economy provides two fundamental ideas, biophysical and ethicosocial limits, along with the contemporary psychosocial condition of money, indicators, and information technology. His Chapter 11 I found especially helpful in focussing on the other basic concepts of allocation, distribution, and optimal scale.
A funny characteristic of Daly's thought strikes me as strangely comparable to conventional economists, in that it is overwhelmingly philosophical in character. While he also overwhelmingly appears to be applying a very tangible awareness of the biophysical and ethicosocial limits to his thoughts about allocation, distribution, and scale and the like, he does not cite constructive and existing examples.
As he refers at the end of his biophysical topic, conventional economists are like high priests. I think he implicitly perceives another issue that I don't think he explicitly addresses, that of economic power. William Dugger and a few other hearty economists have braved the subject, although it is C.W. Mills who had forged through some wilderness with his work, The Power Elite. Therefore, Daly may want to remain in the highly theoretical realm to avoid imaginable tragedies of other sorts.
Nevertheless, he does refer to Greenpeace in the introduction in an offhand reference, which touches on this important invisible, and essential, dimension. While Daly's discussion explores brilliantly various essential conceptual realms, I think three additional ones that help me grasp and stick with his enormous accomplishment are the views of Ralph Nader, Anita Roddick, and James Warbasse. I use Ralph Nader to reflect the role of non-profit activists like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, and Sierra Club. Anita Roddick represents social entrepreneurs like Pax World Fund, Tom's of Maine, and Patagonia's founder. James Warbasse advocated for the cooperative movement, represented in part by Welch's, Ocean Spray, and Land O'Lakes, but more strongly by Organic Valley, Equal Exchange, and Once Again Nut Butters.
With these types of dynamics in mind, an invisible wall in Daly's thought becomes clear. His focus has continued to be the established system and the fundamental dynamics underlying its tragic growth. Ultimately, however, the hope for manifesting his insights lies outside the realm of his overall focus. The wisdom economy he refers to briefly exists in many places already. Daly's discussions are a fine basis to encourage and motivate those who already participate in the alternative, green economy.
Moreover, I have found at least two points which reflect something about the limitations of Daly's own assumptions and focus, trivial as they ultimately appear to be. His review of the situation in Northeast Brazil tragically fails to acknowledge the indigenous populations. He makes an egregiously wrong statement "there is no ethnic difference between the poor and the rich." Personally, I happen to have close family in that very area, and immediately perceived the mistake. Further research clarified the situation for me. A tragic case of cultural eradication took place there, which may have spared some lives but meant total cultural subjugation.
Secondly, he states at one point that he would let labor and capital duke it out as if on equal terms when he concludes an argument of biophysical limits. I thought that an unrealistic equation, and a moment of loss of clarity as he circled in the intellectual stratosphere. Unfortunately, for all the corporate executive and cultural prejudice against laborers, it is the anti-employee actions of cold-blooded, profit-blood thirsty executives that has overwhelmingly debased labor's conditions and underlain most of their grievances.
On a number of occasions he seems to indulge in conventional market assumptions before mostly discerning fundamental issues. The issue of labor ultimately has been given extensive treatment in literature on employee-owned firms, beginning with Jaroslav Vanek and others in journals like Journal of Economic Issues. David Ellerman has made an important argument recently, and well-described in William Greider's The Soul of Capitalism and Mark Lutz's Economics for the Common Good. Daly is also treated in both those excellent works. Greider's addresses many practical dimensions and cases and would make excellent accompaniment to Daly's work. Michael Conroy's work, Branded!, also. He treats the non-profit certification movement with some inspiring detail.
Ultimately, my research has been leading me to the conclusion that the empirical basis of modern economics is not their inexplicable powers of fantastic logic. It is the missing dimension captured in Daly's quote of high priests, Mills' work on The Power Elite, and Dugger's work on Corporate Hegemony. Predatory, profit-maximizing corporations have stacked the system, including legal decisions over the last 200 years in an anti-democratic counter-revolution even before Reagan. They created a limited liability culture that has created an advertising and consumer culture each in turn. Thom Hartmann, Joel Bakan, Charles Derber, and Marjorie Kelly are among some of the excellent researchers on those topics, along with Greider, Dugger, and Mills. Therefore, the strongest logical step for these brave ecological economists like Daly, and any of us there supporters, is to link the actions mentioned by Diamond, formerly of the WWF, about the need for citizen action and the successes of the WWF and Rainforest Action Network. Keeping Nader, Greenpeace, Roddick, Warbasse, and Conroy in mind, and the many civil society groups, Daly's work can find the empirical base it needs to help transform academia and green industrial society.
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Top reviews from other countries
Manishi
Nice book arguing against the hegemony of GDP
Reviewed in Germany on October 30, 2023Francisco
De obligada lectura en los tiempos que corren
Reviewed in Spain on June 23, 2023Andrew Francis
Another great Herman Daly book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 25, 2015
"thechetbaker"
The best book I read last year
Reviewed in Japan on February 19, 2005