Towards A New Economic Paradigm: The Parallel History of Economic Thought and the Way Forward

Abstract

Few dispute that the current socio-economic system is in troubles. Sustainable development is running high – at least at the level of lip service. But we are far from consensus in specifying why and how our current development path is unsustainable. In this chapter I argue that the world is on the edge of a radical change of values (as it happened already 4-5 times in our known history). And that the deep core of the problem is our irrational (or rationalizing) adherence to the self-oversurviving value system. I try to find this value system in the current paradigm, economism, which has passed its competence to a drammatical extent. This I consider rather a quasireligion, than a science. As an alternative I depict the recently less visible, but more than two thousand year old tradition of moral economics. Two new economic philosophies are also proposed, which are at the end.

Keywords: Crisis, danger, Earth’s carrying capacity, demographic degradation, ecology, economic paradigm, economic philosophy, economism, environment, footprint, history, humankind, moral economics, Planet Earth, planetary boundaries, social responsibility, socio-economic system, sustainable development, unsustainability, values.