By Jamey Ellis Each of us has given without the expectation of receiving. Each of us knows the rewards of doing so. Sometimes the joy felt by those giving can even seem to outweigh that of the ones receiving. We’ve all taken part in a gift exchange, be it birthdays, holidays or anniversaries. But do we actually need to wait until a specific moment to find that joy of giving? Could such giving...
Some people object to the concept of “natural capital” because they say it reduces nature to the status of a commodity to be marketed at its exchange value. This indeed is a danger, well discussed by George Monbiot. Monbiot’s criticism rightly focuses on the monetary pricing of natural capital. But it is worth clarifying that the word “capital” in its original non-monetary sense means “a stock ...
Without trying to give definitions of growth or degrowth everybody knows anyway, I would like to emphasize that these phenomena were always subject to discussions. Even a non-economist knows that it is impossible to talk about growth without mentioning ideas like increases in production factors, industrialization or economic development. Any increase has to come to a [...]