An economist I respect

[bandwraith at aol.com]

Robert Underwood Ayres:

There is a potential for confusion here between technological progress and "progress" in the more general, even more undefined sense. Along with many others, I have long tended carelessly to equate economic growth with that kind of undefined progress. Though aware of the difference, I nevertheless assumed for convenience that the one is virtually a surrogate for the other. The time has come to try to sort out this confusion.

In a certain simplistic sense the difference between growth and progress is all too obvious: It is the difference between "more" and "better". In challenging the growth paradigm itself I am not assuming that growth necessarily means "more" physical goods. Far from it, I insist that the true measure of economic output is not the quantity of goods produced, but the quality and value of final services provided to the consumer. What is most wrong about the "growth syndrome" is not its tendency to consume material resources (as Barry Commoner, for instance, assumed). What is wrong with it is that growth of the kind now occurring in the US and Europe is no longer making people happier or improving their real standard of living.

It is possible to have economic growth - in the sense of providing better and more valuable services to ultimate consumers - without necessarily consuming more physical resources. This follows from the fact that consumers are ultimately not interested in goods per se but in the services those goods can provide. The possibility of de-linking economic activity from energy and materials ("dematerialization") has been one of the major themes of my professional career.

          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Ayres_(scientist)

The problem with economists in general is that they do not understand reality- global warming, the second law of thermodynamics, toxicology, peak oil, etc., which is to say, their initial assumptions are invalid. This is not the case with Ayres.
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