The Other Road to Serfdom and the Path to Sustainable Democracy
Our planet is finite. Our political and economic systems were designed for an infinite planet. These difficult truths anchor the perceptive analysis offered in The Other Road to Serfdom and the Path to Sustainable Democracy. With wit, energy, and a lucid prose style, Eric Zencey identifies the key elements of “infinite planet” thinking that underlie our economics and our politics—and shows how they must change. Zencey’s title evokes F. A. Hayek, who argued that any attempt to set overall limits to free markets—any attempt at centralized planning—is “the road to serfdom.” But Hayek’s argument works only if the planet is infinite. If Hayek is right that planning and democracy are irreducibly in conflict, Zencey argues, then on a finite planet, “free markets operated on infinite planet principles are just the other road to serfdom.”

The alternative is ecological economics, an emergent field that accepts limits to what humans can accomplish economically on a finite planet. Zencey explains this new school of thought and applies it to current political and economic concerns: the financial collapse, terrorism, population growth, hunger, the energy and oil industry’s social control, and the deeply rooted dissatisfactions felt by conservative “values” voters who have been encouraged to see smaller government and freer markets as the universal antidote. What emerges is a coherent vision, a progressive and hopeful alternative to neoconservative economic and political theory—a foundation for an economy that meets the needs of the 99% and just might help save civilization from ecological and political collapse.
1110056368
The Other Road to Serfdom and the Path to Sustainable Democracy
Our planet is finite. Our political and economic systems were designed for an infinite planet. These difficult truths anchor the perceptive analysis offered in The Other Road to Serfdom and the Path to Sustainable Democracy. With wit, energy, and a lucid prose style, Eric Zencey identifies the key elements of “infinite planet” thinking that underlie our economics and our politics—and shows how they must change. Zencey’s title evokes F. A. Hayek, who argued that any attempt to set overall limits to free markets—any attempt at centralized planning—is “the road to serfdom.” But Hayek’s argument works only if the planet is infinite. If Hayek is right that planning and democracy are irreducibly in conflict, Zencey argues, then on a finite planet, “free markets operated on infinite planet principles are just the other road to serfdom.”

The alternative is ecological economics, an emergent field that accepts limits to what humans can accomplish economically on a finite planet. Zencey explains this new school of thought and applies it to current political and economic concerns: the financial collapse, terrorism, population growth, hunger, the energy and oil industry’s social control, and the deeply rooted dissatisfactions felt by conservative “values” voters who have been encouraged to see smaller government and freer markets as the universal antidote. What emerges is a coherent vision, a progressive and hopeful alternative to neoconservative economic and political theory—a foundation for an economy that meets the needs of the 99% and just might help save civilization from ecological and political collapse.
10.49 In Stock
The Other Road to Serfdom and the Path to Sustainable Democracy

The Other Road to Serfdom and the Path to Sustainable Democracy

by Eric Zencey
The Other Road to Serfdom and the Path to Sustainable Democracy

The Other Road to Serfdom and the Path to Sustainable Democracy

by Eric Zencey

eBook

$10.49  $14.99 Save 30% Current price is $10.49, Original price is $14.99. You Save 30%.

Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
WANT A NOOK?  Explore Now

Related collections and offers

LEND ME® See Details

Overview

Our planet is finite. Our political and economic systems were designed for an infinite planet. These difficult truths anchor the perceptive analysis offered in The Other Road to Serfdom and the Path to Sustainable Democracy. With wit, energy, and a lucid prose style, Eric Zencey identifies the key elements of “infinite planet” thinking that underlie our economics and our politics—and shows how they must change. Zencey’s title evokes F. A. Hayek, who argued that any attempt to set overall limits to free markets—any attempt at centralized planning—is “the road to serfdom.” But Hayek’s argument works only if the planet is infinite. If Hayek is right that planning and democracy are irreducibly in conflict, Zencey argues, then on a finite planet, “free markets operated on infinite planet principles are just the other road to serfdom.”

The alternative is ecological economics, an emergent field that accepts limits to what humans can accomplish economically on a finite planet. Zencey explains this new school of thought and applies it to current political and economic concerns: the financial collapse, terrorism, population growth, hunger, the energy and oil industry’s social control, and the deeply rooted dissatisfactions felt by conservative “values” voters who have been encouraged to see smaller government and freer markets as the universal antidote. What emerges is a coherent vision, a progressive and hopeful alternative to neoconservative economic and political theory—a foundation for an economy that meets the needs of the 99% and just might help save civilization from ecological and political collapse.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781611683677
Publisher: University Press of New England
Publication date: 10/08/2012
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 340
File size: 784 KB

About the Author

ERIC ZENCEY is the author of Panama, a critically acclaimed and bestselling novel, and a collection of essays, Virgin Forest: Meditations on History, Ecology, and Culture.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Weather on Factory Planet
The Other Road to Serfdom
Friedrich Hayek, Socialist and His Fallacy of the Excluded Middle
What “Sustainability” Is
Oil, Economic theory, and the Moral Culpability of a Discipline
The Economics Textbook That Just Might Save Civilization
Getting Over GDP
Industrial Civilization as a Pyramid Scheme
The Financial Crisis Is the Environmental Crisis
The Battle over the Environmental Kuznets Curve
Revisiting “the Bet that Ruined the World”
Freakonomist Cheap Shots Jane Fonda
Got Terrorism? Blame Economists
Ending the Culture War
On the Oklahoma Abortion Laws, SUVs, and Climate Justice
What Green Might Bring
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index

What People are Saying About This

Richard Heinberg

“What happens to the ‘free market’—and to people who depend upon markets for their survival—when essential resources are depleted, or when weather becomes so weird that crops won’t grow? Zencey reveals the failure of conventional economics in our dawning age of limits, then points the way toward a new economics that can better serve human needs while also maintaining a living planet. This should be required reading in every economics class.”

James Howard Kunstler

“Eric Zencey brings a healthful shot of lucidity to the long-suffering, much-abused, reality-averse realm of economics. Real adults in a fully functional society have to know how things really work. This book gets around all the gaming, trickery, and wishful thinking to the fundamental question of how we might continue the practical project of remaining civilized.”

Bill McKibben

“A remarkably interesting antidote to the glib and unthinking cult of deregulation that has left both the physical and social fabric of our planet in tatters.”

From the B&N Reads Blog

Customer Reviews