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Critics to Economic Market System
Greediness, Reason and Love

Misery remains in large regions of the world. Conflicts spread all over the world. Our planet is ecologically at a critical point…

There are many explanations for such a situation, of course. We can be rather vague – and yet touch the truth – and say that the problems of our societies are rooted in our ways of behaving and thinking. Or we can be controversial and blame the market laws, or, in other words, the rules that drive our economic systems and societies.

And that’s what Schumacher, an important economist and ecologist of the twentieth century, has defended. To him, «a man pushed by greediness and envy» - which is what is happening in the framework of economic liberalism - «looses his faculty of seeing things as they really are, or of seeing them in their proportions and in the whole, and his successes may turn into a fiasco».

Our environmental problems are a major example of the result of the functioning of market rules. Global warming and huge climate changes are menacing billions of people, and are a direct emanation of man’s greed and of the short term view and interests associated with market rules.

In an epoch where the mermaid chant of liberalism is largely dominant, it’s important to meditate on the words of the critics of that system. They may contain some utopia, or some disagreement with the near world, but they help us to be more critical.

Economics may have constraints and rules. The market can’t be abolished, and can be a powerful mechanism of development. But we must correct it and oppose its evil sides. Love – in its diverse forms: love to others, to the earth, to high cultural standards… and reason, also have an important word in our societies and economics. We can’t leave the market so free of rules as the hard line liberals pretend.

Humanity is conducting an unintended, uncontrolled, globally pervasive experiment whose ultimate consequences could be second only to a global nuclear war. The Earth's atmosphere is being changed at an unprecedented rate by pollutants resulting from human activities, inefficient and wasteful fossil fuel use, and the effects of rapid population growth in many regions. These changes represent a major threat to international security and are already having harmful consequences over many parts of the globe.
Statement by WMO, UNEP, and Environment Canada at The Changing Atmosphere: Implications for Global Security Conference, Toronto, June 1988.

We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization.

The environment is much more than a policy position to me; it is a profoundly moral obligation. We only have one Earth. And if we do not keep it healthy and safe, every other gift we leave our children will be meaningless.
Al Gore, in Guy Dauncey Stormy Weather

If it had been the purpose of human activity on earth to bring the planet to the edge of ruin, no more efficient mechanism could have been invented than the market economy.
Jeremy Seabrook, English writer, The Myth of the Market

There is something fundamentally wrong with treating the earth as if it were a business in liquidation.
Herman Daly, Environment Department of the World Bank economist, in Al Gore Earth in the Balance

Modern society will find no solution to the ecological problem unless it takes a serious look at its lifestyle.

Our children and grandchildren are going to be mad at us for burning all this oil. It took the Earth 500 million years to create the stuff we’re burning in 200 years. Renewable energy sources are where we need to be headed.

Mankind has probably done more damage to the Earth than in all of previous human history.

Jacques Cousteau, 1910-1997, French ecologist, in New Perspectives Quarterly 1996

If I were a Brazilian without land or money or the means to feed my children, I would be burning the rain forest too.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
Adam Smith, 1723-1790, English economist, The Wealth of Nations

We're doing great, thank God. The American economy is flourishing. We're using more fossil fuels. We're putting more CO2 in the air. The coal plants are running at record levels. Business has never been better. We're doing great!
Fred Palmer, Western Fuels Association, cited in Stormy Weather, Guy Dauncey

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