Appropriate Economy

Ah, easter. A welcome opportunity to continue work on the paper… or so I thought. I spent a couple of days in my parents summer house NOT getting very far, but today I managed to get a little reading done.

Today I read about the “Appropriate Economy” which is part of a greater movement, which started in the 70’s as far as I can gather, sometimes referred to as “Solidarity Economy” or “People’s Economy”.

Appropriate Economics sees economic relations fundamentally as social relations. I deals with the attempt to embed ethics and values into an economic network

An appropriate economy builds on local assets, ressources and culture. It builds on the culture of the local community, which is why it can be difficult to transfer a system to another community. It is not an “off-the-shelf” solution.

http://www.appropriate-economics.org/introduction.html

They mention something which they call “Steady-State Economy” which is something I must look into. I think it sounds way incompatible with my wishes for an alternate economic system. This system tries to keep consumption down by imposing a lot of limits (on income, expenditure, number of chidren born, etc.). Sounds to me like a step in the wrong direction, but I have to look more into it.

Can anyone (if there’s anyone out there) point me to some good litterature about the human psyke and money? I mean something which argues why money has been such an “ideal” mechanism for us? I’m particularly interested in something that talks about how we use money as punishment, which we can do as long as money is a scarce ressource.

Oh, and I also bought a book called “Short Circuit: Strengthening Local Economies for Security in an Unstable World” by Richard Douthwaite (yes for REAL money) and printed a free book called “Poor Because of Money”. And because it’s good friday and I couldn’t stay completely focused all afternoon I also bought a new toy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeYXVs7yu3U

22 hours