Take a look at this article:
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/21083/

It gives a good overview of GNH and also the country profile from the BBC:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/country_profiles/1166513.stm

This gives a great picture of how a nation can subsist without following the captialist paradigm.

And thanks for the compliment. I am looking forward to keeping a fruitful dialogue going here too.

I’ve come across the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI) too.

Both GNH and GPI definitely seem like improvements on the usual GDP or GNP.

If I’m interpreting GNH correctly, I think there’s merit, when looking at goals a country should shoot for, to taking economics out of the picture entirely and just looking at the final product — how happy people are. This is something I’ll have to investigate further.

BTW, I saw your post related to this on your blog. Good food for thought. I look forward to hearing more from you on these issues.

Right now I am really interested in Gross National Happiness (GNH). It’s a corny name but I think the idea is good. It “needs” to be measureable in order to be accepted, but once that happens the numbers (like any Western economic system) take over to become all meaningful when in fact it is completely meaningless. This obsession with measureably and substantiability is simply wrong. Some things can not be measureable, and should not be measured (love for your partner or spouse is one that comes to mind).

This is closely related to something I posted about previously — the problem of mainstream economics failing to acknowledge that the economy is a *part* of the ecosystem.

So we need, in some way, to shift to an economic approach which puts the ecosystem on an equal (or better!) footing with the economy. Whether the steady state economy is the way to do that, I’m not sure. Maybe something else will turn out to be a superior approach. But I will say it seems to be the most developed alternative I’ve seen out there. It definitely meets a lot of resistance from mainstream economists, but there are some pretty prominent folks like Daly backing it.

I heard just the other day that there is some work being done toward a citizens’ group which will lobby government bodies to establish local steady state economies in the U.S. I’ll report more when I hear something. But it’s an interesting sign.

As far as the carbon trading kinds of things, yeah, I’m not sure they really represent any true solution. Heck, maybe signature103 is right that we just have to reduce consumption directly. But it seems to me we need some changes in economic policy as well.

Portions of the Kyoto accord seem similar to the basic steady state economy model. My understanding, is under Kyoto, Annex I countries, like Canada for instance, would buy “pollution credits” from developing countries in order to be allowed to exceed certain pollution limits.

I don’t really have a strong knowledge of either Kyoto or the steady state economy concept, but what little I have read I don’t really think will work nor be realistically implemented.

Ross

signature — Well, you may be right. I’m a bit skeptical too that these sorts of schemes really effect any fundamental change. On the plus side, though, (I think) is that as a rationing scheme TEQs seem to necessitate setting a cap on total energy made available. I would assume it’s a cap based on some estimate of what’s sustainable.

But, having written that, when it comes to nonrenewable resources, no level of consumption is truly sustainable. :-/ Maybe that’s the problem right there. But it would at lease be an estimate of what the ecosystem can successfully reabsorb with regard to waste. That would be a step in the right direction, no?

I guess the question is whether it would be an effective step toward something like a steady state economy. What do you think?

I haven’t fully read the articles you posted but novelty may be what TEQ is and nothing more – another way to make the picture a little more fuzzy.

And interest rates hikes don’t work. The money ultimately comes back into the economy as government spending, probably the worst way to try to stop (over)consumption. The only way is to slow consumption directly without looking at it through financial numbers.