Author: Crelis

Capitalism typically goes through cycles of expansion to contraction. We commonly refer to these as ‘business cycles’ or ‘economic cycles’. Every now and then, however, these cycles go off the hinges. They become unstable and can lead to recessions, crises and depressions. This inherent instability of the capitalist system cannot be explained by standard economic models. Instead, those models blame instability on excessive regulation, government interventions or other factors outside the market-economic system. Some unorthodox economists see it differently. Steve Keen, for example, developed an alternative kind of economic model—one that can mimic instability. The model provides compelling and urgent insights into how economic crises arise from within the structures of capitalism. Another crisis seems inevitable as long as the causes are misdiagnosed. Read more…

Cycles of growth and decline in ecology were famously revealed in so-called predator-prey relationships. As foxes eat chickens, chicken reproduction drops, which leaves fewer chickens for foxes to eat. Consequently, the fox population drops, which then allows the chicken population to rebuild. As its food source becomes available again, the fox population also rebuilds and the cycle starts again. Read more…

At the core of the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is the idea that economic growth (defined as money flow or market value) can be ‘decoupled’ from the physical growth of the economy (resource consumption) and the associated environmental pressures (degradation, pollution). Paradoxically, however, the concept’s main promoters admit that there is virtually no evidence that decoupling works, that the conceptual basis for it is weak, and that even if it were possible it is not politically feasible. Decoupling is, thus, a dangerous fantasy sustained by disavowal – the simultaneous admission and denial – of its impossibility in practice. Read more…