The Economy of Sustainability: Some Consequences on the Economic Theory

Abstract

The economy of sustainability is usually portraying the tendency to stability as a universal law regulating the development of the mankind and nature relationship. The trend towards the stability of economic systems is the guarantor of a constant and regular growth, in accordance with the evolution of the environment around us. It follows that the deviation from the stability rule is certainly possible but with some penalties. The main penalty is the transformation of the linear and constant growth into the conjuncture sinuous movement, so that the corrective recession would be introduced into the economic circuit. Recession intended as a tool to bring the deviated system back to the natural condition of stability. According to this point of view, the recession is a sin to be paid in the economy management and there would be no way to avoid to pay this price. Therefore, attempts to avoid the penalties imposed to correct the system may be reckless. Trying to avoid the penalty means only to refuse now that damage which would allow the following return to the serenity of natural stability. It follows that the inexhaustible attempts to correct the economic trend in favor of a constant growth line do not take into due consideration that only the stable condition of the economy can guarantee that tomorrow wouldn’t be worse than today. Therefore, attempting to straighten the sinuous line of the cycle is absurd, at least if we continue to remain inside the instability sub-world. The result is that the ultra-Keynesian policies to support the cycle correspond to an irrepressible desire to take action in order to mitigate the damage. But the recession is a cure that sooner or later must be adopted. So, the options offered by the fiscal and monetary policies to support the cycle can have some effect, even satisfactory, but only in the short term. That is, they offer the possibility to drag over time the showdown with the immanent tendency towards stability. But sooner or later the tendency towards recession will return even more urgent and it would be therefore appropriate to accept a present damage for an advantage (constant growth) in the future, within an economic scenario once again stable.