A Planetary Economy

<p></p><p>This book asks, how would a stable, prosperous economy of the future look if one started with a blank sheet of paper? Given that the world’s economy is locked into a coevolution with nature, the urgency of this question is brought into stark relief by the 2020 coronavirus pandemic and ongoing climate change.</p>While physical technologies to build such an economy mostly exist, the social technologies, in the form of institutions, governance and policies, do not.&nbsp;The development of these social technologies will necessitate a reconsideration of economic norms: in particular, what is the economy for, and what are we, as actors within it, striving for?&nbsp;This book integrates normative, institutional, political and economic requirements into a systematic framework to drive our present growth economy toward a future planetarian one. It outlines a suite of interrelated policies to increase the economy’s material efficiency, establish a basic living standard, and reform the money system, while along the way eliminating economic debt and balancing government budgets.<p></p><p>The framework and policies together form a paradigm of market planetarianism: the idea that the power of markets may be used to steer the economy toward a desired long-term goal. The methodological aspects of this paradigm are covered in the companion volume,&nbsp;<i>Economics of a Crowded Planet</i>.</p><p></p>