Shift our Economic Reasoning to be Consistent with Sustainable Development by timdamon

Judge 1: Economics is a set of integrated principles and methods. It is supported by many smart people. I agree that these people are hopelessly wrong headed in many areas. My most cited article deals with economics and after nearly 40 years most economists still cite it for the wrong reason. They miss the rather clear and compelling data. Economists don’t change any faster than glaciers. Empirical evidence that what they are doing is wrong has little influence. The author may be correct, but there is no convincing plan in this proposal for implementing this change. Sorry. Judge 2: There is no question that discounting is a big contributor to unsustainable behavior. But how do you really plan to change the economic, political and social institutions of our world to limit discounting. You cannot stop it, nor do you want to. Even Nicholas Stern used a low discount rate, not zero. If I could wave a magic wand and make this happen, I would do it in a heartbeat. But the challenge is enormous, and I am not seeing a real strategy for doing it in this proposal.