The Natural Economy: A Study of a Marvellous Order in Human Affairs [Paperback]

John Young (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0856831662 | ISBN-13: 978-0856831669 | Publication Date: January 1, 1997

This volume argues that the West may have emerged victorious in the conflict of ideologies, but no nation can be considered truly wealthy if a significant proportion of its citizens are forced into unemployment or early retirement. Apart from the personal hardship and indignity caused, unemployment and early retirement create a huge funding problem for the state which has to resort to high taxation and borrowing to fund this in a humane society. This high level of taxation and borrowing in turn depresses economic activity and wellbeing. The main obstacles to reform are ignorance of an alternative economic strategy and the reluctance of economists to admit their error, though the latter is changing. John Young focuses on today's conundrum: why is it that with modern technology, which can produce in a day - or even hours - what had taken weeks or months before, there is still grinding poverty, and, paradoxically, the greatest poverty is often found side by side with the greatest wealth in the world's major cities. A growing number of economists are admitting that conventional economics cannot solve the problem of poverty and unemployment. This book offers a way forward that would also take into consideration environmental concerns. John Young is the author of "Reasoning Things Out"

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Shepheard-Walwyn (January 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0856831662
• ISBN-13: 978-0856831669
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,356,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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5.0 out of 5 stars "More radically revolutionary than Marx.", May 2, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Natural Economy: A Study of a Marvellous Order in Human Affairs (Paperback)

Much is rightly said about generosity towards the poor - yet generosity leaves the recipient inferior. It has always seemed to me that there is far too little said about simple justice, justice being about equality. Christ's "the poor you have always with you" too often seems to be taken only as a guarantee that there will always be the opportunity to be generous. Should it not also strike us as a rebuke? Is widespread poverty inevitable? This book addresses that question.

Some think of economics as a sort of super accountancy, as though to sum up the sums of all the bookkeepers in the land. Not to deny the usefulness of that, John Young contends in his new book _The Natural Economy_ that economics springs from something much more simple and fundamental - the quite natural inclination of us all to save effort in getting what we need in order to live.

To do this, we swap things, since people differ in their skills. Man is the only animal that swaps. Economics is at root the study of these exchanges. As such, it is the study of what is at the very root of the well-being of society - and it is truly a science of plenty since exchanges promote prosperity. In an economic act of exchanging, both parties to the exchange obtain, fundamentally, the saving of effort.

It is in this light that any artificial restrictions on these mutual exchanges are to be seen as a sort of brake on plenty. This is the study of abundance - utterly different from that perverse definition of economics which I had to learn as a schoolboy, that "economics is the study of the application of scarce means to alternative ends," the study of scarcity! Yet many have regarded economics in this light.

So, where do we find such artificial restrictions? According to the author, they abound. Thus, any influence which detracts from the mutual benefit in an exchange will be to the disadvantage of one, or perhaps of both, parties. For example, a monopoly supplier can dictate the price terms for what he sells, sometime! s even to the point of extortion. Or, a trade union, by its policies, can be as guilty of extortionate behaviour as the veriest 'robber baron' entrepreneur.

As a central part of what he has to say, the author deals clearly and at length with a notion much spoken of, yet frequently misunderstood - the common good. Some may wish to read the book for this section alone. It is in terms of fostering the common good, in the face of that which tends to corrupt and reduce it, that the book sees economic science. In this light, it is seen that there are many practices we condone which oppose it.

The book is by no means a detailed treatise on what is wrong and how to fix it. It simply points to certain ills by way of object lesson while leading us to understand the nature of economic reality, and shows in the process that there is an ethical dimension to economics. In its quiet and exact way it is more radically revolutionary than the works of Marx. It is more radical, because it goes more surely to the root of economics. It is also revolutionary. But far from advocating violent revolution, the book begins its revolution by engendering an understanding of what is wrong, by first giving us an inkling of what ought to be.

(John Ziegler teaches at the Centre for Thomistic Studies, Sydney, Australia.)