Nothing fails like success because we don't learn from it. We learn only from failure.
Kenneth E. BouldingRead
Economics has been incurably growth-oriented and addicted to everybody growing richer, even at the cost of exhaustion of resources and pollution of the environment.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques the relentless pursuit of economic growth, highlighting its detrimental effects on resources and the environment.
Kenneth E. Boulding emphasizes the obsession with continual economic growth as a fundamental flaw in economics. This addiction to increasing wealth often comes at the expense of environmental degradation and resource depletion, suggesting that a more sustainable approach is necessary for a healthier planet and society.
Themes
EconomicsGrowthEnvironmentResourcesSustainability
In practice
Example use cases
During a presentation on environmental policies, this quote can highlight the need for sustainable economic practices.
More from Kenneth E. Boulding
All quotes βAs long as man was small in numbers and limited in technology, he could realistically regard the earth as an infinite reservoir, an infinite source of inputs and an infinite cesspool for outputs. Today we can no longer make this assumption. Earth has become a space ship, not only in our imagination but also in the hard realities of the social, biological, and physical system in which man is enmeshed.
Kenneth E. BouldingRead
Mathematics brought rigor to Economics. Unfortunately, it also brought mortis.
Kenneth E. BouldingRead
Are we to regard the world of nature simply as a storehouse to be robbed for the immediate benefit of man? ... Does man have any responsibility for the preservation of a decent balance in nature, for the preservation of rare species, or even for the indefinite continuance of his race?
Kenneth E. BouldingRead
Similar quotes
A nation's economy is more than its markets, tastes, technologies and property rights.
Edmund PhelpsRead
Having a decent share of the national wealth for the middle class is not bad for growth. It is actually useful both for equity and efficiency reasons.
Thomas PikettyRead
No complaint... is more common than that of a scarcity of money.
Adam SmithRead
An economy hampered by restrictive tax rates will never produce enough jobs or enough profits
John F. KennedyRead
The basis on which good repute in any highly organized industrial community ultimately rests is pecuniary strength; and the means of showing pecuniary strength, and so of gaining or retaining a good name, are leisure and a conspicuous consumption of goods.
Thorstein VeblenRead
Money never seems to be interested in strengthening regulatory agencies, for example, but always in subverting them, in making them miss the danger signs in coal mines and in derivatives trading and in deep-sea oil wells.
Thomas FrankRead