Abstract

V: Government's Complex Role

Although economist John Maynard Keynes was already arguing, in the 1930's, for a novel expedient to deal with growing abundance, his economist disciples found a different novel expedient. They suggested that the only way to deal with abundance was to insure that it never developed: that, in fact, one should keep demand growing so fast that it would never be possible to produce more than could be sold. Most economists and politicians throughout the world are now committed to this latter solution. Unfortunately, the U.S. has never really considered the potentials opened up by abundance, it has simply continued to assume that there is no other possibility but continued growth in the supply of ecofacts. Government and marketives are both committed to this goal and fail to recognize that many of the policies they adopt are contradictory and that the combination of all of them is actually destroying the market system.