Returning to traditional values in the age of scarcity -- "We have an abundance of land and all the renewable resources that go with land; we have the tools and the scientific understanding to use them; we have time to change; and most valuable of all, we have an incredibly rich cultural heritage to draw upon...Our ancestors chartered a new continent. We will be charting a new way of life, one that can be sustained long after the last coal seam has been emptied. Ours is the finer challenge." Fron the Preface.

The future is not what it used to be: Returning to traditional values in an age of scarcity

Johnson, Warren A.

Dodd, Mead

MUDDLING TOWARD FRUGALITY

Mr. Johnsons thesis can be summarized without much difficulty: after generations of extravagant and reckless industrial expansion, we are clearly entering an age of economic scarcity. While human demands continue to rise, natural resources, especially the nonrenewable kind, become harder to find and more expensive to extract, process, transport and distribute. This simple brute fact is the basic cause of inflation, despite the inability of most professional economists to see it. (The dismal science has never been more dismally obtuse than it is today.) The law of diminishing returns is coming into effect. Technological developments can delay the process but not halt or reverse it; nor can we rely on government or big business to save us. Planning for further growth delays the adjustments that must be made, makes a fair sharing of necessary sacrifices more troublesome, and if carried too far will make more severe and painful, because rapid, the inevitable decline of the international economic machine. The best way to deal with the end of affluence is to accept itnot fight itand to begin, here and now, the unavoidable adaptations, on an individual, family, and community basis. Piecemeal, experimental, and muddling.

Muddling Toward Frugality

Literature & Fiction

Genre Fiction

Shambhala Pubns

Peterbilt: The Evolution of Class

Warren A. Johnson Publishing

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Books by Johnson, Warren A.