ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book aims to distinguish between exhaustibles and non-exhaustibles when classifying the types of natural production factors, activities and products. It sets out the logic of optimisation serves as a vehicle for describing actual behaviour. The book explores the 'system-wide' complexity and causal interrelatedness of flow and stock variables, and discusses a holistic system approach as an adequate methodological device. Economics has always been in a crisis since it broke away from social philosophy in the late eighteenth century. Scientific procedures of evaluation will play a crucial role in a new political economy. The endogenisation of variables of the body politic into economic models, as has been attempted by the new school of politometrics, is instrumental for conclusive statements about the probability of the actual implementation of plans, government policies or social objectives.
