ABSTRACT
In this chapter the author argues that the inestimable laws of thermodynamics and a range of fundamental ethical considerations determine that present rates of economic growth cannot continue. The economy grows in physical scale, but the ecosystem does not. Therefore, as the economy grows it becomes larger in relation to the ecosystem. Standard economics does not ask how large the economy should be relative to the ecosystem. A steady-state economy is an economy with constant stocks of artefacts and people. The given definition of a steady-state economy stands in great contrast to the regime of economic growthmania characteristic of the modern world. Money fetishism is a particular case of what Alfred North Whitehead called the “fallacy of misplaced concreteness”, which consists in reasoning at one level of abstraction, but applying the conclusions of that reasoning to a different level of abstraction.
