ABSTRACT
The quality of life of individuals is regarded as the fundamental end of society, and its arrangements, and the activities of the individuals, are judged as though they were means. An economy is efficient if the contribution to quality of life made by each unit of resource is as high as possible. Market economies are essentially dynamic. Sustainable economic welfare might decline while S- efficiency increased. For example, economic welfare might decline as a result of some naturally occurring adverse environmental change, and there might still be a net decline even if S- efficiency improved. The concept of S-efficiency is also of use in considering the effect of environmental policy measures. The main reason why market economies have evolved towards decreasing S- efficiency is, in outline, simple. A more recent experiment in achieving S-efficiency is that of Masanobu Fukuoka, who has made the extraordinary claim that a full acre is if anything too large for a family farm.
