ABSTRACT
The ideas behind ecological living have a long history, perhaps starting with John Stuart Mill in 1857. Mill believed that economic growth must someday end in a “stationary state,” which “would be, on the whole, a very considerable improvement on our present condition”. Ecological living is similar to a steady-state economy and includes many key steady-state concepts. In the spaceman economy, what students are primarily concerned with is stock maintenance, and any technological change which results in the maintenance of a given total stock with a lessened throughput, is clearly a gain. The human economy is a subsystem of the steady-state ecosystem. Most people who believe a no-growth or steady-state economy is necessary or desirable agree that a steady state must be much more equal than the United States. When labor unions were strong, they sought a bigger share for workers, but this was usually under the assumption that the economy was growing, so profits to owners could grow too.
