Nice take down. Peel back the layers and you'll always find hierarchies defending their existence. We hurt ourselves so the rulers can continue to rule.
The externality framing is perfect, calling ecological damage an "externality" admits the framework cant handle reality. The elementary school thought experiment works because kids haven't been taught to confuse money movement with provisioning, they intuitively grasp that resources come from earth not from exchange. The recursion conflict you describe, where macro rules violate micro survival logic, is why every attempt at "green growth" ends up as accounting tricks rather than actual degrowth. I've watched environmental economists try to price carbon and biodiversity as if assigning numbers fixes systems failure when really it just monetizes collapse while pretending markets can optimize what they systematicaly exclude from calculation.
Yes! Your perspective will strike any rational thinker as essentially true. We have an "immoral" economic system, disguised as being merely "amoral". The next questions (for me, anyway) are: What would be the features of a rational and humanistic 'economics' be? How might we, as a species, think and act together, cooperatively, and globally, to address our needs and desires? Thanks
I appreciate this post! I thought it was very interesting, but I am struggling with certain things. You mentioned that supply and demand curves completely ignore actual human needs, but I have to disagree. Price elasticity is a basic economic system that is determined how sensitive consumers are to price changes. This has a direct influence of the demand curve. This, at least to me, accounts for the actual necessities of living. A classic example of this is insulin. People who need insulin are going to less sensitive to price changes. Of coarse this can lead to manipulation, however intervention in these cases are inevitable through public policy. This, of course, influences market economics. Within market economics itself, public policy is extremely relevant and it needs to be considered in this topic. When I was in my basic economic classes (micro and macro), I was taught that economics in itself isn’t about prices and efficiency, but is literally the study of scarcity. The core principles of economics start from scarcity and necessity. Something I do agree with you about is how market economics ignores many important questions, but I feel that’s where other forms of Economics comes in. There are so many different types, such as gender economics and environmental economics. I feel like these branches need to be considered in market economics, but that doesn’t make it useless because it can help show efficient outcomes when used in tandem with other forms of economics. Another thing I disagree about is how you painted this picture about the perception of market economics as an exact science, in which you argue against this. I would argue that no branch of economics is perceived as an exact science because of its nature. I remember learning in those econ classes that economics, many times, utilizes models that help explain things. The key word here is model. It’s not an exact representation of reality, but it’s not blind at all. My education drilled that into my mind. Economists create models from the best representation of reality that they can. That doesn’t mean that there’s no value in understanding them.
The disagreement here isn’t about whether economists are thoughtful or whether models have some value—it’s about what kind of value markets are actually calculating. Price elasticity does reflect behavioral sensitivity to price, but it does not measure human need. Using insulin as an example, inelastic demand doesn’t tell us how essential insulin is; it tells us how much suffering people will tolerate before consumption collapses. That is a measure of stress under constraint, not a direct accounting of necessity.
From a cybernetic perspective, value is defined by functional requirement within a system, not by post-hoc reaction. Insulin’s importance lies in what happens to human health, mortality, hospitals, and social stability when it is unavailable. Markets do not calculate those consequences in advance. They register importance only after harm occurs, once scarcity has already expressed itself through price.
This is why market calculation is structurally myopic. Markets operate on ex post signals—prices after scarcity, demand after damage, policy after failure becomes visible. Cybernetic systems (integral), by contrast, rely on ex ante feedback: physiological limits, ecological thresholds, production capacity, and systemic risk. Elasticity measures how much pressure a population can withstand; cybernetic value measures what must be maintained for the system to remain viable.
Public policy doesn’t resolve this flaw—it highlights it. If markets require constant external correction to address healthcare, housing, food security, or ecological damage, then markets are not performing those calculations themselves. Policy acts as a manual feedback system compensating for what price signals cannot see.
Finally, while economics is often framed as the study of scarcity, cybernetics starts deeper—with resource states, constraints, flows, and regenerative limits. Price collapses this complexity into a single scalar, which is convenient but deeply lossy. The proliferation of subfields like environmental or health economics doesn’t fix this; it confirms the limitation. Markets don’t calculate what matters to system stability—they calculate what people can endure.
Another great critique of capitalist economics that fails to identify specific alternatives that would solve these problems. I want to know exactly what could be done differently. We know that command economies are full of their own inefficiencies, which seems to be the implied intuition-based solution proposed by the children in this article. I think the problems you point out can be ameliorated by replacing GDP with Gross National Happiness or some other more holistic measure of economic success, or by implementing a Land Value Tax that puts a price on extraction of limited natural resources. We all know why capitalism is failing us. What we don't know is how to fix it. Can we pair our critiques with solutions, please?
The market-system is not merely burdensome, but cancerous to our social and environmental well-being.
This is immeasurably worse than what Nazi Germany meant by calling the disabled people "useless eaters," which wasn't even defined as mindless consumerists.
The way you can simply explain complex topics is brilliant. I have jotted down so many lines from this post, this was so good. Thank you so much for writing it and sharing it!
Sorry, Peter. I wrote my earlier comment, after I read/scanned over your article, but failed to pick up on the link to the Integral paper. I'll take a look at that. Thanks
Not sure what you mean. What do you think Integral is supposed to be? A infrastructure for helping that any group in any community can use to help themselves. Integral isn't gonna be about one person travelling around the country to 'implement it', it'll be a way for all the anti-capitalist, pro-social organizations and movements already out there to enhance their efforts to provision basic needs for everyone without money and markets, over time.
Check if you have a local council in your area. Do you have a sustainability council of even 5 people regularly meeting and doing local actions and education?
Nice take down. Peel back the layers and you'll always find hierarchies defending their existence. We hurt ourselves so the rulers can continue to rule.
The externality framing is perfect, calling ecological damage an "externality" admits the framework cant handle reality. The elementary school thought experiment works because kids haven't been taught to confuse money movement with provisioning, they intuitively grasp that resources come from earth not from exchange. The recursion conflict you describe, where macro rules violate micro survival logic, is why every attempt at "green growth" ends up as accounting tricks rather than actual degrowth. I've watched environmental economists try to price carbon and biodiversity as if assigning numbers fixes systems failure when really it just monetizes collapse while pretending markets can optimize what they systematicaly exclude from calculation.
Yes! Your perspective will strike any rational thinker as essentially true. We have an "immoral" economic system, disguised as being merely "amoral". The next questions (for me, anyway) are: What would be the features of a rational and humanistic 'economics' be? How might we, as a species, think and act together, cooperatively, and globally, to address our needs and desires? Thanks
Very well written article, hope this gets out to the world.
Neoclassical (orthodox) economics is pure, 100% bullshit:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/global-sustainability/article/sustainability-scientists-critique-of-neoclassical-economics/AF8F51932270DA84A2D4D946EDEB4EA1
My response: https://mattmcelligott.substack.com/p/the-nature-of-economics
https://x.com/DaveShapi/status/2005971149780390226?s=20
I appreciate this post! I thought it was very interesting, but I am struggling with certain things. You mentioned that supply and demand curves completely ignore actual human needs, but I have to disagree. Price elasticity is a basic economic system that is determined how sensitive consumers are to price changes. This has a direct influence of the demand curve. This, at least to me, accounts for the actual necessities of living. A classic example of this is insulin. People who need insulin are going to less sensitive to price changes. Of coarse this can lead to manipulation, however intervention in these cases are inevitable through public policy. This, of course, influences market economics. Within market economics itself, public policy is extremely relevant and it needs to be considered in this topic. When I was in my basic economic classes (micro and macro), I was taught that economics in itself isn’t about prices and efficiency, but is literally the study of scarcity. The core principles of economics start from scarcity and necessity. Something I do agree with you about is how market economics ignores many important questions, but I feel that’s where other forms of Economics comes in. There are so many different types, such as gender economics and environmental economics. I feel like these branches need to be considered in market economics, but that doesn’t make it useless because it can help show efficient outcomes when used in tandem with other forms of economics. Another thing I disagree about is how you painted this picture about the perception of market economics as an exact science, in which you argue against this. I would argue that no branch of economics is perceived as an exact science because of its nature. I remember learning in those econ classes that economics, many times, utilizes models that help explain things. The key word here is model. It’s not an exact representation of reality, but it’s not blind at all. My education drilled that into my mind. Economists create models from the best representation of reality that they can. That doesn’t mean that there’s no value in understanding them.
K.
The disagreement here isn’t about whether economists are thoughtful or whether models have some value—it’s about what kind of value markets are actually calculating. Price elasticity does reflect behavioral sensitivity to price, but it does not measure human need. Using insulin as an example, inelastic demand doesn’t tell us how essential insulin is; it tells us how much suffering people will tolerate before consumption collapses. That is a measure of stress under constraint, not a direct accounting of necessity.
From a cybernetic perspective, value is defined by functional requirement within a system, not by post-hoc reaction. Insulin’s importance lies in what happens to human health, mortality, hospitals, and social stability when it is unavailable. Markets do not calculate those consequences in advance. They register importance only after harm occurs, once scarcity has already expressed itself through price.
This is why market calculation is structurally myopic. Markets operate on ex post signals—prices after scarcity, demand after damage, policy after failure becomes visible. Cybernetic systems (integral), by contrast, rely on ex ante feedback: physiological limits, ecological thresholds, production capacity, and systemic risk. Elasticity measures how much pressure a population can withstand; cybernetic value measures what must be maintained for the system to remain viable.
Public policy doesn’t resolve this flaw—it highlights it. If markets require constant external correction to address healthcare, housing, food security, or ecological damage, then markets are not performing those calculations themselves. Policy acts as a manual feedback system compensating for what price signals cannot see.
Finally, while economics is often framed as the study of scarcity, cybernetics starts deeper—with resource states, constraints, flows, and regenerative limits. Price collapses this complexity into a single scalar, which is convenient but deeply lossy. The proliferation of subfields like environmental or health economics doesn’t fix this; it confirms the limitation. Markets don’t calculate what matters to system stability—they calculate what people can endure.
Another great critique of capitalist economics that fails to identify specific alternatives that would solve these problems. I want to know exactly what could be done differently. We know that command economies are full of their own inefficiencies, which seems to be the implied intuition-based solution proposed by the children in this article. I think the problems you point out can be ameliorated by replacing GDP with Gross National Happiness or some other more holistic measure of economic success, or by implementing a Land Value Tax that puts a price on extraction of limited natural resources. We all know why capitalism is failing us. What we don't know is how to fix it. Can we pair our critiques with solutions, please?
please try to arrange debates / critical discussions with relevant experts who disagree with your analysis, who are status-quo apologists/defenders.
The market-system is not merely burdensome, but cancerous to our social and environmental well-being.
This is immeasurably worse than what Nazi Germany meant by calling the disabled people "useless eaters," which wasn't even defined as mindless consumerists.
The way you can simply explain complex topics is brilliant. I have jotted down so many lines from this post, this was so good. Thank you so much for writing it and sharing it!
Sorry, Peter. I wrote my earlier comment, after I read/scanned over your article, but failed to pick up on the link to the Integral paper. I'll take a look at that. Thanks
Not sure what you mean. What do you think Integral is supposed to be? A infrastructure for helping that any group in any community can use to help themselves. Integral isn't gonna be about one person travelling around the country to 'implement it', it'll be a way for all the anti-capitalist, pro-social organizations and movements already out there to enhance their efforts to provision basic needs for everyone without money and markets, over time.
Check if you have a local council in your area. Do you have a sustainability council of even 5 people regularly meeting and doing local actions and education?