The Wealth of Nature. John Michael Greer

situation are those found in nonhuman Nature — above all, the cycles of increase, overshoot and dieoff which afflict so many other species that rely on outside forces to control their numbers. The ecological paradigm suggests that unless we take that model and its implications into account, some of the most important factors shaping our future are completely out of sight.

      The change from one paradigm to another, however, is not an overnight thing. Kuhn points out that in the sciences it usually has to wait until most of the older generation of scientists, who have been trained in the old paradigm, have been removed from the debate by old age and death. The same thing is too often true in other fields. Thus it’s uncomfortably likely that even as the industrial paradigm fails to explain an increasingly challenging world, a great many people will cling to the faith that progress will bail us out, and ignore the fact that all the complex economic activities of the industrial world depend ultimately on Nature itself.

      Primary and Secondary Goods

      This is one of the many places where E. F. Schumacher’s work provides a vital analytical tool. As mentioned in the Introduction, Schumacher made a distinction between what he called primary goods and secondary goods one of the foundations of his economic thought.⁹ Secondary goods are the goods and services provided by human labor, the ordinary subject of economics as the discipline is currently practiced. Primary goods are the goods and services provided by Nature, and they make the production of secondary goods possible.