For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, and a Sustainable Future

Winner of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order 1992, Named New Options Best Political Book

Economist Herman Daly and theologian John Cobb, Jr., demonstrate how conventional economics and a growth-oriented industrial economy have led us to the brink of environmental disaster, and show the possibility of a different future.

Named as one of the Top 50 Sustainability Books by University of Cambridges Programme for Sustainability Leadership and Greenleaf Publishing.

Pushing for economic growth above all else, industrial nations ignore the damage done to the biosphere by the profligate use of energy and scarce resources. Daly, a World Bank economist, and Cobb, a philosopher-theologian, set forth a detailed, far-reaching blueprint for a highly decentralized economy built around small communities, scaled to human needs and stewardship of the planet. Their important, radical critique of contemporary economic thinking in the book's dry first half leads to specific proposals in the second. These include a tax on industrial polluters, worker participation in management and ownership, reduced military expenditures and a self-sufficient national economy that relies less on imports. In place of gross national product, they put forth an "index of sustainable economic welfare" as a yardstick of true growth.
Copyright 1989 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This book is a profound critique of conventional economic theories and policies. Daly (economics, Louisiana State Univ.), an economist at the World Bank, and Cobb (theology and philosophy, Claremont Graduate Sch., Cal.) provide an alternative approach to economics, one that is more humanistic and less scientific. Their criticisms are rooted in a religious/philosophical framework of stewardship and community. The idealistic policies that flow from this new approach will be controversial. This book is highly recommended, especially for college libraries. Few other volumes address these issues with such insight.
- Richard C. Schiming, Mankato State Univ., Minn.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.