This is not so much sustainability in the use of particular resources — for particular goods fall in and out of favour according to supply and demand factors — but sustainability of high economic growth and high standards of living in the economically developed, capitalist economies.
Take, as an example, the transition in the market for interior illumination: tallow candles were replaced by whale-oil lamps, which were replaced by kerosene lamps, which were replaced by incandescent bulbs powered by electricity.
There was no social or political pressure needed to accomplish this evolution; there was no “peak whale oil” movement, no kerosene conservationists, no sustainability crusade of yore. All it took was a functional price system, combined with the ever-present entrepreneurial drive for profits under a competitive, free-market order.
The real beauty of this free-market price system is that it brings about its own kind of sustainability
17 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in energy economics, entrepreneurship, environmental economics Tags: peak oil
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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