Economies in nature.

• Author: Henshaw, Philip F.
• Position: FROM READERS - Letter to the editor

There are always big gaps in human designs for things nature makes appear easy, but are not. The "economic democracy" idea proposed by David Schweickart ["A New Capitalism--or a New World?", September/October] is interesting for the ideals expressed, but retains one of the central flaws of capitalism that has to be dealt with for human economies to ever become part of nature. Schweickart is in very good company, as the same flaw mars nearly all the popular alternate economic models.

What's missing is a correction for how private, institutional, and government money management is used to drive an endless, growing search for new ways to use up the Earth. I think they all did in fact consider it, but apparently didn't see the natural way to solve it. It's the central problem of capitalism: the conflict between stability and the rules that let owners of money continually multiply their money, even in a non-growing economy. If people agree there's a need to limit the growth of wealth...