Reimaging our economic system to create the conditions for all life to thrive

“Anyone who believes that exponential growth can go on forever in a finite world is either a madman, or an economist" Kenneth Boulding.

It took me to my late twenties to really connect to economics, having missed out on anything close to an interest during schooling. Seeing the disconnect between the physical limits to growth and our infinite growth myth play out, made me wonder whether we can design better: a economic system that naturally creates health and not percieved wealth.

In 2022, I joined the first Capital Institute course on 'Introduction to Regenerative Economics: New Ways of Seeing, Thinking, Managing, and Being for the 21st Century’, which explored exactly that, grounded in the following three premises:

• The human economy is a living system (albeit an unhealthy one today). 

• There are universal patterns and principles – “first principles” – we can define that broadly describe the qualities and tendencies of how life works. 

• If the human economy is to be sustainable over the long run, it must harness the regenerative process by aligning with these same “first principles” of living systems