The formula of human well-being used to be simple: Make money, get happy. So why is the old axiom suddenly turning on us?This article is an excerpt from Bill McKibben's new book, Deep Economy: The Wealth of Communities and the Durable Future. It first appeared in Mother Jones.
For most of human history, the two birds More and Better roosted on the same branch. You could toss one stone and hope to hit them both. That's why the centuries since Adam Smith launched modern economics with his book The Wealth of Nations have been so single-mindedly devoted to the dogged pursuit of maximum economic production.
Smith's core ideas -- that individuals pursuing their own interests in a market society end up making each other richer; and that increasing efficiency, usually by increasing scale, is the key to increasing wealth --have indisputably worked. They've produced more More than he could ever have imagined. They've built the unprecedented prosperity and ease that distinguish the lives of most of the people reading these words. It is no wonder and no accident that Smith's ideas still dominate our politics, our outlook, even our personalities.
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