Cross-Disciplinary Scientific Foundation for Sustainability: Qualitative Economics

We need to understand everyday interactions as “qualitative economics” as they have their roots in the historical, subjectivist, and philosophical tradition. As a starting point, we use the philosophy of science perspective and analysis. As the 21st century moves rapidly into a new economic era, there is a need to examine the ontological roots of economics as people, organizations, environment, and business to understand the local and global economies of today and tomorrow. We follow a historical but yet a “new paradigm” today to economic theory. In other words, our approach to the science of economics is an entirely different paradigm. Our approach argues that the current conventional neoclassical paradigm including economic revisionism with its focus on perfect information in a balanced equilibrium system is the basis of economic theory today and is fundamentally wrong. Even some of the more popular books on the earth being flat, global or different (“Freakonomics”), are all based on the conventional neoclassical economic paradigm that is nonscientific.
Adam Smith, under the objectivist paradigm along with his followers to this day notes that the basis for business is barter and exchange. In fact, they are adamantly opposed to a Lifeworld view of economics. The objectivist's paradigm in a pre–mass production globalized world provides little guidance in terms of uneven economic growth and clearly substantive problems with understanding the needs of developing nations. Instead, it argues that “market forces” and business in general can innovate and hence meet new challenges. Yet that neoclassical economic perspective is part of the problem as it only considers supply and demand in quantifiable statistics.
For example, how does “climate change” enter into the conventional economic paradigm? It does not because climate change at the United Nations or the US, and the EU international levels require extensive government involvement, public policy, standards, regulations, and controls that can be set and monitored. Indeed, that is the message gaining prominence globally, as all but three nations (one of which was the United States) signed the Kyoto Accords. What is interesting about this issue is that the conventional neoclassical perspective would rather deny the science of global warming and ignore the economic needs for combating climate change. This has been the position of most economists such that their answer is that the “market forces” will correct the problem. The code concept for neoclassic economics is to label the global energy crises as a “perfect storm”, which makes it ironic in the context of global warming and now the climate and weather changes experienced globally. Only since science has almost unanimously confirmed global warming, have economist sought other ideas.