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Economic gain vs natural loss | blogjou

Murray Gell-Mann

The Quark and the Jaguar

355
20 May 2024

Economic gain vs natural loss


Discussion of budgets leads directly to the question of whether national accouting procedures include the depletion on nature’s capital. Usually they do not. If the president of a tropical country contracts with a foreign lumber company to have a large chunk of the nation’s forests cut down for a low price and a bribe, the national accounts show the price as part of the national income, and maybe even the bribe as well if it is spent at home and not sent to a Swiss bank, but the disappearance of the forest, with all its benefits and potential, does not appear as a corresponding loss.[…] Our example also makes clear that the struggle against major corruption is a key element in achieving the economic transition.