Steady state economics – a primer

Re Andrew Faiz's article on moral choices (January)Shopping is an ambiguous activity. I can be detached about the subject because I have achieved the biblically approved three score years and ten. I don't need anything except food, drink and replacements. People with growing children cannot be quite so laid back. Still most of us would agree we have too much stuff and buying more stuff simply puts more wear and tear on the planet.
But doesn't buying keep the economy going? Certainly that is the orthodox view. But, there is an alternative, eccentric position called steady-state economics. Orthodox economic theory assumes the planet is an inexhaustible supply of resources and an unfillable dump. We can go on getting, spending and wasting as long as we like and measure our prosperity in never-ending economic growth.
Steady-state people say the planet is not so bountiful. The less we demand of it the better. In their ideal world, people work less but still have enough to live on because they need less. Some people need more than they have now, but the rest of us would live on what we have, or in some cases a good deal less. Shopping would become a necessity, like going to the dentist and people in the Caribbean could have their beaches pretty well to themselves. On the other hand we would have a great deal more leisure time. We would become time-rich and goods-poor, rather than the other way around.
In Isaiah 44 the prophet mocked the man who got a tree, used part of it to warm his house, part of it to cook his supper and part of it to make an idol, a piece of wood he treated as a god. We don't make idols the way the Babylonians did, but we do take things too seriously. Cars and houses cease to be tools and become means of self-expression; and the bigger the better.
With a little thought we could get by with less. Two of my students got married shortly after graduation; they told me they didn't want anything, even though a starting minister's salary is not exactly a princely sum. So I wrote them a poem. We would all be better off if we defined ourselves by what we do without, rather than what we have.
The primary moral choice in shopping is whether to shop at all.