Comprehending environmental and economic sustainability: Comparative analysis of stability principles in the biosphere and free market economy

摘要

Using the formalism of Lyapunov potential function it is shown that thestability principles for biomass in the ecosystem and for employment ineconomics are mathematically similar. The ecosystem is found to have a stableand an unstable stationary state with high (forest) and low (grasslands)biomass, respectively. In economics, there is a stable stationary state withhigh employment, which corresponds to mass production of conventional goodssold at low cost price, and an unstable stationary state with lower employment,which corresponds to production of novel goods appearing in the course oftechnological progress. An additional stable stationary state is described foreconomics, the one corresponding to very low employment in production of lifeessentials such as energy and raw materials. In this state the civilizationcurrently pays 10% of global GDP for energy produced by a negligible minorityof the working population (currently ~0.2%) and sold at prices greatlyexceeding the cost price by 40 times. It is shown that economic ownership overenergy sources is equivalent to equating measurable variables of differentdimensions (stores and fluxes), which leads to effective violation of the lawsof energy and matter conservation.