Hazel Henderson

Letter to Her Majesty: Suggestion for Low-Tech Apparatus for Economic Horizon-Scanning

As a fellow Brit who enjoyed David Warsh's Knowledge and the Wealth of Nations , I appreciate this article and agree with most of it. However, we must still go further outside the " Economics " box and take a systems and compexity view . For example, economists have still not corrected most of their textbooks to embrace the new "triple bottom line " accounting models , which internalize " externalities" . The new ESG ( environment , social and governance ) performance audits of companies has been shown to be material to asset value .
Similarly, these new accounting methods at the level of the firm , need also to be applied to national accounts ( UNSNAs) i.e. to correct GDP/GNP accordingly , by subtracting the costs still
" externaized" to taxpayers and society , as well as the
" defensive " expenditures ( e.g. to clean up pollution) ---all still counted in national accounts as additional " production".
I co-organized the debate in the European Parliament on
BEYOND GDP in 2007 beyond-gdp.eu
When economists and financial "engineers" blind us to externalities , they set us up for continual crises . These " Black Swans " are of our own making.
My forthcoming monograph with physicist Fritjof Capra ,
" Qualitiative Growth" will be published by the Society of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales and Tomorrow's Company and launched in the House of Lords in November.. I commend this and my own multi-disciplinary ,systems approach to measuring national trends with the Calvert Group of socially responsible mutual funds, the Calver-Henderson Quality of Life Indicators( updated at Calvert-Henderson.com ) to David Warsh's attention, as well as the faculty of LSE and Her Majesty.