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140-743: Hypothetical utopias focus on, among other things, equality in categories such as economics , government and justice , with the method and structure of proposed implementation varying according to ideology. Lyman Tower Sargent argues that the nature of a utopia is inherently contradictory because societies are not homogeneous and have desires which conflict and therefore cannot simultaneously be satisfied. To quote: There are socialist, capitalist, monarchical, democratic, anarchist, ecological, feminist, patriarchal, egalitarian, hierarchical, racist, left-wing, right-wing, reformist, free love, nuclear family, extended family, gay, lesbian and many more utopias [ Naturism , Nude Christians , ...] Utopianism, some argue,

280-630: A common stock, and with its scepticism about the rulership of kings, voiced in the Books of Samuel ; and the New Testament 's affirmations that God was no respecter of persons, that there were no masters or slaves under the New Covenant . From these and similar texts, he interpreted Christian teaching as calling for the abolition of property [in land] and aristocracy. For him, nature "is in effect God, and this pantheistic materialism proclaimed

420-590: A corn chandler. Winstanley died in 1676, aged 66, vexed by legal disputes concerning a small legacy owed to him in a will. The Soviet-era Alexander Garden Obelisk in Moscow, Russia, in 1918 included his name among a list of outstanding thinkers and personalities of the struggle for the liberation of workers. In 1999, the British activist group The Land is Ours celebrated the Digger movement's 350th anniversary with

560-669: A cowherd. Winstanley published a pamphlet called The New Law of Righteousness . The basis of this work came from the downtrodden state of the labouring population of England under the encroachment of private property by means of the Enclosures of common land; the remedy it espouses is the communal life, as exposed in the Book of Acts , chapter two, verses 44 and 45: "And all that believed were together, and had all things common; And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need." Winstanley argued that In

700-702: A definition of economics as a study of human behaviour, subject to and constrained by scarcity, which forces people to choose, allocate scarce resources to competing ends, and economise (seeking the greatest welfare while avoiding the wasting of scarce resources). According to Robbins: "Economics is the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses". Robbins' definition eventually became widely accepted by mainstream economists, and found its way into current textbooks. Although far from unanimous, most mainstream economists would accept some version of Robbins' definition, even though many have raised serious objections to

840-451: A distinct field. The book focused on determinants of national income in the short run when prices are relatively inflexible. Keynes attempted to explain in broad theoretical detail why high labour-market unemployment might not be self-correcting due to low " effective demand " and why even price flexibility and monetary policy might be unavailing. The term "revolutionary" has been applied to the book in its impact on economic analysis. During

980-635: A greater "utopian socialist" movement, due to their shared characteristics. A once common characteristic is an egalitarian distribution of goods, frequently with the total abolition of money . Citizens only do work which they enjoy and which is for the common good , leaving them with ample time for the cultivation of the arts and sciences. One classic example of such a utopia appears in Edward Bellamy 's 1888 novel Looking Backward . William Morris depicts another socialist utopia in his 1890 novel News from Nowhere , written partially in response to

1120-420: A lower relative cost of production, rather relying only on its own production. It has been termed a "fundamental analytical explanation" for gains from trade . Coming at the end of the classical tradition, John Stuart Mill (1848) parted company with the earlier classical economists on the inevitability of the distribution of income produced by the market system. Mill pointed to a distinct difference between

1260-539: A march and reoccupation of St George's Hill , the site of the first Digger colony. Like the original colony, this settlement was quickly disbanded. Since 2010 a Wigan Diggers’ Festival has been held annually in Winstanley's birth town of Wigan attracting support across the North of England. The Complete Works of Gerrard Winstanley , edited jointly by Thomas N. Corns, Ann Hughes and David Loewenstein, were published by

1400-449: A more comprehensive theory of costs on the supply side. In the 20th century, neoclassical theorists departed from an earlier idea that suggested measuring total utility for a society, opting instead for ordinal utility , which posits behaviour-based relations across individuals. In microeconomics , neoclassical economics represents incentives and costs as playing a pervasive role in shaping decision making . An immediate example of this

1540-467: A more important role in mainstream economic theory. Also, heterogeneity among the economic agents, e.g. differences in income, plays an increasing role in recent economic research. Other schools or trends of thought referring to a particular style of economics practised at and disseminated from well-defined groups of academicians that have become known worldwide, include the Freiburg School ,

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1680-441: A new space. Utopia is not kind of a free imagination utopia is a matter of inner most urgency, you are forced to imagine it, it is the only way out, and this is what we need today." Philosopher Milan Šimečka said: ...utopism was a common type of thinking at the dawn of human civilization . We find utopian beliefs in the oldest religious imaginations, appear regularly in the neighborhood of ancient, yet pre-philosophical views on

1820-473: A period of turbulent development of capitalism that highlighted antagonisms of capitalist society ( Saint-Simon , Fourier , Owen , Cabet , Lamennais , Proudhon and their followers). Famous quotes from writers and characters about utopia: Utopian socialist Étienne Cabet in his utopian book The Voyage to Icaria cited the definition from the contemporary Dictionary of ethical and political sciences : Utopias and other models of government, based on

1960-597: A proportion of the value their work had created. Marxian economics was further developed by Karl Kautsky (1854–1938)'s The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx and The Class Struggle (Erfurt Program) , Rudolf Hilferding 's (1877–1941) Finance Capital , Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924)'s The Development of Capitalism in Russia and Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism , and Rosa Luxemburg (1871–1919)'s The Accumulation of Capital . At its inception as

2100-409: A rapidly growing population against a limited amount of land meant diminishing returns to labour. The result, he claimed, was chronically low wages, which prevented the standard of living for most of the population from rising above the subsistence level. Economist Julian Simon has criticised Malthus's conclusions. While Adam Smith emphasised production and income, David Ricardo (1817) focused on

2240-459: A rigorous 50-year-long educational program to be benign oligarchs, the "philosopher-kings." Plato stressed this structure many times in statements, and in his published works, such as the Republic . The wisdom of these rulers will supposedly eliminate poverty and deprivation through fairly distributed resources, though the details on how to do this are unclear. The educational program for the rulers

2380-469: A set of stable preferences, a definite overall guiding objective, and the capability of making a choice. There exists an economic problem, subject to study by economic science, when a decision (choice) is made by one or more players to attain the best possible outcome. Keynesian economics derives from John Maynard Keynes , in particular his book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), which ushered in contemporary macroeconomics as

2520-409: A single tax on income of land owners. In reaction against copious mercantilist trade regulations, the physiocrats advocated a policy of laissez-faire , which called for minimal government intervention in the economy. Adam Smith (1723–1790) was an early economic theorist. Smith was harshly critical of the mercantilists but described the physiocratic system "with all its imperfections" as "perhaps

2660-404: A social framework characterized by vigorous competition between alternative philosophies. The English political philosopher James Harrington (1611–1677), author of the utopian work The Commonwealth of Oceana , published in 1656, inspired English country-party republicanism (1680s to 1740s) and became influential in the design of three American colonies. His theories ultimately contributed to

2800-452: A social science, economics was defined and discussed at length as the study of production, distribution, and consumption of wealth by Jean-Baptiste Say in his Treatise on Political Economy or, The Production, Distribution, and Consumption of Wealth (1803). These three items were considered only in relation to the increase or diminution of wealth, and not in reference to their processes of execution. Say's definition has survived in part up to

2940-435: A sought after end). Some subsequent comments criticised the definition as overly broad in failing to limit its subject matter to analysis of markets. From the 1960s, however, such comments abated as the economic theory of maximizing behaviour and rational-choice modelling expanded the domain of the subject to areas previously treated in other fields. There are other criticisms as well, such as in scarcity not accounting for

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3080-538: A species to become extraordinarily cooperative and capable of creating culture . The Book of Revelation in the Christian Bible depicts an eschatological time with the defeat of Satan , of Evil and of Sin . The main difference compared to the Old Testament promises is that such a defeat also has an ontological value: "Then I saw 'a new heaven and a new earth ,' for the first heaven and

3220-442: A synthesis emerged by the 2000s, often given the name the new neoclassical synthesis . It integrated the rational expectations and optimizing framework of the new classical theory with a new Keynesian role for nominal rigidities and other market imperfections like imperfect information in goods, labour and credit markets. The monetarist importance of monetary policy in stabilizing the economy and in particular controlling inflation

3360-527: A utopia, dystopia is a concept which surpassed utopia in popularity in the fictional literature from the 1950s onwards, chiefly because of the impact of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four . In 1876, writer Charles Renouvier published a novel called Uchronia ( French Uchronie ). The neologism , using chronos instead of topos , has since been used to refer to non-existent idealized times in fiction, such as Philip Roth 's The Plot Against America (2004) , and Philip K. Dick 's The Man in

3500-554: Is Held in Common' Tianxia weigong( Chinese : 天下爲公 ; pinyin : Tiānxià wèi gōng ) influenced modern Chinese reformers and revolutionaries, such as Kang Youwei . It is said, once Maitreya is reborn into the future kingdom of Ketumati , a utopian age will commence. The city is described in Buddhism as a domain filled with palaces made of gems and surrounded by Kalpavriksha trees producing goods. During its years, none of

3640-572: Is a perfect Creature of himself; and the same Spirit that made the Globe, dwels in man to govern the Globe; so that the flesh of man being subject to Reason, his Maker, hath him to be his Teacher and Ruler within himself, therefore needs not run abroad after any Teacher and Ruler without him, for he needs not that any man should teach him, for the same Anoynting that ruled in the Son of man, teacheth him all things... And so selfish imaginations taking possession of

3780-421: Is a term for the "way (nomos) to run a household (oikos)", or in other words the know-how of an οἰκονομικός ( oikonomikos ), or "household or homestead manager". Derived terms such as "economy" can therefore often mean "frugal" or "thrifty". By extension then, "political economy" was the way to manage a polis or state. There are a variety of modern definitions of economics ; some reflect evolving views of

3920-438: Is also applied to such diverse subjects as crime , education , the family , feminism , law , philosophy , politics , religion , social institutions , war , science , and the environment . The earlier term for the discipline was "political economy", but since the late 19th century, it has commonly been called "economics". The term is ultimately derived from Ancient Greek οἰκονομία ( oikonomia ) which

4060-465: Is bolstered by the title of the book and nation and its apparent confusion between the Greek for "no place" and "good place": "utopia" is a compound of the syllable ou-, meaning "no" and topos, meaning place. But the homophonic prefix eu-, meaning "good," also resonates in the word, with the implication that the perfectly "good place" is really "no place." In many cultures, societies, and religions, there

4200-555: Is essential for the improvement of the human condition. But if used wrongly, it becomes dangerous. Utopia has an inherent contradictory nature here. The opposite of a utopia is a dystopia . Utopian and dystopian fiction has become a popular literary category. Despite being common parlance for something imaginary, utopianism inspired and was inspired by some reality-based fields and concepts such as architecture , file sharing , social networks , universal basic income , communes , open borders and even pirate bases . The word utopia

4340-517: Is not realized or feasible, but has the ideal that is somewhere beyond the horizon, a lighthouse to which it may seek to approach if it considers that ideal socially valid and generally accepted." Chronologically, the first recorded Utopian proposal is Plato 's Republic . Part conversation, part fictional depiction and part policy proposal, Republic would categorize citizens into a rigid class structure of "golden," "silver," "bronze" and "iron" socioeconomic classes. The golden citizens are trained in

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4480-413: Is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it

4620-450: Is some myth or memory of a distant past when humankind lived in a primitive and simple state but at the same time one of perfect happiness and fulfillment. In those days, the various myths tell us, there was an instinctive harmony between humanity and nature. People's needs were few and their desires limited. Both were easily satisfied by the abundance provided by nature. Accordingly, there were no motives whatsoever for war or oppression. Nor

4760-598: Is the consumer theory of individual demand, which isolates how prices (as costs) and income affect quantity demanded. In macroeconomics it is reflected in an early and lasting neoclassical synthesis with Keynesian macroeconomics. Neoclassical economics is occasionally referred as orthodox economics whether by its critics or sympathisers. Modern mainstream economics builds on neoclassical economics but with many refinements that either supplement or generalise earlier analysis, such as econometrics , game theory , analysis of market failure and imperfect competition , and

4900-447: Is the central notion of the proposal. It has few laws, no lawyers and rarely sends its citizens to war but hires mercenaries from among its war-prone neighbors. These mercenaries were deliberately sent into dangerous situations in the hope that the more warlike populations of all surrounding countries will be weeded out, leaving peaceful peoples to remain. During the 16th century, Thomas More's book Utopia proposed an ideal society of

5040-399: Is this old notion of imagining this ideal society we know will never be realized, the other is the capitalist utopia in the sense of new perverse desire that you are not only allowed but even solicited to realize. The true utopia is when the situation is so without issue, without the way to resolve it within the coordinates of the possible that out of the pure urge of survival you have to invent

5180-607: Is viewed as basic elements within economies , including individual agents and markets , their interactions, and the outcomes of interactions. Individual agents may include, for example, households, firms, buyers, and sellers. Macroeconomics analyses economies as systems where production, distribution, consumption, savings , and investment expenditure interact, and factors affecting it: factors of production , such as labour , capital , land , and enterprise , inflation , economic growth , and public policies that have impact on these elements . It also seeks to analyse and describe

5320-549: The City of London , where he became an apprentice to a Merchant Tailor. In 1638, he was admitted as a freeman of the Merchant Tailors' Company , a trade guild . In 1639, he married Susan King, the daughter of William King, a London surgeon. The First English Civil War disrupted Winstanley’s business, and in 1643 he was made bankrupt. His father-in-law helped him to move to Cobham, Surrey , where he initially worked as

5460-605: The Oxford University Press in December 2009 at £229 ( ISBN   978-0-19-957606-7 ). A shorter and less comprehensive volume containing all the major works, Gerrard Winstanley: A Common Treasury edited by Andrew Hopton, was published in 1989 by Aporia ( ISBN   978-0-948518-45-4 ) and reprinted several times since, most recently in 2011 (paperback) by Verso Books (UK) with an introduction by Tony Benn ( ISBN   978-1-84467-595-1 ). 1975 saw

5600-780: The School of Lausanne , the Stockholm school and the Chicago school of economics . During the 1970s and 1980s mainstream economics was sometimes separated into the Saltwater approach of those universities along the Eastern and Western coasts of the US, and the Freshwater, or Chicago school approach. Within macroeconomics there is, in general order of their historical appearance in

5740-924: The Shakers , who originated in England in the 18th century and arrived in America in 1774. A number of religious utopian societies from Europe came to the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries, including the Society of the Woman in the Wilderness (led by Johannes Kelpius (1667–1708), the Ephrata Cloister (established in 1732) and the Harmony Society , among others. The Harmony Society

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5880-488: The idyllic state of affairs they describe is not irretrievably and irrevocably lost to mankind, that it can be regained in some way or other. One way might be a quest for an "earthly paradise" – a place like Shangri-La , hidden in the Tibetan mountains and described by James Hilton in his utopian novel Lost Horizon (1933). Christopher Columbus followed directly in this tradition in his belief that he had found

6020-433: The macroeconomics of high unemployment. Gary Becker , a contributor to the expansion of economics into new areas, described the approach he favoured as "combin[ing the] assumptions of maximizing behaviour, stable preferences , and market equilibrium , used relentlessly and unflinchingly." One commentary characterises the remark as making economics an approach rather than a subject matter but with great specificity as to

6160-467: The neoclassical model of economic growth for analysing long-run variables affecting national income . Neoclassical economics studies the behaviour of individuals , households , and organisations (called economic actors, players, or agents), when they manage or use scarce resources, which have alternative uses, to achieve desired ends. Agents are assumed to act rationally, have multiple desirable ends in sight, limited resources to obtain these ends,

6300-415: The societal to the microeconomic level: Economics is a study of man in the ordinary business of life. It enquires how he gets his income and how he uses it. Thus, it is on the one side, the study of wealth and on the other and more important side, a part of the study of man. Lionel Robbins (1932) developed implications of what has been termed "[p]erhaps the most commonly accepted current definition of

6440-400: The "choice process and the type of social interaction that [such] analysis involves." The same source reviews a range of definitions included in principles of economics textbooks and concludes that the lack of agreement need not affect the subject-matter that the texts treat. Among economists more generally, it argues that a particular definition presented may reflect the direction toward which

6580-486: The 1970s and 1980s, when several major central banks followed a monetarist-inspired policy, but was later abandoned because the results were unsatisfactory. A more fundamental challenge to the prevailing Keynesian paradigm came in the 1970s from new classical economists like Robert Lucas , Thomas Sargent and Edward Prescott . They introduced the notion of rational expectations in economics, which had profound implications for many economic discussions, among which were

6720-657: The Five Sences, and ruling as King in the room of Reason therein, and working with Covetousnesse, did set up one man to teach and rule over another; and thereby the Spirit was killed, and man was brought into bondage, and became a greater Slave to such of his own kind, then the Beasts of the field were to him. Winstanley took as his basic texts the Biblical sacred history , with its affirmation that all men were descended from

6860-651: The Garden of Eden when, towards the end of the 15th century, he first encountered the New World and its indigenous inhabitants. The Peach Blossom Spring ( Chinese : 桃花源 ; pinyin : Táohuāyuán ), a prose piece written by the Chinese poet Tao Yuanming , describes a utopian place. The narrative goes that a fisherman from Wuling sailed upstream a river and came across a beautiful blossoming peach grove and lush green fields covered with blossom petals. Entranced by

7000-617: The Greek historian and biographer of the 1st century, dealt with the blissful and mythic past of humanity. From Sir Philip Sidney 's prose romance The Old Arcadia (1580), originally a region in the Peloponnesus , Arcadia became a synonym for any rural area that serves as a pastoral setting, a locus amoenus ("delightful place"). The Biblical Garden of Eden as depicted in the Old Testament Bible 's Book of Genesis 2 ( Authorized Version of 1611 ): And

7140-579: The High Castle (1962) . According to the Philosophical Dictionary , proto-utopian ideas begin as early as the period of ancient Greece and Rome, medieval heretics , peasant revolts and establish themselves in the period of the early capitalism, reformation and Renaissance ( Hus , Müntzer , More , Campanella ), democratic revolutions ( Meslier , Morelly , Mably , Winstanley , later Babeufists , Blanquists ,) and in

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7280-480: The Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die. [...] And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; [...] And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam and he slept: and he took one of his ribs and closed up

7420-450: The Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. Out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden and the tree of knowledge of good and evil . [...] And the Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And

7560-442: The absence of death and suffering ; changes in human nature and the human condition . Technology has affected the way humans have lived to such an extent that normal functions, like sleep, eating or even reproduction, have been replaced by artificial means. Other examples include a society where humans have struck a balance with technology and it is merely used to enhance the human living condition (e.g. Star Trek ). In place of

7700-407: The analysis of wealth: how wealth is created (production), distributed, and consumed; and how wealth can grow. But he said that economics can be used to study other things, such as war, that are outside its usual focus. This is because war has as the goal winning it (as a sought after end ), generates both cost and benefits; and, resources (human life and other costs) are used to attain the goal. If

7840-479: The area of inquiry or object of inquiry rather than the methodology. In the biology department, it is not said that all biology should be studied with DNA analysis. People study living organisms in many different ways, so some people will perform DNA analysis, others might analyse anatomy, and still others might build game theoretic models of animal behaviour. But they are all called biology because they all study living organisms. According to Ha Joon Chang, this view that

7980-551: The aristocratic mystic Lady Eleanor Davies . This employment lasted less than a year. It ended when Davies accused Winstanley of mismanaging her property, and he then returned to Cobham. Winstanley continued to advocate the redistribution of land. In 1652 he published another pamphlet called The Law of Freedom in a Platform , in which he argued that the Christian basis for society is where property and wages are abolished. In keeping with Winstanley's adherence to biblical models,

8120-443: The author believes economics is evolving, or should evolve. Many economists including nobel prize winners James M. Buchanan and Ronald Coase reject the method-based definition of Robbins and continue to prefer definitions like those of Say, in terms of its subject matter. Ha-Joon Chang has for example argued that the definition of Robbins would make economics very peculiar because all other sciences define themselves in terms of

8260-501: The beauty, he continued upstream and stumbled onto a small grotto when he reached the end of the river. Though narrow at first, he was able to squeeze through the passage and discovered an ethereal utopia, where the people led an ideal existence in harmony with nature. He saw a vast expanse of fertile lands, clear ponds, mulberry trees, bamboo groves and the like with a community of people of all ages and houses in neat rows. The people explained that their ancestors escaped to this place during

8400-511: The beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Man, the lord that was to govern this Creation; for Man had Domination given to him, over the Beasts, Birds, and Fishes; but not one word was spoken in the beginning, That one branch of mankind should rule over another. And the Reason is this, Every single man, Male and Female,

8540-466: The bottom, you shall see it lies within the iron chest of cursed covetousness, who gives the earth to some part of mankind and denies it to another part of mankind: and that part that hath the earth, hath no right from the law of creation to take it to himself and shut out others; but he took it away violently by theft and murder in conquest. From The Law of Freedom in a Platform : If they prove desperate, wanton or idle, and will not quietly submit to

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8680-403: The causes and meaning of natural events, the purpose of creation, the path of good and evil, happiness and misfortune, fairy tales and legends later inspired by poetry and philosophy ... the underlying motives on which utopian literature is built are as old as the entire historical epoch of human history. ” Philosopher Richard Stahel said: ...every social organization relies on something that

8820-499: The civil unrest of the Qin dynasty and they themselves had not left since or had contact with anyone from the outside. They had not even heard of the later dynasties of bygone times or the then-current Jin dynasty . In the story, the community was secluded and unaffected by the troubles of the outside world. The sense of timelessness was predominant in the story as a perfect utopian community remains unchanged, that is, it had no decline nor

8960-517: The colonies. Physiocrats , a group of 18th-century French thinkers and writers, developed the idea of the economy as a circular flow of income and output. Physiocrats believed that only agricultural production generated a clear surplus over cost, so that agriculture was the basis of all wealth. Thus, they opposed the mercantilist policy of promoting manufacturing and trade at the expense of agriculture, including import tariffs. Physiocrats advocated replacing administratively costly tax collections with

9100-671: The days of the Peasants' Revolt (1381) led by Wat Tyler , because that is when a verse of the Lollard priest John Ball was circulated: On 1 April 1649, Winstanley and his followers took over vacant or common lands on St George's Hill in Surrey . Other Digger colonies followed in Buckinghamshire, Kent , and Northamptonshire . Their action was to cultivate the land and distribute food without charge to any who would join them in

9240-488: The design of modern monetary policy and are now standard workhorses in most central banks. After the 2007–2008 financial crisis , macroeconomic research has put greater emphasis on understanding and integrating the financial system into models of the general economy and shedding light on the ways in which problems in the financial sector can turn into major macroeconomic recessions. In this and other research branches, inspiration from behavioural economics has started playing

9380-532: The development of such a utopia. In his book Deep Utopia: Life and Meaning in a Solved World , philosopher Nick Bostrom explores what to do in a "solved world", assuming that human civilization safely builds machine superintelligence and manages to solve its political, coordination and fairness problems. He outlines some technologies considered physically possible at technological maturity, such as cognitive enhancement , reversal of aging , self-replicating spacecrafts , arbitrary sensory inputs (taste, sound...), or

9520-506: The distribution of income among landowners, workers, and capitalists. Ricardo saw an inherent conflict between landowners on the one hand and labour and capital on the other. He posited that the growth of population and capital, pressing against a fixed supply of land, pushes up rents and holds down wages and profits. Ricardo was also the first to state and prove the principle of comparative advantage , according to which each country should specialise in producing and exporting goods in that it has

9660-476: The early-19th century also centred on economic considerations, but with a view to preserving class distinctions; Wakefield influenced several colonies founded in New Zealand and Australia in the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s. In 1905, H. G. Wells published A Modern Utopia , which was widely read and admired and provoked much discussion. Also consider Eric Frank Russell 's book The Great Explosion (1963),

9800-469: The economy can and should be studied in only one way (for example by studying only rational choices), and going even one step further and basically redefining economics as a theory of everything, is peculiar. Questions regarding distribution of resources are found throughout the writings of the Boeotian poet Hesiod and several economic historians have described Hesiod as the "first economist". However,

9940-573: The end every man shall be saved, though some at the last hour." His book The Mysterie of God is apparently the first theological work in the English language to state this universalism. In 1657 Winstanley and his wife Susan received a gift of property in Ham Manor in Cobham, from his father-in-law William King. This marked Winstanley's renovation in social status locally and he became waywarden of

10080-455: The equality of all people through nature as well as the usefulness of popular sciences - alchemy , astrology , herbal medicine and the magical arts." Winstanley wrote: "Seeing the common people of England by joynt consent of person and purse have caste out Charles our Norman oppressour, wee have by this victory recovered ourselves from under his Norman yoake ." His theme was rooted in ancient English radical thought. It went back at least to

10220-688: The first large-scale macroeconometric model , applying the Keynesian thinking systematically to the US economy . Immediately after World War II, Keynesian was the dominant economic view of the United States establishment and its allies, Marxian economics was the dominant economic view of the Soviet Union nomenklatura and its allies. Monetarism appeared in the 1950s and 1960s, its intellectual leader being Milton Friedman . Monetarists contended that monetary policy and other monetary shocks, as represented by

10360-404: The first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea...'He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death' or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away" and no longer just gnosiological ( Isaiah : "See, I will create/new heavens and a new earth./The former things will not be remembered,/nor will they come to mind". Narrow interpretation of

10500-634: The flesh instead thereof and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman and brought her unto the man. According to the exegesis that the biblical theologian Herbert Haag proposes in the book Is original sin in Scripture? , published soon after the Second Vatican Council , Genesis 2:25 would indicate that Adam and Eve were created from the beginning naked of the divine grace , an originary grace that, then, they would never have had and even less would have lost due to

10640-540: The following decades, many economists followed Keynes' ideas and expanded on his works. John Hicks and Alvin Hansen developed the IS–LM model which was a simple formalisation of some of Keynes' insights on the economy's short-run equilibrium. Franco Modigliani and James Tobin developed important theories of private consumption and investment , respectively, two major components of aggregate demand . Lawrence Klein built

10780-509: The global economy . Other broad distinctions within economics include those between positive economics , describing "what is", and normative economics , advocating "what ought to be"; between economic theory and applied economics ; between rational and behavioural economics ; and between mainstream economics and heterodox economics . Economic analysis can be applied throughout society, including business , finance , cybersecurity , health care , engineering and government . It

10920-424: The growth in the money stock, was an important cause of economic fluctuations, and consequently that monetary policy was more important than fiscal policy for purposes of stabilisation . Friedman was also skeptical about the ability of central banks to conduct a sensible active monetary policy in practice, advocating instead using simple rules such as a steady rate of money growth. Monetarism rose to prominence in

11060-549: The idealistic principles of the American Founders. The colonies of Carolina (founded in 1670), Pennsylvania (founded in 1681), and Georgia (founded in 1733) were the only three English colonies in America that were planned as utopian societies with an integrated physical, economic and social design. At the heart of the plan for Georgia was a concept of "agrarian equality" in which land was allocated equally and additional land acquisition through purchase or inheritance

11200-463: The importance of various market failures for the functioning of the economy, as had Keynes. Not least, they proposed various reasons that potentially explained the empirically observed features of price and wage rigidity , usually made to be endogenous features of the models, rather than simply assumed as in older Keynesian-style ones. After decades of often heated discussions between Keynesians, monetarists, new classical and new Keynesian economists,

11340-548: The inhabitants of Jambudvipa will need to take part in cultivation and hunger will no longer exist. In the 21st century, discussions around utopia for some authors include post-scarcity economics , late capitalism , and universal basic income ; for example, the "human capitalism" utopia envisioned in Utopia for Realists ( Rutger Bregman 2016) includes a universal basic income and a 15-hour workweek , along with open borders . Scandinavian nations , which as of 2019 ranked at

11480-477: The last section of which details an economic and social utopia. This forms the first mention of the idea of Local Exchange Trading Systems (LETS). During the " Khrushchev Thaw " period, the Soviet writer Ivan Efremov produced the science-fiction utopia Andromeda (1957) in which a major cultural thaw took place: humanity communicates with a galaxy-wide Great Circle and develops its technology and culture within

11620-429: The law, the task-master is to feed them with short diet, and to whip them, for a rod is prepared for the fool's back, till such time as their proud hearts do bend to the law ... If any have so highly broke the laws as they come within the compass of whipping, imprisoning and death, the executioner shall cut off the head, hang or shoot to death, or whip the offender according to the sentence of law. Thus you may see what

11760-568: The liberty of this poor weak frame my body of flesh, which is my house I dwell in for a time; but I strive to cast down your kingdom of darkness, and to open hell gates, and to break the devil's bonds asunder wherewith you are tied, and that you my enemies may live in peace; and that is all the harm I would have you to have. From A New-year's Gift for the Parliament and Army : The life of this dark kingly power, which you have made an act of Parliament and oath to cast out, if you search it to

11900-417: The literature; classical economics , neoclassical economics , Keynesian economics , the neoclassical synthesis , monetarism , new classical economics , New Keynesian economics and the new neoclassical synthesis . Gerrard Winstanley Gerrard Winstanley (baptised 19 October 1609 – 10 September 1676) was an English Protestant religious reformer, political philosopher, and activist during

12040-755: The longest-running financially successful communes in American history. The Oneida Community , founded by John Humphrey Noyes in Oneida, New York , was a utopian religious commune that lasted from 1848 to 1881. Although this utopian experiment has become better known today for its manufacture of Oneida silverware, it was one of the longest-running communes in American history. The Amana Colonies were communal settlements in Iowa , started by radical German pietists , which lasted from 1855 to 1932. The Amana Corporation , manufacturer of refrigerators and household appliances,

12180-693: The lyrics. An older song, the " Diggers' Song ", said to have been written by Winstanley, was recorded by the English group Chumbawamba on their English Rebel Songs 1381–1914 in 1988. From A Declaration from the Poor Oppressed People of England : The power of enclosing land and owning property was brought into the creation by your ancestors by the sword; which first did murder their fellow creatures, men, and after plunder or steal away their land, and left this land successively to you, their children. And therefore, though you did not kill or thieve, yet you hold that cursed thing in your hand by

12320-744: The majority of the secular communes failed within 8 years. Sosis cites anthropologist Roy Rappaport in arguing that rituals and laws are more effective when sacralized . Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt cites Sosis's research in his 2012 book The Righteous Mind as the best evidence that religion is an adaptive solution to the free-rider problem by enabling cooperation without kinship . Evolutionary medicine researcher Randolph M. Nesse and theoretical biologist Mary Jane West-Eberhard have argued instead that because humans with altruistic tendencies are preferred as social partners they receive fitness advantages by social selection , with Nesse arguing further that social selection enabled humans as

12460-449: The market's two roles: allocation of resources and distribution of income. The market might be efficient in allocating resources but not in distributing income, he wrote, making it necessary for society to intervene. Value theory was important in classical theory. Smith wrote that the "real price of every thing ... is the toil and trouble of acquiring it". Smith maintained that, with rent and profit, other costs besides wages also enter

12600-437: The most famous passages in all economics," Smith represents every individual as trying to employ any capital they might command for their own advantage, not that of the society, and for the sake of profit, which is necessary at some level for employing capital in domestic industry, and positively related to the value of produce. In this: He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he

12740-585: The myth does not take place towards the remote past but either towards the future or towards distant and fictional places, imagining that at some time in the future, at some point in space, or beyond death, there must exist the possibility of living happily. In the United States and Europe, during the Second Great Awakening (ca. 1790–1840) and thereafter, many radical religious groups formed utopian societies in which faith could govern all aspects of members' lives. These utopian societies included

12880-563: The mythological tradition (the poem Works and Days ), explained that, prior to the present era , there were four other progressively less perfect ones, the oldest of which was the Golden Age . Perhaps the oldest Utopia of which we know, as pointed out many years ago by Moses Finley , is Homer 's Scheria , island of the Phaeacians . A mythical place, often equated with classical Corcyra , (modern Corfu / Kerkyra ), where Odysseus

13020-499: The need to improve. Eventually, the Chinese term Peach Blossom Spring came to be synonymous for the concept of utopia. Datong ( Chinese : 大同 ; pinyin : dàtóng ) is a traditional Chinese Utopia. The main description of it is found in the Chinese Classic of Rites , in the chapter called "Li Yun"( Chinese : 禮運 ; pinyin : Lǐ yùn ). Later, Datong and its ideal of 'The World Belongs to Everyone/The World

13160-744: The parish in 1659, overseer of the poor in 1660 and churchwarden of the Church of England parish church in 1667–68. He was elected Chief Constable of Elmbridge , Surrey, in October 1671. These offices on the face of it conflicted with Winstanley's apparent Quakerism , a religion which later became more quietist . When Susan died in about 1664, Winstanley sold the land in Cobham to King for £50. Winstanley returned to London to trade, whilst retaining some connections in Surrey. In about 1665 he married his second wife, Elizabeth Stanley, and re-entered commerce as

13300-533: The period of the Commonwealth of England . Winstanley was the leader and one of the founders of the English group known as the True Levellers or Diggers . The group occupied formerly common land that had been privatised by enclosures and dug them over, pulling down hedges and filling in ditches, to plant crops. "True Levellers" was the name they used to describe themselves, whereas the term "Diggers"

13440-503: The pessimistic analysis of Malthus (1798). John Stuart Mill (1844) delimited the subject matter further: The science which traces the laws of such of the phenomena of society as arise from the combined operations of mankind for the production of wealth, in so far as those phenomena are not modified by the pursuit of any other object. Alfred Marshall provided a still widely cited definition in his textbook Principles of Economics (1890) that extended analysis beyond wealth and from

13580-464: The power of the sword; and so you justify the wicked deeds of your fathers, and that sin of your fathers shall be visited upon the head of you and your children to the third and fourth generation, and longer too, till your bloody and thieving power be rooted out of the land. From A Watch-word to the City of London, and Army : Alas! you poor blind earth-moles, you strive to take away my livelihood and

13720-413: The precise control of motivation, mood, well-being and personality. Economics Economics ( / ˌ ɛ k ə ˈ n ɒ m ɪ k s , ˌ iː k ə -/ ) is a social science that studies the production , distribution , and consumption of goods and services . Economics focuses on the behaviour and interactions of economic agents and how economies work. Microeconomics analyses what

13860-487: The present, modified by substituting the word "wealth" for "goods and services" meaning that wealth may include non-material objects as well. One hundred and thirty years later, Lionel Robbins noticed that this definition no longer sufficed, because many economists were making theoretical and philosophical inroads in other areas of human activity. In his Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science , he proposed

14000-409: The price of a commodity. Other classical economists presented variations on Smith, termed the ' labour theory of value '. Classical economics focused on the tendency of any market economy to settle in a final stationary state made up of a constant stock of physical wealth (capital) and a constant population size . Marxist (later, Marxian) economics descends from classical economics and it derives from

14140-568: The public good, may be inconceivable because of the disordered human passions which, under the wrong governments, seek to highlight the poorly conceived or selfish interest of the community. But even though we find it impossible, they are ridiculous to sinful people whose sense of self-destruction prevents them from believing. Marx and Engels used the word "utopia" to denote unscientific social theories. Philosopher Slavoj Žižek told about utopia: Which means that we should reinvent utopia but in what sense. There are two false meanings of utopia one

14280-429: The purest approximation to the truth that has yet been published" on the subject. The publication of Adam Smith 's The Wealth of Nations in 1776, has been described as "the effective birth of economics as a separate discipline." The book identified land, labour, and capital as the three factors of production and the major contributors to a nation's wealth, as distinct from the physiocratic idea that only agriculture

14420-508: The release of Kevin Brownlow and Andrew Mollo 's film Winstanley . As with the duo's previous film, It Happened Here , it had taken several years to produce with a very low budget. Winstanley was loosely based on a 1961 novel by David Caute entitled Comrade Jacob and was produced in a quasi-documentary style, with great attention to period detail – even to the point of only using breeds of animals which were known to exist at

14560-596: The religion-based Twelve Tribes , which started in the United States in 1972. Since its inception, it has grown into many groups around the world. Similarly, a commune called Brook Farm established itself in 1841. Founded by Charles Fourier's visions of Utopia, they attempted to recreate his idea of a central building in society called the Phalanx. Unfortunately, this commune could not sustain itself and failed after only six years of operation. They wanted to stay open for longer, but they could not afford it. Their goal, however,

14700-471: The same name. Readers, including Utopian socialists, have chosen to accept this imaginary society as the realistic blueprint for a working nation, while others have postulated that Thomas More intended nothing of the sort. It is believed that More's Utopia functions only on the level of a satire, a work intended to reveal more about the England of his time than about an idealistic society. This interpretation

14840-412: The scope and method of economics, emanating from that definition. A body of theory later termed "neoclassical economics" formed from about 1870 to 1910. The term "economics" was popularised by such neoclassical economists as Alfred Marshall and Mary Paley Marshall as a concise synonym for "economic science" and a substitute for the earlier " political economy ". This corresponded to the influence on

14980-490: The similarity of the word to eutopia , meaning "good place", from Greek : εὖ ("good" or "well") and τόπος ("place"), which ostensibly would be the more appropriate term for the concept in modern English. The pronunciations of eutopia and utopia in English are identical , which may have given rise to the change in meaning. Dystopia , a term meaning "bad place" coined in 1868, draws on this latter meaning. The opposite of

15120-486: The so-called Lucas critique and the presentation of real business cycle models . During the 1980s, a group of researchers appeared being called New Keynesian economists , including among others George Akerlof , Janet Yellen , Gregory Mankiw and Olivier Blanchard . They adopted the principle of rational expectations and other monetarist or new classical ideas such as building upon models employing micro foundations and optimizing behaviour, but simultaneously emphasised

15260-444: The source of the word economy. Joseph Schumpeter described 16th and 17th century scholastic writers, including Tomás de Mercado , Luis de Molina , and Juan de Lugo , as "coming nearer than any other group to being the 'founders' of scientific economics" as to monetary , interest , and value theory within a natural-law perspective. Two groups, who later were called "mercantilists" and "physiocrats", more directly influenced

15400-406: The state or commonwealth with a revenue for the publick services. Jean-Baptiste Say (1803), distinguishing the subject matter from its public-policy uses, defined it as the science of production, distribution, and consumption of wealth . On the satirical side, Thomas Carlyle (1849) coined " the dismal science " as an epithet for classical economics , in this context, commonly linked to

15540-412: The static perfection of a utopia, libertarian transhumanists envision an " extropia ", an open, evolving society allowing individuals and voluntary groupings to form the institutions and social forms they prefer. Mariah Utsawa presented a theoretical basis for technological utopianism and set out to develop a variety of technologies ranging from maps to designs for cars and houses which might lead to

15680-408: The subject of mathematical methods used in the natural sciences . Neoclassical economics systematically integrated supply and demand as joint determinants of both price and quantity in market equilibrium, influencing the allocation of output and income distribution. It rejected the classical economics' labour theory of value in favour of a marginal utility theory of value on the demand side and

15820-532: The subject of several poems, one of which, an early translation of a 13th-century French work, is given in George Ellis' Specimens of Early English Poets . In this, "the houses were made of barley sugar and cakes, the streets were paved with pastry and the shops supplied goods for nothing." London has been so called (see Cockney ) but Boileau applies the same to Paris. Schlaraffenland is an analogous German tradition. All these myths also express some hope that

15960-402: The subject or different views among economists. Scottish philosopher Adam Smith (1776) defined what was then called political economy as "an inquiry into the nature and causes of the wealth of nations", in particular as: a branch of the science of a statesman or legislator [with the twofold objectives of providing] a plentiful revenue or subsistence for the people ... [and] to supply

16100-471: The subject": Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses. Robbins described the definition as not classificatory in "pick[ing] out certain kinds of behaviour" but rather analytical in "focus[ing] attention on a particular aspect of behaviour, the form imposed by the influence of scarcity ." He affirmed that previous economists have usually centred their studies on

16240-826: The subsequent development of the subject. Both groups were associated with the rise of economic nationalism and modern capitalism in Europe. Mercantilism was an economic doctrine that flourished from the 16th to 18th century in a prolific pamphlet literature, whether of merchants or statesmen. It held that a nation's wealth depended on its accumulation of gold and silver. Nations without access to mines could obtain gold and silver from trade only by selling goods abroad and restricting imports other than of gold and silver. The doctrine called for importing inexpensive raw materials to be used in manufacturing goods, which could be exported, and for state regulation to impose protective tariffs on foreign manufactured goods and prohibit manufacturing in

16380-487: The subsequent events narrated. On the other hand, while supporting a continuity in the Bible about the absence of preternatural gifts ( Latin : dona praeternaturalia ) with regard to the ophitic event , Haag never makes any reference to the discontinuity of the loss of access to the tree of life. The Land of Cockaigne (also Cockaygne, Cokaygne), was an imaginary land of idleness and luxury, famous in medieval stories and

16520-438: The text depicts Heaven on Earth or a Heaven brought to Earth without sin . Daily and mundane details of this new Earth, where God and Jesus rule, remain unclear, although it is implied to be similar to the biblical Garden of Eden. Some theological philosophers believe that heaven will not be a physical realm but instead an incorporeal place for souls . The Greek poet Hesiod , around the 8th century BC, in his compilation of

16660-480: The time, and actual Civil War armour and weapons borrowed from the Tower of London museum. In 2009 UKA Press released Winstanley: Warts and all ( ISBN   978-1-905796-22-9 ), the story of the making of the film Winstanley , written by film director and film historian Kevin Brownlow . The song, "The World Turned Upside Down", by English folksinger Leon Rosselson , weaves many of Winstanley's own words into

16800-559: The top of the World Happiness Report , are sometimes cited as modern utopias, although British author Michael Booth has called that a myth and wrote a 2014 book about the Nordic countries . Particularly in the early 19th century, several utopian ideas arose, often in response to the belief that social disruption was created and caused by the development of commercialism and capitalism . These ideas are often grouped in

16940-606: The top-down ( bureaucratic ) nature of Bellamy's utopia, which Morris criticized. However, as the socialist movement developed, it moved away from utopianism; Marx in particular became a harsh critic of earlier socialism which he described as "utopian". (For more information, see the History of Socialism article.) In a materialist utopian society, the economy is perfect; there is no inflation and only perfect social and financial equality exists. Edward Gibbon Wakefield 's utopian theorizing on systematic colonial settlement policy in

17080-598: The tract envisages a communistic society structured on non-hierarchical lines, though one likely to have voluntary patriarchs. By 1654 Winstanley was possibly assisting Edward Burrough , an early leader of the Quakers, later called the Society of Friends . It seems that Winstanley remained a Quaker for the rest of his life, since his death was noted in Quaker records. However, his Quakerism may not have been very strong as he

17220-467: The war is not winnable or if the expected costs outweigh the benefits, the deciding actors (assuming they are rational) may never go to war (a decision ) but rather explore other alternatives. Economics cannot be defined as the science that studies wealth, war, crime, education, and any other field economic analysis can be applied to; but, as the science that studies a particular common aspect of each of those subjects (they all use scarce resources to attain

17360-463: The word Oikos , the Greek word from which the word economy derives, was used for issues regarding how to manage a household (which was understood to be the landowner, his family, and his slaves ) rather than to refer to some normative societal system of distribution of resources, which is a more recent phenomenon. Xenophon , the author of the Oeconomicus , is credited by philologues for being

17500-460: The work of Karl Marx . The first volume of Marx's major work, Das Kapital , was published in 1867. Marx focused on the labour theory of value and theory of surplus value . Marx wrote that they were mechanisms used by capital to exploit labour. The labour theory of value held that the value of an exchanged commodity was determined by the labour that went into its production, and the theory of surplus value demonstrated how workers were only paid

17640-471: The work. Local landowners took fright from the Diggers' activities and in 1650 sent hired armed men to beat the Diggers and destroy their colony. Winstanley protested to the government, but to no avail, and eventually the colony was abandoned. After the failure of the Digger experiment in Surrey in 1650 Winstanley temporarily fled to Pirton, Hertfordshire , where he took up employment as an estate steward for

17780-534: The world organized and built intentional communities with the hope of developing a better way of living together. Many of these intentional communities are relatively small. Many intentional communities have a population close to 100, with many possibly exceeding this number. While this may seem large, it is pretty small in comparison to the rest of society. From the small populations, it is apparent that people do not prefer this kind of living. While many of these new small communities failed, some continue to grow, such as

17920-510: The world. Anthropologist Richard Sosis examined 200 communes in the 19th-century United States, both religious and secular (mostly utopian socialist ). 39 percent of the religious communes were still functioning 20 years after their founding while only 6 percent of the secular communes were. The number of costly sacrifices that a religious commune demanded from its members had a linear effect on its longevity, while in secular communes demands for costly sacrifices did not correlate with longevity and

18060-736: Was a Christian theosophy and pietist group founded in Iptingen , Germany , in 1785. Due to religious persecution by the Lutheran Church and the government in Württemberg , the society moved to the United States on October 7, 1803, settling in Pennsylvania . On February 15, 1805, about 400 followers formally organized the Harmony Society, placing all their goods in common . The group lasted until 1905, making it one of

18200-622: Was coined by contemporaries. Gerrard Winstanley was baptised on 19 October 1609, the son of Edward Winstanley, mercer , and was baptised in the parish of Wigan , then part of the West Derby hundred of Lancashire . His mother's identity remains unknown and he could have been born anywhere in the parish of Wigan. The parish of Wigan contained the townships of Abram , Aspull , Billinge-and-Winstanley , Dalton, Haigh , Hindley , Ince-in-Makerfield , Orrell , Pemberton , and Upholland , as well as Wigan itself. In 1630, Winstanley migrated to

18340-655: Was coined in 1516 from Ancient Greek by the Englishman Sir Thomas More for his Latin text Utopia . It literally translates as "no place", coming from the Greek : οὐ ("not") and τόπος ("place"), and meant any non-existent society, when 'described in considerable detail'. However, in standard usage, the word's meaning has shifted and now usually describes a non-existent society that is intended to be viewed as considerably better than contemporary society. In his original work, More carefully pointed out

18480-475: Was involved in the government of his local parish church from 1659 onwards though it is not unknown for committed Quakers to retain strong ties to other religious traditions, even including priesthood. He may have been buried in a Quaker cemetery. Winstanley believed in Christian Universalism , the doctrine that everyone, however sinful, will eventually be reconciled to God; he wrote that "in

18620-421: Was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus (1798) used the concept of diminishing returns to explain low living standards. Human population , he argued, tended to increase geometrically, outstripping the production of food, which increased arithmetically. The force of

18760-543: Was originally started by the group. Other examples are Fountain Grove (founded in 1875), Riker's Holy City and other Californian utopian colonies between 1855 and 1955 (Hine), as well as Sointula in British Columbia , Canada. The Amish and Hutterites can also be considered an attempt towards religious utopia. A wide variety of intentional communities with some type of faith-based ideas have also started across

18900-892: Was productive. Smith discusses potential benefits of specialisation by division of labour , including increased labour productivity and gains from trade , whether between town and country or across countries. His "theorem" that "the division of labor is limited by the extent of the market" has been described as the "core of a theory of the functions of firm and industry " and a "fundamental principle of economic organization." To Smith has also been ascribed "the most important substantive proposition in all of economics" and foundation of resource-allocation theory—that, under competition , resource owners (of labour, land, and capital) seek their most profitable uses, resulting in an equal rate of return for all uses in equilibrium (adjusted for apparent differences arising from such factors as training and unemployment). In an argument that includes "one of

19040-600: Was prohibited; the plan was an early step toward the yeoman republic later envisioned by Thomas Jefferson . The communes of the 1960s in the United States often represented an attempt to greatly improve the way humans live together in communities. The back-to-the-land movements and hippies inspired many to try to live in peace and harmony on farms or in remote areas and to set up new types of governance. Communes like Kaliflower , which existed between 1967 and 1973, attempted to live outside of society's norms and to create their own ideal communalist society. People all over

19180-437: Was recognised as well as the traditional Keynesian insistence that fiscal policy could also play an influential role in affecting aggregate demand . Methodologically, the synthesis led to a new class of applied models, known as dynamic stochastic general equilibrium or DSGE models, descending from real business cycles models, but extended with several new Keynesian and other features. These models proved useful and influential in

19320-414: Was there any need for hard and painful work. Humans were simple and pious and felt themselves close to their God or gods. According to one anthropological theory, hunter-gatherers were the original affluent society . These mythical or religious archetypes are inscribed in many cultures and resurge with special vitality when people are in difficult and critical times. However, in utopias, the projection of

19460-502: Was very similar to that of Utopia: to lead a more wholesome and simpler life than the atmosphere of pressure surrounding society at the time. It is clear that despite ambition, it is difficult for communes to stay in operation for very long. Though Francis Bacon 's New Atlantis is imbued with a scientific spirit, scientific and technological utopias tend to be based in the future, when it is believed that advanced science and technology will allow utopian living standards ; for example,

19600-513: Was washed ashore after 10 years of storm-tossed wandering and escorted to the King's palace by his daughter Nausicaa . With stout walls, a stone temple and good harbours, it is perhaps the 'ideal' Greek colony , a model for those founded from the middle of the 8th Century onward. A land of plenty, home to expert mariners (with the self-navigating ships), and skilled craftswomen who live in peace under their king's rule and fear no strangers. Plutarch ,

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