Monday, 11 October 2010

The limitation of mainstream SC

I just read the Chapter 2 of "The New Economics of Sustainable Consumption" and this chapter mentioned some failure of the mainstream. They are as followed.

1.princing failures
The ecological modernisation approach to SC is based on a free market system which means the each people aims to satisfaction. However, our real market  is different.

2.information failures
The mainstream is based on neo-classical economics which assumes that all the consumers are fully informed, rational, selfish,and weigh up all their options before choosing to make a purchase. In real society, no one can do that.

3.self-regulation failure
In the case of both green and ethical consumption, most companies will not self-restrict, which is on the opposite to the assumption.

to be continued...

1 comment:

  1. Nothing is wrong with our real market and maximising satisfaction when talking about pricing failures. Rather opposite,the wrong thing is current(can I say it?) market mechanism send wrong price signals to both produceers and consumers because the full social and ecological costs are not included in market prices(Gill says).

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