To put it mildly, the principal fault that the Saunterer finds with the economics community today is its fault of neglecting the importance of having an abundance of wilderness. Somehow that fault slipped in since the time of John Stuart Mill, an early economist, who wrote:
It is not good for a man to be kept perforce at all times in the presence of his species. . . . Nor is there much satisfaction in contemplating the world with nothing left to the spontaneous activity of nature; with every rood of land brought into cultivation, which is capable of growing food for human beings; every flowery waste or natural pasture ploughed up, all quadrupeds, or birds which are not domesticated for man’s use exterminated as his rivals for food, every hedgerow or superfluous tree rooted out, and scarcely a place left where a wild shrub or flower could grow without being eradicated as a weed. (Quoted from The Life of the Creative Spirit, p. 255.)
For a brief biography of John Stuart Mill, click here.
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