Book: End of Growth
By: Richard Heinberg

CHAPTER ONE Richard Heinberg explains that economics do not realize how unsettling the global economy actually is. He introduces basic concepts such as supply and demand, division of labor and the balance of international trade. He feels that the market should run freely without outside intervention and we should not wait around for problems to work themselves out. In class we have discussed the Laissez faire and the term is brought up which is defined as an environment in which transactions between private parties are free from state intervention, including regulations, taxes, tariffs and enforced monopolies. Heinberg explains deeply how people are not ready for the dramatic changes that are to come. Several years ago, the world we lived in was much different. There was more trust in communities because goods did not have a high value, which made people depend more on one another. Eventually people began to strive to only benefit themselves by finding new ways to exchange things between one another. Many years later, a form of currency was created, which spread across the world and provided people with a way to buy and sell goods and services. This did not stop the problems with trade waiting to be encountered and improved. The influential economist from the 19th century, Karl Marx, came up with the idea of capitalism proposed by a name of the current economic system, which is privately owned enterprises. Capital is defined by wealth and money, which also represents ones assets they own. The second idea he proposed was communism. Communism is government owned and a controlled market but it still caused problems due to an imbalance of wealth through nations. Nations learned to support fossil fuel growth of the physical economy by increasing their money supply using fractional reserve banking. This led banks to the idea of charging interest in order to benefit form loaning someone money. Money could be created as was needed, which led the supply of money easier to handle. Even with all of this the economy will never be perfect and although there have been many downfalls there has also been much success from when this all was introduced. Businesses see the change of money as beneficial to their companies because they are allowed to take out as much loans in order to make their business successful. When they have more money to use they can hire more workers to make their company bigger and stronger. This is every businesses goal to be the best and with most companies doing this causes a great amount of competition. Every business looks for workers who have the best knowledge on how to make the company more successful so this makes a businesses have high wages to attract the best workers. People are wanting as much as possible to become as wealthy as they can. An issue is that sometimes markets only have extreme success for a small period of time, which leaves the boss with barely anything. When this happens the government should step in to regulate the downside of these markets. Once the government regulates some decide to bend the rules and look for a way to become profitable all together. Heinberg begins to explain a better understanding of how we got where we are today. He explains key terms to give a better understanding on why we are so deep into debt and what makes up debt. He says that it is possible for us to work our way out of crisis but we need to know where we want to go in order to do so.
CHAPTER TWO The chapter begins with a quote that means he does not picture this as a recession but referred to it as a lower level of business. There are many different views on where our economy is going and each person has their own take of the matter. Even though everyone has a different opinion we all must plan ahead to guarantee there will be economic safety of our future. Heinberg explains that no one will know for sure what the market will be like in the future but we