Sacred Economics: Money, Gift, and Society in the Age of Transition

What is the difference between a supermarket tomato and one grown in my neighbor’s garden and given to me? What is different between a prefab house and one built with my own participation by someone who understands me and my life? The essential differences all arise from specific relationships that incorporate the uniqueness of giver and receiver.

The present convergence of crises—in money, energy, education, health, water, soil, climate, politics, the environment, and more—is a birth crisis,

In a society in which standard of living is high, it is not enough simply to display control of sufficient resources to ensure the survival of you, your mate, and your offspring. You must control more resources than are controlled by your potential competitors for mates to make an attractive display.5

By making money impermanent, we preserve it as means but not as end and in so doing inspire a conception of wealth radically different from anything we have known.

What if everyone worked 20 percent less, instead of 20 percent of the people working not at all?

gifts not of money but of the use of money.

Money seems to be the enemy of our better instincts, as is clear every time the thought “I can’t afford to” blocks an impulse toward kindness or generosity.

Someone is going to be paying the costs of environmental destruction regardless.

Our money derives its value from the right to harvest 300,000 tons of cod from the Newfoundland cod fishery, the right to draw 30 million gallons of water monthly from the Ogallala Aquifer, the right to emit 10 billion tons of CO2, the right to pump 2 billion barrels of oil from the ground, the use of the X-microhertz band of the electromagnetic sp