More than a century ago, English economist John Ruskin observed that the same economic system that creates glittering wealth also spawns what he called illth — poverty, pollution, despair, illness. ❋ Unknown (2007)
Poverty, pollution, despair, and ill-health — what John Ruskin called illth — is the dark side of capitalism. ❋ Unknown (2007)
Chase argued that American abundance produced "illth," a term he had borrowed from the nineteenth-century British gothicist John Ruskin, who argued that capitalist wealth produced social and mental disorders. ❋ Unknown (2009)
Physical throughput growth is at the present margin and in the aggregate increasing illth faster than wealth, thus making us poorer rather than richer. ❋ Unknown (2009)
Beyond some point growth in production and population will begin to increase social and environmental costs faster than it increases production benefits, thereby ushering in an era of uneconomic growth — growth that on balance makes us poorer rather than richer, that increases “illth” faster than it increases wealth. ❋ Unknown (2009)
The correlation between throughput growth and GDP growth is sufficiently strong historically so that in the absence of countervailing policies even GDP growth frequently increases illth faster than wealth. ❋ Unknown (2009)
More importantly, we begin to imagine a world in which nature and future generations are represented in real-time transactions, corporations internalize previously externalized costs, prices of illth-causing goods rise, and everyone receives some property income. ❋ Unknown (2008)
The price of pollution would go up; corporate illth creation would go down. ❋ Unknown (2008)
A research agenda that inherently recognizes this connection between northern ‘wealth’ and southern ‘illth’ [what John Ruskin referred to as the opposite of wealth] will go a long way towards equitable and sustainable development. ❋ Unknown (2007)
Hence the system generates ever more illth, waste, and ever-widening disparities between rich and poor. ❋ Unknown (2007)
Moreover, illth prevention is a lot cheaper than illth cleanup. ❋ Unknown (2007)
If we want to reduce illth on an economy-wide scale, we need to change the code that produces it. ❋ Unknown (2007)
Unless the code itself is changed, our economic machine will always create more illth than it cleans up. ❋ Unknown (2007)
When illth of one sort gets too great, the new bits of code will turn the illth valve down, or give authority to trustworthy humans to do so. ❋ Unknown (2007)
It occurs quietly and continuously as corporations add illth to the commons without permission or payment. ❋ Unknown (2007)
Seddoms creature what matter what merrytricks went off with his revulverher in connections with ehim being a norphan and enjoining such wicked illth, ehim! ❋ Unknown (2006)
One way to evaluate the performance of an economic system is to look at the ratio of well-being to illth it produces. ❋ Unknown (2005)
The illth of nations and the fecklessness of policy: An ecological economist’s perspective. ❋ Unknown (2009)
They’d have the power to reduce some of the negative externalities — the illth — that corporations shift to the commons. ❋ Unknown (2008)
There’s only good growth on one side of the ledger, and on the other, a void in which illth and debt accumulate, uncounted and unnoticed. ❋ Unknown (2008)
