Meta economics: generating moral economies

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ABSTRACT We live in an increasingly volatile and complex time. The climate is rapidly changing; the world’s biodiversity is rapidly declining, unleashing the 6th great extinction; income and wealth inequality is rising, with few people believing in the potential of a better future; and authoritarianism is undermining democracy. There is a growing sense that traditional, neo-liberal economic systems and the behaviours they encourage are contrary to long-term human and nature flourishing. The foundations of the western 20th century consensus are being shaken. The essential flaw of neo-classical economics is that it is based on the idea of individual actors, whether selves or firms, seeking to maximize their individual outcomes. But we have learned from complexity science, quantum physics and ecology, that the world is not so simple. Every entity, whether a quark, a microbe, a household, a business or a country, is part of a relational field, a vast array of interconnections that support, challenge and influence the entity. This entangled understanding of the world calls for a meta-economics, integrating economics with ethics, the social sciences and the natural sciences, such as planetary health, ecology, neuroscience and systems thinking.