Economic growth or eco-development: does it makes sense to grow the way we do?

Abstract

What is the nature and causes of the wealth of nations? It was the question that gave rise to economic science in the eighteenth century, and that inaugurated a school of economic thought known as “the classics”, whose most well-known representative, to be considered precisely the father of the economy, was Adam Smith . The answegiven by these thinkers was that the source of wealth and engine of economic growth of nations, was determined by the accumulation of resources (land, labor and capital) by nature scarce, by population growth (long term limited by the own availability of resources), as well as by the productive specialization as strategy of optimization in the use of the same ones and of the market like allocating mechanism of the resources in the economy. Under these premises, it was evident that in the long term, once the resources of society were fully utilized, what was called “the steady state” would be reached, that is, a moment in time from which it would be impossible to continue growing . Under this framework of analysis it is understandable the relevance given by the classics to international trade, because it constitutes an escape valve to the “steady state” by making available unused resources (for example land for cultivation) and markets for surpluses productive .