Many seem to have forgotten, today, the contribution by Frederick Soddy (1877–1956) to macroeconomy and monetary policies.
Maybe because Soddy, Nobel Prize in 1921 "for his contributions to our knowledge of the chemistry of radioactive substances, and his investigations into the origin and nature of isotopes", has long remained famous for chemistry.
However, at a time when neoclassical economics (based on the metaphor of equilibrium between supply and demand) and evolutionary economics (based on a metaphor from biology, where innovations play the role of mutations) were consolidating into the two pillars of macroeconomic thinking we all know, he humbly offered a third way: an economics rooted in physics, in the laws of thermodynamics (you already now of our keen interest for this approach, and of our attention for the work of Ole Peters), fathering what today we would call "ecological economics".
A few days ago the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose has published on their blog a most fascinating review of Soddy's economic thinking that we absolutely recommend you read... if nothing else because of the closing remarks about the responses to the crises in 1929 and 2008, and the different trajectories those stimuli put the "rescued" populations on... if you have read our previous posts about "trickle down failures", "antitrusts and redistribution", and "economic cycles and the role of the State in shaping and using the market for its people", among others, you will connect the dots about the missing part of the story ;)
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