The Public Economy: Understanding the Government As a Producer

In this paper, ECI researcher June Sekera calls for a new public economics that returns to lost roots, while breaking new ground by taking into account the biophysical imperatives of production. The model offered here takes a systems perspective, recognizes a public economy with distinctive purpose and drivers, and focuses on government as a producer. Finally, it draws on two centuries of physics and 21st-century systems ecology in recognizing biophysical imperatives inherent to production. Developing and promoting a cogent theory of the public economy system is vital to the effective operation and, ultimately, survival of the governmental systems by which democratic nation-states function today. The paper rejects the simplistic typecasting of government, the ‘market-failure’ rationalization for state action, the invalid imposition of market axioms and assumptions on the public domain, and the disregard of public purpose in the mainstream economics and argues that it is time for a reformation of public economics.