"If the economy becomes disembodied from society it can only lead to disaster"
About this Quote
Susan George warns against an economy severed from the people and places it is meant to serve. Markets do not exist in a vacuum; they are built on laws, norms, shared resources, and human relationships. When economic decision-making is treated as an autonomous realm governed only by profit and price signals, social needs, democratic accountability, and ecological limits get pushed aside. That detachment breeds crises because the system stops recognizing the real costs it imposes.
Her claim echoes Karl Polanyi’s idea of embeddedness: stable societies embed markets within social rules; efforts to disembed them unleash destructive forces. Think of financialization before 2008, when vast speculative flows detached from productive activity, or of austerity programs that protected bondholders while shredding public services. The immediate effects were unemployment, foreclosures, and eroded trust; the longer-term damage included political polarization and a legitimacy deficit for democratic institutions.
George’s decades of work on global debt, structural adjustment, and trade rules showed how policies crafted for market efficiency can decimate livelihoods when they ignore social context. Privatizing essentials like water or health care may satisfy a ledger but can imperil public welfare. Treating the planet as an externality generates profits now and climate chaos later. When footloose capital outruns labor protections and tax systems, communities hollow out and inequality soars. Disaster lies not only in crashes but in the slow violence of precarious lives and degraded ecosystems.
Reversing the logic means re-embedding the economy in social purpose: aligning finance with productive investment, pricing in environmental costs, securing labor rights, and letting democratic deliberation set the boundaries within which markets operate. Prosperity is sustainable only when economic activity is accountable to the society and biosphere that make it possible. George’s warning is less a rhetorical flourish than a diagnosis: separate the economy from its human and natural foundations, and breakdown follows.
Her claim echoes Karl Polanyi’s idea of embeddedness: stable societies embed markets within social rules; efforts to disembed them unleash destructive forces. Think of financialization before 2008, when vast speculative flows detached from productive activity, or of austerity programs that protected bondholders while shredding public services. The immediate effects were unemployment, foreclosures, and eroded trust; the longer-term damage included political polarization and a legitimacy deficit for democratic institutions.
George’s decades of work on global debt, structural adjustment, and trade rules showed how policies crafted for market efficiency can decimate livelihoods when they ignore social context. Privatizing essentials like water or health care may satisfy a ledger but can imperil public welfare. Treating the planet as an externality generates profits now and climate chaos later. When footloose capital outruns labor protections and tax systems, communities hollow out and inequality soars. Disaster lies not only in crashes but in the slow violence of precarious lives and degraded ecosystems.
Reversing the logic means re-embedding the economy in social purpose: aligning finance with productive investment, pricing in environmental costs, securing labor rights, and letting democratic deliberation set the boundaries within which markets operate. Prosperity is sustainable only when economic activity is accountable to the society and biosphere that make it possible. George’s warning is less a rhetorical flourish than a diagnosis: separate the economy from its human and natural foundations, and breakdown follows.
Quote Details
| Topic | Justice |
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