What If the Economy Was Modeled After Ecology?
December 09, 2025 at 02:45AMWhat if we thought of the American economy as a living organism, rather than a machine? For Atmos, Christine Ro talks with John Fullerton, a former J.P. Morgan banker now focused on regenerative economics—which, in simplest terms, is the idea that the economy is a living system. The founder of a paradigm-changing think tank, Fullerton tells Ro he’s not anti-capitalist, but instead wants to build an economy that’s resilient as a whole, optimizes different forms of capital beyond financial capital, and celebrates human creativity within a healthier and less monopolistic market. He also thinks financial institutions like banks could do a lot of good—but they won’t. Reading their conversation, I couldn’t help but think of everything I’ve learned in school over the decades—about Adam Smith, about GDP, about growth—and imagine a world where future generations begin their economic lessons under the guidance of ecology’s wisdom.
I don’t like the framing of shrink or grow. It’s more about the quality of what’s growing and about how life cycles. Our obsession with GDP is unintentionally causing us to obsess with this idea of degrowth, in my opinion. There’s a lot of things that need to shrink, like the amount of emissions we put in the atmosphere, but degrowth is actually not aligned with how life works. I mean, I’m 65, and I’m still growing. I’m just not growing physically.
That’s related to a concept in ecology called the adaptive cycle. The adaptive cycle shows that eventually, after something stops growing, it begins to break down and eventually releases that energy and matter into a new form—like compost. There’s nothing in the capitalist framework that sees the possibility of decay and death and rebirth. So if we’re going to have a regenerative economy that behaves the way life works, it needs to cycle the way life works.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2025/12/08/regenerative-economy-capitalism-ecology/
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