This book describes and advocates Intelligent National Frugality, a proposed new approach to human economic and social activity. Instead of promoting mindless consumerism the INF approach focuses on human communities, human aspirations and real human needs. It also places a very high value on environmental concerns, including the need to steadily reduce humanity's greenhouse gas emissions. Perhaps surprisingly, the INF approach can be combined with free enterprise, with socialism or with any combination of the two. By rejecting the foolish and risky ideology of endless growth, the approach opens a great many doors-ethical doors as well as economics ones-that arguably lead to a far more satisfactory and a far worthier human society, for our descendants as well as for ourselves.
About the Author: John M. Braden was born (in 1942), raised and educated in Ontario, Canada. For several years in the 1960s and 1970s, he lived and worked outside of North America. Since then, he has been living in Canada, mostly in rural eastern Ontario. He has worked at various jobs and on various projects over the years. In addition, since at least the 1970s, he has been thinking about and reading about the ideas discussed in his book. He has also spent countless hours putting his own thoughts down on paper. Even though the frugality dealt with in this book relates primarily to the business world and to government, the reader might be curious as to whether John has incorporated much frugality into his personal life. The answer is both "yes" and "no". On the "yes" side, John and his wife have chosen to have no television set or dishwasher or clothes dryer in their house. Their refrigerator is similar to the one described in Chapter 4, our small, rural, super-insulated house is heated with wood, they have a composting toilet, and a highly efficient washing machine which combines top-loading with a horizontal axis. They generate a portion of their electricity from their own solar panels and buy the rest-which comes to via the normal grid-from a commercial company that uses renewable sources for all the electricity it supplies to the grid. Much of the time, they use hand tools, wheelbarrows, clotheslines and human muscles. On the "no" side, however, they drive our seven-year-old car long distances every year. Being a hybrid, it gets excellent fuel economy, provided that it is driven gently and conservatively. But clearly the combination of even excellent fuel economy with long driving distances does not constitute frugality. There was a five-year period in the early 1970s when, living in large cities, John relied mostly on public transportation and owned no motor vehicle at all. But under what he calls conventional economics, he have never managed to get a firm grip on all aspects of personal frugality simultaneously. That in itself has taught him a lot. In any case, John emphasizes that this book is not about him or about any other private individual. It is about Intelligent National Frugality, about how it might be achieved and about why he considers it to be a worthy goal.