The Standing Forest · Chapter Two
The Economy Has a Coastline
Ammanuel Santa Anna · ORCID 0009-0008-3244-0306
Chapter Two of The Standing Forest: Doughnut Economics for Leaders and Households, with the Figures You Already Hold.
Abstract
Most maps of the economy have no coastline. The circular flow printed in the opening chapter of almost every introductory course shows households sending labour to firms and firms sending wages back, goods one way and money the other, in a loop that turns for ever. Nothing comes into the loop from outside it, and nothing leaves. There is no sun, no soil, no sea, no smoke. The diagram is not wrong about what it shows. It is silent about where the loop is standing. This chapter is about the people who drew the coastline in. Four of them, across four generations, writing for different readers and from different starting points, arrived at the same correction. The history matters to a leader for a practical reason: an idea that has been rediscovered four times is not a fashion, and an idea that has been misquoted for fifty years has to be read from its sources before it can be defended in a boardroom.
Cite this chapter
Santa Anna, A. (2026). The Economy Has a Coastline. In The Standing Forest. Luminous Prosperity Inc. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23989545
@incollection{santaanna2026the2,
author = {Santa Anna, Ammanuel},
title = {The Economy Has a Coastline},
booktitle = {The Standing Forest},
chapter = {2},
publisher = {Luminous Prosperity Inc.},
year = {2026},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.23989545},
url = {https://business.hautelumiere.life/library/the-standing-forest/02-the-economy-has-a-coastline/}
}
References
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- Chapter OneThe Line on the Mapdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989543
- Chapter TwoThe Economy Has a Coastlinedoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989545
- Chapter ThreeWhere the Ring Leaksdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989546
- Chapter FourThe Organism and Its Habitatdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989547
- Chapter FiveA City Draws Its Ringdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989548
- Chapter SixA Government Changes What It Countsdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989549
- Chapter SevenThe Forest That Was Paid to Standdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989550
- Chapter EightHow to Know It Workeddoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989551
- Chapter NineThe Field Manualdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989552
- Chapter TenThe Hard Conversationsdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989553
- Chapter ElevenThe Household Ringdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989554
- Chapter TwelveThe Standing Forestdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989555
- Chapter ThirteenThe Workbookdoi:10.5281/zenodo.23989556
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The licence
Free to read, share, quote, translate and teach, non-commercially, for ever, under the Luminous Library Licence 1.0. Every other right is the Author’s. Deposited on Zenodo in the Luminous Prosperity community.