Economic Imperialism is defined as a strategy for integrating ecology and economics that seeks to expand the boundary of the economic subsystem until it encompasses the entire ecosystem (Daly and Farley, p. 50). So it is NOT, as “Ev” claims, “economic dominance. This is a theoretical component of ecological economics that seeks to define ecosystems through an economic paradigm.

Economics establish price-to-product/service ratios. The problem with economic imperialism is that it would price natural capital – like air, water and trees – relative to a perceived market value rather than valuing these necessities outside an economic subsystem, basing their values on the intangible benefits they provide.

Alternatives to economic imperialism include economic reductionism, which sets the economy as a subsystem of the natural ecosystem. It suggests, falsely, that human action is entirely reducible to the laws of nature, or that the naturalistic principles that apply to ecosystems also apply to the economic subsystem.

The best alternative according to Daly and Farley, which is the foundation of the ecological economics argument, is the Steady-State subsystem. This concept does not try to erase the boundaries between the economic and the ecological subsystems, rather it enforces the boundaries by dictating that the “throughput by which the ecosystem maintains and replenishes the economic subsystem must be ecologically sustainable.”

So in your “Sell trees. Make Pulp. Make dollar bills” argument, you fail to understand the boundary between extraction and replenishment. Exploiting a finite resource, and relying economically on that exploitation, will inevitably lead to an unsustainable economy. Unless you are a nihilist, this is not a viable option.