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7
Complex Economic Systems
and Sustainability
7.1 Introduction to Economic Systems
While this book has focused mostly on the general relationships between
human sustainability and the ecological, environmental, food, energy,
water, and social systems with which we interact, our actions also signi-
cantly affect, and are affected by, the very important, large, complex non-
linear systems (CNLSs) that probably receive the most public attention
today, that is, economic systems (ESs). ESs are driven by human behavior
in response to many factors, and all ESs are ultimately affected parametri-
cally by human population growth, resource ...