Therefore it follows that an economy must be sustainable in order for a steady stream of customers to appear. To be sustainable, an ecology must be both robust and diverse, and so must an economy. Innovation must be allowed to flourish and fill the economic niches. But business must live sustainably, and farm and harvest the resources it needs, not merely exploit them. Economics is how we maintain and manage our household, both literally and in the larger sense.
Ecology is the study of our larger home, the Earth.
We include the natural environment, but also the environment we have constructed for ourselves. We consider it no less important to understand society than nature. They are both our home. Our economy can be thought of as an ecosystem. In an ecosystem, energy is cycled from one organism to the next.