I definitely agree that it's worth thinking about things like scarcity, our ultimate goals, what kind of societies we're creating, etc., and that an over focus

I definitely agree that it's worth thinking about things like scarcity, our ultimate goals, what kind of societies we're creating, etc., and that an over focus on GDP growth or personal wealth is a problem. I've often talked about how much of our GDP is wasted on things that have a net negative value for society (but a positive value for GDP). The issues I have with Daly's approach, though, is in placing the blame on growth and acting as if a steady-state economy is the answer. Even if we froze the economy today, we'd still be emitting too much CO2 and we'd still be wasting tons of time and resources on things that have a net negative value on society. Being simply opposed to growth doesn't solve the real issues. It just unnecessarily alienates people who would otherwise be willing to address the actual problems, and also places you in opposition to good forms of growth that don't cause these problems (and may help solve them). And while I think it's important to think about the big questions, I don't think it should the focus of economists. The role of economists isn't to decide what our values and goals are, it's to give us an insight into how we can best pursue them after we decide those values and goals ourselves.