trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

War. The capacity of GDP to describe the real level of welfare has been questioned with well-reasonedgrounds and alternatives are being sought for it 1 . The problems of comparability and measurability havehowever hindered their adoption in national accounting systems.The idea embedded in the basic concepts of economics of the scarcity of distributable resources helpsus to understand the endeavour to continuously increase those resources, because it and it alone isbelieved to increase the absolute wealth of all citizens. The growth does not however eliminate thescarcity because the battle continues, even in conditions of growth, over the relative share of the entirepot to be divided: as part of the population becomes wealthier, others feel more and more impoverished,even if they were becoming richer when measured in absolute terms. The very fact that there iscompetition speaks of the scarcity of the things that are being competed for. One could say that the moredistinctively there is competition in a society, the more strongly it is troubled by scarcity.4. Veblen’s conception of consumption as competition for social statusWhere half a century earlier Marx focused on relations of production, Veblen (1899) concentrated hisattention on relations of consumption with similar purposes. Veblen wrote his classic Theory of theLeisure Class at a time that was already characterised by accelerating economic growth (Robbins, 2008).Veblen envisioned human evolution as advancing from producer to consumer, and he had no faith in theidea that the general increase in wealth would eradicate conflict but seemed instead to believe thatdevelopment would follow an opposite course. This is ensured by the mutual, imitative or emulativecompetition causing discord among the consumers, the dynamic of which Veblen (2003, p.23) describesin the following terms:“In any community where goods are held in severalty it is necessary, in order to ensure his ownpeace of mind, that an individual should possess as large a portion of goods as others withwhom he is accustomed to class himself; and it is extremely gratifying to possess somethingmore than others. But as fast as a person makes new acquisitions, and becomes accustomed tothe resulting new standard of wealth, the new standard forthwith ceases to afford appreciablygreater satisfaction than the earlier standard did. The tendency in any case is constantly tomake the present pecuniary standard the point of departure for a fresh increase of wealth; andthis in turn gives rise to a new standard of sufficiency and a new pecuniary classification ofone’s self as compared with one’s neighbours.” 2Veblen sketches a picture tinted with irony on consumption based on ostentation and competitionover social status. The idea of consumption as activity that regulates people’s mutual relations has notlost its relevance during the past one hundred plus years: purchasing power and wealth is used to obtainsocial status and ultimately measure human value. The envious, individualist consumer ‘unveiled’ byVeblen is a creation of modernity and the central agent in contemporary consumer society.1E.g. happiness researcher Layard and economists Hirvonen and Mangeloja (2006) have come to the conclusionthat after a certain limit the use of purchasing power has only little influence on the state of happiness.2http://elegant-technology.com/resource/TOLC_CMP.PDF177