trends and future of sustainable development - TransEco

consumption has no centre point (or everyone is in the centre point). There is no uniting elite who woulddo the thinking for the others and set the norms. Hence, there is no hierarchy either.Consumption wealth as ‘countercapital’. The network of consumers awakening to responsibilitywould begin to be ‘woven’ by the kind of people who want to actively cut back on the satisfying of needsand desires that they see as unnecessary and burdening to human relationships and humanity’srelationship to nature – to give up the ‘Veblen good’. These people who would voluntarily restrict theirpersonal consumption would be left with free consumption capital, which they would start to invest insome objective that is outside the sphere of their personal consumption. The concentrations of powerborn in this manner would, in networking together, create ‘countercapital’ to the production capital, andsocial initiative would eventually shift into the realm of the consumers.Creative dimension of consumption. As opposed to the traditional concept of charity, what isessential in this model is the act of joining forces in focusing the chosen projects. This presupposes fromthe participants an awakening to the kind of network consciousness that would make continuous andcoordinated cooperation possible. It is a question of bringing a new, creative dimension to consumption,which would at the level of micro-economy increase the psychological and/or material welfare of theparticipating individual and his circle of affiliates selected on the basis of the investment target. Thesurplus value for welfare produced in this manner would be actualised without funding from any outsidesource. Realized interactively, everyone participating in the process would gain in terms of welfare andno one would lose. The principle, if extending to the macro-level, would mean a possibility to disengagethis growth of welfare, in its new trajectory, from the demand of continuous growth.Production based on economy of use. The increase of welfare requires an intensifying of theproduction of goods based on use value to counterbalance the efforts of the present production model tomaximize exchange values. The integrative impacts of this activity on individuals and communities wouldsooner or later extend to the world of production in a way that would curb private profiteering. This wouldentail a partial realignment of production when some of the old and many of the new companies wouldconcentrate on improving the use-value properties (i.e. offering) of the goods produced. Not only wouldefforts be made to improve their quality properties in terms of longer lifetime, but common goods wouldalso be produced to be used by several people either in turns or together, alongside goods meant forpersonal use. This means a (voluntary) separation of property rights and access rights, which in turn isonly possible in the framework a new use ethics. In a central role in it is the participants’ readiness andwillingness to care for another person’s property as if it were their own. Social investments and innovationscould be based on a substitute exchange system such as local currency 1 .Innovations of use. The use of purchasing power and goods guided by a new use ethics wouldincrease use value-based production through innovations of use. Not only would new forms and ways ofusing products be found for existing goods (e.g. increasing recycling) but ‘user-based innovation’, whichmany businesses have started deploy, could also be focused on the use aspect of products, which in turnwould have an effect of broadening the offering, i.e. use potential, of goods already in the design andproduction phases. Generally the endeavour is (according to the bleak characterization by Bauman 2007,1Earlier attempts have largely fallen short in the protectiveness of the state concerning its monopoly of currency.(Douthwaite 1996). For very interesting and extensive perceptions on the different forms and technical realization oflocal currencies, see Lietaer (2001).182