Seite 54 [54]
OCR
52 | Tue Purtosopny or Eco-Pourtics some vehicle broke the speed barrier of 15 mph, time scarcity related to traffic began to grow. After industry has reached this per capita output, transport made of man a new kind of waif: a being constantly absent from a destination he cannot reach on his own but must attain within the day." But the forced growth of production actually does satisfy a need: the need of an economic system in which gains are only gains while they can be realised in new profitable investments. ‘This is the simple and well-known explanation of the necessity of growth. The competition favours whoever can keep his specific production costs lower through more effective technology, production in greater quantity and convincing advertising and marketing activity. As a result of all this, the main problem of the global economy is no longer shortage but surplus, not the increase of production but of consumption, of so-called solvent demand — or demand capable of further indebtedness. Thomas Princen points out that production thus understood is, if anything, primarily consumption: it literally consumes human abilities and the natural environment as pure resources. And consumption is production: the production of needs. According to him, of true needs here on Earth there are but two kinds: what nature needs for the maintenance of the circle of life and the needs of the people who need help. This should be the true demand. But neither is solvent. Consumer society works counter to true needs; it increases deprivation. At most it modernises poverty, for the poor are no longer excluded from the market economy. Quite the contrary: they become poor through losing their independence, together with the knowledge and creativity that previously provided them with a sufficient living. This, claims Ivan Illich, makes them the scum of the market economy. They lose faith in their own abilities and become dependent on the paid services of professionals in all areas of life. All the new needs planted in us by the pressure coming from the side of demand — be it smartphones, overseas travel or even organic food — create new dimensions of inequality among those who can afford them and those who can only desire them. ‘These people, warns Illich, no longer demand participation for themselves in politics, but rather better provision.” It is typical of the narrow economy-centred worldview of our times that the spread of environmentally conscious thought is often connected to the oil crisis of the seventies. According to the mainstream view, the 4 Yvan Illich: Towards a History of Needs, p.127, Heyday Books, New York, 1978. 25 Thomas Princen: Treading Softly, p.71. The MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2010. 26 Tvan Illich did.
