Can we avoid environmental pitfalls through a not-for-profit economy?

FROM FOR-PROFIT TO NOT-FOR-PROFIT: The environmental and social challenges and crises facing humanity today beg the question – how can the economy be organised in ways that allow for the fulfilment of every person's needs while also fitting within the ecological limits of the planet?

Researchers in the post-growth strand of political ecology seek to find sustainable ways of organizing the economy that do not require economic growth.

In an article published in Journal of Political Ecology centre PhD student Jennifer Hinton explores the idea that a transition to a post-growth economy requires a change in how businesses relate to profit.

High environmental cost

In the article Hinton argues that in an economy where profit is the main objective, consumerism, economic growth, inequality, and the tendency to destroy the natural environment are inherent features rather than anomalies or market failures.

This, Hinton believes, is because profit-seeking requires and drives increasing production and consumption, at the cost of environmental degradation. Business owners accumulate wealth at the cost of wages, causing increased inequalities.

In this economy, profit-seeking investment favors large businesses, so the largest players attract the most investment. This puts pressure on businesses to grow, merge with, and acquire other businesses, leading to market concentration.

And the desire for financial gain, in a setting of inequality and market concentration, inhibits regulations and taxes that might otherwise reduce inequality and ecological damage.

Consumerism on different terms

An economy operating on not-for-profit conditions however would generate very different outcomes.

In such an economy, Hinton argues, the focus would instead lie on creating social benefits and there would be no private business owners to accumulate the surplus.

Without the pressure to deliver dividends, businesses would not have to push people to consume for the sake of increasing profit and would be able to respond to signals that consumerism is bad for people and planet.

That is not to say consumerism would not exist, but it would be on different terms, based on needs rather than wants, and striving to keep the planet healthy as well.

Link to publication

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