Brainforum

Sustainability sucks!?!

Sustainability sucks? At least that´s the impression we get when thinking about the social, economic and ecologic problems we are facing and the things people do or don´t do to change the way the world moves.

Even single persons struggle with integrating sustainability into their daily life. Public transport to get to the office? Recycling? Car-Sharing?
When it is not even possible for private persons to make the step towards sustainable behaviour, how should this work out for a global company? Even more: Do we then have the right to demand this kind of attitude?

When looking at corporate homepages, the first thing that comes into view most of the times is a big and shiny button screaming “Corporate Social Responsibility”. The flash video next door talks about sustainability. In my opinion, these two terms seem to have evolved to the new and hip gadget in the world of corporate communication. The true motive rarely is an altruistic one, but the fear that some day society will deprive the company from taking action and drift over to competitors.

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Does our society need growth?

One can answer this question looking at both sides of the income equals outcome equation.

I will try to treat the income side. Therefore, I´ll specify the question a little: do we need steady growth to guarantee a certain minimum life standard for all human beings?
The other rather philosophical question would be whether we need technological growth, resulting in more work efficiency, more comfort and also longer estimated life times.
Keynes wrote in his standard work that he expected us to nowadays live in a perfect world without any unemployment – he underestimated the rising human pursuit of comfort and luxury: despite the exponential growth of work efficiency, increasing human desires have resulted in not only constant but even rising unemployment rates.

To facilitate the question, I will divide up our society into two parts: the employees and the capitalists. All assumptions are based on a solow model with integrated work efficiency affecting technological progress.
Additionally, I will assume that our international economy is more or less pretty close to the stationary point: the accumulation of capital has pretty far reached its maximum.
As I want to answer the question whether growth is required and possible when the global economy is saturated, I will assume the following scenario:

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What western economic systems can learn from micro-insurance and micro-credit

The concept of micro-credit has been praised throughout the past years, leading even to a Nobel Peace Prize for one of the founders of a successful micro-credit scheme.

One of the recent discussions in the “micro” segment is the one lead about micro-insurance. Such models are supposed to provide affordable insurance for the informal sector in different areas such as health or agriculture. Most of the time, these insurance schemes are realized as group policies on a community base.

As one of the members of the BRIC states, India has reclaimed the “Health for All” aim.  Given that neither the private supply of health facilities nor the public ones have been able to significantly bridge the gap in health insurance for the poor, micro-insurance plays an important role for being able to achieve this goal.

Their trait of being community based implies that every action of a member has consequences for the group as a whole. The premiums of every member are collected in a common pot and used in the case of the incidence of risk. This requires a high responsibility of every individual involved. The concept not only enables insurance for a part of the population which was seen as uninsurable, but also weakens or even avoids aspects such as fraud, moral hazard or adverse selection.

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