Hmmm . . . I see what you're getting at. You want something positive rather than just limits on the excesses.

You could of course require companies to recycle or take back their own products when the consumer is finished; this would solve the problem of getting companies to produce long-lived products. Or, free enterprise might solve the problem on its own if we see ads such as "Bill's TV sets -- last twice as long as Brand X," or something like that.

There is a more underlying problem, and that is the question of things with "high commodity potential" versus "low commodity potential." Jack Manno draws attention to this in his book Privileged Goods. No matter how environmentally-friendly our commodities are, our current economic system (even as reconfigured according to Daly) still rewards things with high commodity potential.

Examples of high commodity potential (HCP) goods are Barbie dolls, commercial fertilizers, mass-marketed drugs, and grid-dispersed electricity. Low commodity potential (LCP) goods are direct child-led interaction, knowledge of the soil, healthy lifestyle changes, and passive solar design. (Manno explains what makes a commodity HCP rather than LCP.) Yet the HCP goods may fulfill the actual need that we have just as well or better than the LCP good. But which do we hear about, and which is most easily available? Clearly, the HCP goods, just because they are easier to commoditize.

One way to approach this would be to have positive government intervention to support LCP goods. (I'm not sure how this would work, but in some cases it would be quite possible.) Another way would be just to limit income to a maximum, thus giving people free time to figure out how to improve their lives outside of the pursuit of money. Probably both strategies are needed.

Thanks for your article.

Keith