For ecological and fair prosperity


¤ Today, the political community, economists, regions, public services, the rich and the poor are subjected to the “return to growth”, and for a very good reason:
Our economic system cannot survive without growth.
Businesses can only survive if their profits grow continually and thus enable them to pay the interest they owe to the banks and to prove to their shareholders, who are becoming ever more greedy and fickle, that they are successful…
Investments, the state budget and jobs depend on the level of the profits distributed in this way.
This system is in a sorry state. Businesses today are neither able to invest, nor to fill the State coffers by taxes and charges taken from their profits.
We are therefore witnessing a sell-off of public services and institutions which have so far corrected economic violence and what it has “yielded”.
Both the left and the right are participating in this operation and the trade unions support it. Some kind souls are even asking us to pay our taxes to save the system!

¤ Not only the economy, but the planet as a whole is sick.
Ongoing globalisation is spreading Western patterns of consumption to the entire world population. At the rate we are going, we would need 30 earth-like planets by the 2030s.
This is why some people say that we need “negative growth”.
Negative growth, however, means entering a voluntary recession. This would mean making the situation we are witnessing today even worse.
Let’s suppose that negative growth was applied systematically by individuals and on a large scale – it would destroy the economic system.
…Why not? This could be a method of arriving at another system.
The idea of “negative growth” thus contains the seeds of a revolution.
However, we would have to suggest an alternative system or model.
But this isn’t actually the case, and those who care about the planet, as well as those who care about jobs, are taking a long time to become aware of the disastrous situation.

¤ Sometimes those who care join forces. All credit to those who want to save the planet and think about making profits out of soft energies, organic food and other excellent things that will create new jobs. But if these good things are produced in a system based on monetary profit they will make only a meagre contribution to the State budget and create few jobs. They will tend to relocate to more favourable regions with lower taxes – just like conventional goods - and will not be competitive for a long time yet. The production of more profitable goods such as arms and luxury gadgets, genetically modified produce that crushes local agriculture, and drugs will be the first to go.
If we want to short-circuit compulsory competition, do we have to establish a universal ecological dictatorship… state capitalism and the return of the Soviet system?
Is this really what we want?
¤ There is an alternative system. It is called distributism, and it disconnects the production of wealth from monetary profit. In its “historical” version this is done by
- “quantifying” the wealth we are currently able to produce - well beyond our real needs.
- distributing this sum to users in the form of a different currency called “consumption” currency. It cannot be hoarded and forces users to renew this wealth.
Remember that in this model the production of goods and services no longer depends on the state of the market. Economic (competitive) violence no longer lays down the law.
Farewell to the pensions problem. Users receive an income from the cradle to the grave. They renew products and services depending on their usage and no long depending on the market. They are no longer compelled to be part of a sterile and harmful production system.
The economy can once again become locally based.

¤ However, this intriguing project does have a few worrying aspects!
To guarantee that goods and services are renewed, the distributists of the interwar years (and immediately after) relied on state planning and a certain period of “social service”. They did not yet have any ecological conscience and vowed to implement the programme which has since become known as the Trente Glorieuses (glorious years between 1945-1975) – more rapidly and without any crises.
Today, this type of planned economy and productive system is no longer appropriate.

¤ PROSPER corrects this initial model.
If we are sure of receiving a guaranteed income from birth to death (which, remember, would be guaranteed by existing wealth and not by unpredictable profits made on some market), we can finally contemplate the end of the division of life into three ages
(one for learning, one for producing, and one for relaxing). Everybody can devote their lives to the activities they choose and thus dedicate their existence to research.
Research based on everyday life: on what is really useful, healthy, long-lasting and beautiful. Research of uses that give meaning to life.
Technological research: we have no reason to renounce the possibilities we have opened up. Rather, we have to free them from the selective use that is made of them in the growth-based model that destroys the planet by its areas of intensive exploitation.
Political research: what we call “power” is embodied – often in a dictatorial manner – in certain uses that are so obvious (wage-based employment, profit, security, but also school, diplomas, cars, etc.) that they blind us. Businessmen and politicians are themselves enslaved by the system, even if they use it to make profits.
Research in sciences, the arts, etc., without the need for profit.

¤ PROSPER even goes as far as contesting the use of money.
It is not certain that “consumption money”, more than any other currency, would be capable of curbing the compulsion to produce. Monetary prosperity once again runs the risk of overriding socially equitable and ecologically tolerable wealth.
Computer technology enables us to directly access resources, to transform them, and to distribute them by means of bar codes and a universal accounting of “materials”.
This is the hypothesis which we invite you to use as a basis of work. It does not necessarily exclude the preceding hypothesis. It transforms it into a phase of transition.
Make it yours, make it succeed: PROSPER will not be jealous!