Beyond Economics and Ecology

They did not want a handout but instead insisted on the liberty to fend for themselves.

The radical monopolization of vernacular life has now made it almost impossible to live without high-energy inputs, outside the cycle of work and consumption, beyond the grip of scarcity.

Whether they are cars or high-tech hospitals, when the quantity of commodities and services exceed a certain threshold of intensity, they exclude non-market alternatives and therefore impose what Illich called a radical monopoly.

Not so long ago, services and commodities swirled only around the margins of everyday life.

While waste and pollution caused by economic growth describe environmental degradation, Illich recommended the term “disvalue” to name the denigration and destruction of the social environments necessary to propel that growth.

Instead, the economy is better understood as a machine for the production of scarcity, whether through force, need, or envy.

In the guise of experts, professionals discriminate against people by imputing a lack, an inability, or a need. They then mask such discrimination by justifying it as doing a service, prompted by their care.

“all through history, the best measure for bad times was the percentage of food eaten that had to be purchased.” Commoning gave those who relied on it a floor against destitution.

Critical reconsideration becomes all the more difficult when an assumption has been left unquestioned long enough to be taken for a certainty and to even congeal into perception.