Konferenzbeitrag
Inserting the Economy into the Environmental Meta-Model
Vorschaubild nicht verfügbar
Volltext URI
Dokumententyp
Text/Conference Paper
Zusatzinformation
Datum
2010
Autor:innen
Zeitschriftentitel
ISSN der Zeitschrift
Bandtitel
Verlag
Shaker Verlag
Zusammenfassung
In the FP7 ICT-ENSURE project a Meta Model was conceptualized, focusing on environmental topics of sustainability research. For a conceptional model of this type it is important to cover increasingly essential aspects needed to be able to sketch the levels, structures, dynamics, means and effects related to sustainability. For extending the environmental Meta-Model a generic economic model was introduced, based on a scientific survey of contemporary and innovative economic research. This paper starts with some remarks on mainstream economics and complements its unhistorical perspective by a multi-layer structure of the economy which might be interpreted in an evolutionary way. The description begins with the most abstract concept of use values, i.e. goods and services useful to people. The variables of this layer can be associated to environmental issues. Natural sciences offer the methodology to study these phenomena. The second layer recognizes the fact that goods and services are the product of human labor. Labor transforms nature and humanizes it by shaping the metabolism of society with nature. Labor becomes visible as the basis of economic value expressed as price by markets under competition. The third layer takes capitalistic structures into account. Capital can move freely between the sectors of the economy, income and property distribution are changed, and price structures are modified. The next two layers reflect changes of the income distribution as a result of the financial sphere (layer four) and of the state (layer five). Digital information and communication technologies are the basis of the layer six where information goods are commodified (as videos, DVDs, e-books etc) and information services are commercialized (mobile telephony), and transaction costs are reduced. This representation of the evolution of the economy should also show that the higher layers dominate and control the lower strata, opening up the potential for new developments. Thus, within information society new possibilities evolve for the better and for the worse and allow in principle new ways to shape and control the interaction of human society and nature towards sustainability,