What if we introduced a punishment for waste?

We cannot remain without taking action and wait until the storm goes past. Nothing will be like it was before. “Before” means before these 20 odd years when the transformation of our economic and technical environment started to gather momentum and left more and more people and even entire nations trailing by the wayside. This evolution is systemic and we have the impression that we are losing control. And indeed:

If we do not react, if we do not decide to take control of the machine here and now, we will hit the wall! One of the aspects of this loss of control is the immense waste that surrounds us at every level of society, be it in our working methods or in our consumption habits. We only evaluate our actions in the short term and according to the supposed benefit they bring us individually. We are no longer interested in the medium and long term consequences of our actions on what surrounds us, on the society of men, on the living world and the planet as a whole. In front of the realization that the economic machine produces more and more inequality and injustice, and takes less and less into account the finality of available resources, we point fingers at one another. Most of us refuse for now to envisage the changes regarding their own lifestyle and their own habits.

We must act!

We must engage in a reflexion with the objective of changing the system. We are aware in our innermost that we cannot continue on this track and that we must act now! Let us have the courage to turn the wheel and to use side roads. We will notice that the grass is greener there and landscapes more beautiful. Our economic system based on endless growth must change!

Our businesses must learn to privilege moderate and stable growth whilst respecting their staff and the world surrounding them. They have to take care to limit the human waste by refusing excessive rationalisation for the benefit of a very small number of beneficiaries. They have to reposition themselves before their own social responsibility and take measure of the negative consequences of a profit-centred behaviour on the environment and on society. They have to include in their medium and long-term profitability calculations the boomerang effect generated by bad management of human and material resources. They will have to accept responsibility for the secondary costs their activity generates and make the necessary provisions to repair the damage they may have caused.

Our civil servants seem to have the impression that the financing of the State emanates from an inexhaustible source. They have to accept the fact that it risks drying up if they do not deliver the effort required to support the economy and protect society. They have to be aware of their responsibility in the functioning of the economic and social systems, and they have the duty to be facilitators and not obstacles to the required evolutions. Their legitimacy is derived from the implementation of these responsibilities and they will be able to draw pride from it.

Live off existing resources

Our administrations have to learn to live off existing resources of the moment and not borrow more to cover their running costs. They must continue to analyse their procedures and internal processes for their efficiency, and reduce their running costs by scrapping the superfluous. They must apply to their civil servants a remuneration logic that is fair compared to the private sector, that does not put prejudice on it and that does not reinforce the cleavages between civil servants and private sector employees.

The political world must stop sticking its head in the sand and take head-on the necessary measures to provoke and accompany the necessary changes, with medium and long term vision and of course with all the courage, commitment, exemplarity and intelligence such a process will require.

Is it really conceivable and realistic to sacrifice all the space necessary to increase our population by nearly 50% in an eternal forward flight in a hope to sustain without fundamentally changing our pension system or to finance an administration eternally overwhelmed by these challenges? Would that not be an unbelievable waste that would not even have the merit of increasing our quality of living?

Politicians, together with the administrations that support them in their actions, will have to avoid in all their decisions to throw taxpayers’ money out of the window. An exam of the pertinence of investments, in infrastructure or others, in terms of supporting economic activity and sustainable growth of the quality of living of the entire population of our country is an absolute must.

No one has got the silver bullet to remedy all the economic ills of our globalised world. However we cannot be satisfied with that realization. The remedies that can be found in Luxembourg, tiny territorial entity extremely dependant on other nations, have to be very sharp and not lose sight of the global context. Our politicians need a long-term vision of the future of the country and its future inhabitants who will be our children’s children. They need the ability to imagine the social transformations that will be necessary and pave the way for them instead of trying in vain to oppose them.

Every one of us individually will have to reflect on his role and his place in our economy and society.

We have learnt to consume without thinking, to amass endlessly, to throw away without limits. We drown under mountains of waste; we poison the air, rivers and seas. Although we know the resources of our planet are limited, although we start guessing that even the universe is limited, we act in Luxembourg, as well as in other nations, as if this didn’t affect us. We must rationalize and save of course, but others should take care of that! We don’t even realise the enormity of our wealth and of the superfluous surrounding us.

If we do not learn to moderate ourselves, others will teach us how. We have to take the initiative in order to remain in control of the upwards movement and to prevent it from becoming a downward spiral in which we will be drawn!

Everyone has to lead by example. We can no longer point fingers at others. We can no longer afford to refuse the reduction of our running costs, the moderation of our salaries, pensions or other revenues and to demand that others should pay.

We cannot stop the waste without solidarity under which everyone takes his share of responsibility. We have to change our lifestyle and consumption patterns. We have to learn again the real value of things, the real value of life. Because life is not in the always more, in a materiality without limits, it really is elsewhere.

We have to analyse the projects for the future of our society, not according to the wealth they will bring in the short run but on their benefit for the sustainability of our society. Even if it will never be as it was before. And for it not to be as it is now, but better in a way that it offers a future to our children and to the following generations. Our current wealth must be put to the service of a genuine societal project for the future and not to satisfy our current individual whims.

If we do not pull ourselves together, if we do not start imagining punishment for waste, our children will be punished and suffer the consequences of our selfishness.