In November 29-December 1, 2018 Tamas Veress participated in the 7th Annual International Sustainability Conference at the Indian Institute of Management in Shillong, India.
Tamas Veress presented a paper jointly written with Laszlo Zsolnai on “Hothouse Earth and Community Economy”. The “Hothouse Earth” trajectory has been created by the so-called “Great Acceleration” which happened in the last few decades. Since 1950s major socio-economic trends caused considerable deterioration of the Earth System.
The “Great Acceleration” has been largely dominated by the private enterprise system which favors profit making instead of substantive value creation, prefers enclosure of common resources over sharing, uses market exchange instead of the circles of reciprocity, employs hierarchy and suppresses participation, strives for financial efficiency instead of material sufficiency, values private property over common property, and produces individual wealth instead of serving the well-being of all parties.
Veress and Zsolnai suggested that creating and recreating thriving forms of ommunity economy is not a matter of choice any more, it is a vital necessity for the deep adaptation required by our ever warming and destabilized Earth. The wisdom of India is very much needed in finding a path to stabilizing our Mother Earth.