1) Given the market economy requires consumption in order to maintain demand for human employment and further economic growth as needed, is there a structural incentive to reduce resource use, biodiversity loss, the global pollution footprint and hence assist the ever-increasing need for improved ecological sustainability in the world today?
2) In an economic system where companies seek to limit their production costs (“cost efficiency”) in order to maximize profits and remain competitive against other producers, what structural incentive exists to keep human beings employed, in the wake of an emerging technological condition where the majority of jobs can now be done more cheaply and effectively by machine automation?
3) In an economic system which inherently generates class stratification and overall inequity, how can the effects of “Structural Violence” - a phenomenon noted by public health researchers to kill well over 18 million a year, generating a vast range of systemic detriments such as behavioral, emotional and physical disorders – be minimized or even removed as an effect?
Q1. Improving the world's ecology is often against the interests of the market economy. What incentives can be put in place to help business be more environmentally responsible?
Q2. Machine automation of jobs is rapidly outpacing opportunities for human employment. Newly created occupations only partly fill the gap. What's to be done?
Q3. Class inequality and low economic status is increasing. Can we manage the resulting behavioral, emotional and physical disorders?