Towards Shared Wealth

Another Conception of Wealth

True wealth does not lie in the accumulation of capital, but in human solidarity.

In a context of growing energy and ecological constraints, a declining trend in energy surplus, high transition costs, pressure from AI on resources, increasing losses linked to disasters, and reduced access to oil in the medium term (with producing countries prioritizing their own domestic needs), large-scale systems of solidarity based on growth and impersonal redistribution are becoming fragile.

Inequalities that challenge the notion of progress

A map of humanity reveals highly unequal situations: a minority, predominantly Western, with high energy and material consumption; large populations in an intermediate situation, mainly in Asia; and hundreds of millions of people still living in structural precariousness and particularly vulnerable.

Generalizing a high-footprint lifestyle is incompatible with the limits of natural systems. The notion of “progress” must be called into question: the trajectory of increasing consumption has also destroyed part of the living foundations on which our species depends.

Solidarity must refocus

In this context, solidarity aimed at survival and a minimum level of collective well-being can no longer rely on ever-increasing abundance.

It must refocus on:

• Local and regional scales, where reciprocity remains visible and manageable;
• The priority sharing of useful knowledge (agriculture, water, basic healthcare, repair, collective organization);
• Local food and material supplies, made necessary by the vulnerability of long-distance transport dependent on oil;
• Guaranteeing minimum thresholds, food, water, basic healthcare, and freedom from extreme violence, rather than equalizing lifestyles.

Towards selective cooperation limited to survival issues

Living with the minimum while sharing, particularly knowledge, is an approach consistent with these constraints.

A global and equal “return to the past”, however, faces the challenges of population size, loss of know-how, urban densities, and diverging interests.

The most robust form of solidarity under constraint therefore combines:

• circles of proximity based on mutual contribution;
• a reduction in unnecessary consumption where it is highest;
• selective cooperation on a larger scale, limited to critical survival issues.

Towards Cooperative Approaches

It is precisely from this perspective that Cooperative Approaches can be understood: not as an abstract ideal, but as a pragmatic framework for organizing solidarity where it remains viable, starting from the actual capacities of communities and the resources available.