大象传媒

In an ad for a major phone company blanketing TV this year, a circle of doe-eyed children is asked: “Who thinks more is better than less?” You know the one鈥攁n eager kindergartener answers, “We want more, we want more,” before the commercial voice intones, “It’s not complicated…”

To economists, there’s no distinction between money spent on stuff that makes life better and money spent on stuff that makes life worse.

When it comes to our economy, most Americans also believe that more is always better. More, in this case, is what economists call growth, and we鈥檙e told that a bigger GDP鈥攖he way we measure economic activity鈥攎eans we’re winning. So it鈥檚 the number that thousands of rules and laws are designed to increase.

After all, what kind of loser wouldn’t want more?

But unlike in the commercial, it’s a little more complicated.

To economists, there’s no distinction between money spent on stuff that makes life better and money spent on stuff that makes life worse. GDP treats both the same. If GDP goes up, we’re told we鈥檙e golden鈥攅ven though it doesn’t actually tell us a thing about how we’re really doing as a society.

In what I call the “Game of More,” politicians cheer a steadily growing economy at the same time as our health indicators are worsening, income inequality is growing, and polar icecaps are melting.

But what if we changed the point of the game? What if the goal of our economy wasn’t more, but better鈥攂etter health, better jobs and a better chance to survive on the planet? Shouldn’t that be what winning means?

That鈥檚 the question I ask in my new movie, “The Story of Solutions.”

In it, I acknowledge that changing the goal of the entire economy鈥攆rom more to better鈥攊s a huge task. We can’t do it all at once. But I argue that by focusing on game-changing solutions, we can steadily build an economy that values things like safer, healthier, and more fair as much as we currently value faster, cheaper, and newer.

So what鈥檚 a game-changing solution look like?

It’s a solution that gives people more power by taking power back from corporations. It values the truth that happiness and well-being don’t come from buying more stuff, but from our communities, our health, and our sense of purpose. It accounts for all the costs it creates, including the toll it takes on people and the planet鈥攊n other words it internalizes costs instead of externalizing them as most businesses do today. And it lessens the enormous wealth gap between those who can’t even meet their basic needs and those who consume way more than their fair share.

When I see a solution that does all that, I’m in. And they’re popping up everywhere:

• Like the Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, where worker-owners are running green businesses鈥攁 laundry, a solar company, and a super productive urban farm鈥攖hat are healthy, safe鈥攁nd democratically run.
• Or in Capannori, Italy, a so-called Zero Waste town where local citizens, businesses, and government aren’t just aiming to manage waste better, they’re questioning the very inevitability of waste by working together as a community to reclaim compost for the soil, to find reusable substitutes for disposable products, and put discarded material to good use.
• And how about the new trend of “collaborative consumption”鈥攆ormerly known as sharing? Sharing may sound like the theme of a Barney song, but it’s a huge challenge to the old game. Things like bikeshare programs and online platforms that let us share everything from our cars to our homes get us off the treadmill of more, more, more, conserve resources, give people access to stuff they otherwise couldn鈥檛 afford, and build community. Nice!

Annie Leonard: How to Be More Than a Mindful Consumer

Like I said, it鈥檚 hard to change the goal of the economy all at once. But as transformational solutions like these gain traction, I think we’ll reach a tipping point鈥攊f we keep focused on the new goal of better. I believe that within a generation it鈥檚 possible we’ll be hearing way less about the share price of the latest start-up or the battery life of the latest iPhone and way more about the health of our planet and neighbors.

So next time you hear someone preaching the virtues of more, tell them you choose better.