Since the 19th century, our economy has been guided by a largely unchanged utopia of work and production. We can call it the utopia of the production economy. It unfolds according to the idea that the world is to be perpetually equipped and kept busy, and that the means to do so are increasingly accessible. These principles, which we still follow today, are thus adapted to demographics, technical capacities and dogmas that are very remote from our reality. Why do we still support the possibility of unlimited development through our means of production when we are experiencing the boundaries of our world's resources?

The current problem is therefore that companies have difficulty accessing the consequences of their actions. The production economy has produced organizations that have dissociated themselves from the repercussions of consumption: organizations that, in fact, do not have the right tools to estimate their own externalities. Imbued with the imagination of an unlimited world, these organizations, like us, are thus trapped in a cultural inertia. Yet many of them have already become aware of the stalemate. We claim that trade is a fundamental activity of human life, and nothing predisposes it to be a negative force in the development of societies.

We must now get rid of our utopia of the production economy. For this purpose, we must begin by asking ourselves: why do we produce? What is the meaning of our trading system? To what human aspirations may economic activities contribute? What source of value covers these aspirations? These issues are all the more urgent as one economic crisis follows another, as inequalities have never been so deep, and as our habitat is threatened by the very nature of our trading exchanges.