ABSTRACT
After 200 years of operating experience with the standard business model we may indeed be coming to an end of history, but one that knows no winners. Our economic system is invariably based on growth and accumulation of materials such as buildings, roads etc., which request ever-increasing amounts of energy just to maintain these manmade infrastructures. The traditional way of improving the life of the poor by increasing the exploitation of natural resources ended some 50 years ago when our ecological footprint exceeded the limits of one Earth. Climate change, extinction of species, and new zoonoses have shown us that we need to reconsider the very basis of our existence. The much-quoted “new normality” which has been longed for during the current pandemic is a menace rather than a solution, for “normality” is the source of our current dilemma.
