I think the issue is to redifine ‘a standard of living’. At the moment design, marketing and manufacturing are about producing goods that are considered to be saleable and competative. This rarely matches useful, durable, necesary or efficient. The need to ‘create jobs’ by producing poor quality products with lots of pointless ‘features’ that quickly breakdown is standard practise.
Centralising services, food production and manufacturing creates supply chain nightmare called cities.
Consider the possibility of creating consumer durables that will last a guaranteed twenty years and leased rather than purchased and paying a substantial chunk of the population not to ‘work’ but contribute to social health, aesthetic projects and environmental maintenance.
Not a matter of lowering our standard of living but revolutionizing its nature.
Skullthorpe's Blog 