TREADMILL OF
PRODUCTION
Theoretical Perspectives
TREADMILL OF PRODUCTION
Treadmill of Production Concept:
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Focuses attention on institutions & social structure
Emphasizes that we are all part of a system that must
continue to grow
Continually produce more products & services and
create consumers that consume the products & services
Process requires ever more energy and resources
Process generates increasing industrial and consumer
wastes
TREADMILL OF PRODUCTION
What is the primary objective of
a corporation such as Ford,
Boeing, or General Electric?
To make a profit for the
stockholders!
TREADMILL OF PRODUCTION
Built around the intersection of two processes:
1. The expansion of technological capacity
Extraction of surplus value (profits) from
production
Reinvestment of profits into the production system
Expanded production is based on withdrawals from
the ecosystem
TREADMILL OF PRODUCTION
2. Dominance of economic growth preferences
Decision makers know that ecosystem
disorganization is a likely outcome of growth
Projected ecosystem disorganization often
dismissed as being merely a temporary disruption
Or disruption is simply denied
TREADMILL OF PRODUCTION
Three groups have an interest in the treadmill:
Owners/stockholders
Want profits, need stable economic & political environment
TREADMILL OF PRODUCTION
Workers
Want work, good wages, good benefits, good working conditions
Government
Needs taxes to provide oversight (OSHA, EPA, welfare), environment of
economic & political stability
TREADMILL OF PRODUCTION
So, who has an interest in
maintaining the treadmill
of production?
Everyone!
TREADMILL OF PRODUCTION
Treadmill Logic:
1. Increasing accumulation of wealth, through
ownership of economic organizations that
successfully use ecological resources to expand
production and profits.
2. Increasing movement of workers away from selfemployment, into positions of employees who
must rely on expanded production to gain jobs and
wages.
TREADMILL OF PRODUCTION
Treadmill Logic:
3. Increasing allocation of the accumulated wealth
to newer technologies in order to replace labor
with physical capital, thereby generating more
profits for wealth-holders, to sustain and expand
their ownership in the face of growing competition
from other wealth holders.
TREADMILL OF PRODUCTION
Treadmill logic:
4. Increasing activities of governments to facilitate expanded
accumulation of wealth for “national development,” on the
one hand, and “social security” on the other.
5. The net result of these processes is an increasing necessity
for ever greater ecological withdrawals and additions to
sustain a given level of social welfare.
TREADMILL OF PRODUCTION
Treadmill logic:
6. An increasing likelihood of an industrial society creating
ecological disorganization as economic pressures push
toward greater extraction of market values from ecosystems.
7. Extending No. 6, societies become increasingly vulnerable to
socioeconomic disorganization as their ecological “resource
base” itself becomes disorganized.