Limits to the Satisfaction of Claims
If this scenario of the limits to the satisfaction of claims, which are already becoming apparent and will become more and more obvious in the future, is correct, one must ask how this can be dealt with socially.
Two paths can be imagined here, which could also be taken in a complementary way: the rejection of demands and the overcoming of ecological growth limits of subsystemic service production. Both ways, however, offer, to say the least, no guarantee for a lasting compatibility of demands and what is ecologically possible.
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SCHIMANK, Uwe, 2005. Differenzierung und Integration der modernen Gesellschaft. Wiesbaden: VS Verl. für Sozialwiss. Beiträge zur akteurzentrierten Differenzierungstheorie / Uwe Schimank, 1. ISBN 978-3-531-14683-6, p. 250–251.
One form of the rejection of claims consisted in a consolidation of the given immense inequality of life chances in the world society. The majority of mankind could only continue to look enviously to the West. The globally operating mass media virtually impose this gaze through their display of the Western lifestyle; at the same time, regional traditional patterns of interpretation, which could legitimize such inequalities at least in the sense that people do not rebel against them, are increasingly losing their binding force. The cultural guiding ideas of fashion – ironically propagated by those whose interest in the preservation of vested interests they now run counter to – offer no formulas for the justification of such inequalities. The universalization of human rights is followed by the welfare state's postulate of a worldwide equalization of living conditions. The minority of the better-off in the world population, in open contradiction to their own normative convictions, could then defend their vested interests only by force, i.e. militarily and by police. Whether this is sustainable in the long run is doubtful for many reasons.
The other way in which aspirations could be reduced to what is ecologically possible is for the better-off to make considerable sacrifices of life chances. This would, of course, require people in the West to give up their Form of Identity based on aspirations and increased demands, without being offered an alternative - apart from hardly revivable traditional offers of identity. In particular, the larger part of the population, which had hitherto hoped for an improvement in its own life chances, even over several generations, would now be suddenly confronted with the fact that the elevator is moving "downward" rather than "upward. It is highly doubtful whether this exchange can be handled without eruptive conflicts; and it is equally doubtful whether political actors would be willing and able to risk bringing about such a situation by making decisions that reject demands, e.g., for the ecologically necessary containment of individual transportation.