In the previous post, an adjustment was traced without being named. The focus was not on proposals, but on what becomes possible when ecological consequences are no longer displaced — when they are reflected in the signals that guide everyday economic decisions.

That adjustment can now be named.

I refer to this adjustment as the Ethical Market Economy. The term does not describe a moral aspiration, but a structural condition: an economic arrangement in which prices, rewards, and access to resources are aligned more closely with real-world consequences, so that harm is no longer systematically advantaged.

Within that broader framework sits a specific mechanism: the Pilot’s Wage.

The Pilot’s Wage is not a tax, nor a subsidy. It does not instruct people how to behave, and it does not depend on shared values or moral agreement.

It works by returning part of the ecological value created in production directly to consumers through a price reduction on goods and services that meet ecological criteria. Here, ecological value refers to the share of production costs derived from renewable resources.

In practical terms, this means that when production causes less ecological harm, participation in that production becomes economically advantageous for consumers — not more costly. Responsibility is not rewarded after the fact; it is recognised at the moment of choice.

In most existing systems, ecologically responsible activity is structurally disadvantaged. Activities that externalise harm often appear cheaper, faster, or more accessible, even when their broader costs are high. The result is not irresponsibility, but consistency: people act in line with the signals they encounter.

The Pilot’s Wage changes those signals.

By lowering prices where ecological integrity is preserved, it alters what becomes normal to choose — without removing choice and without relying on enforcement. Behaviour shifts not because people are persuaded, but because participation has been reorganised.

Adjustment, Not Control

Nothing in this mechanism requires better people. It relies on people as they are.

No assumptions are made about motivation, identity, or belief. The mechanism works at the same level where economic life already unfolds: purchasing, investing, producing, and organising access.

Ethical outcomes are not pursued directly. They emerge indirectly, through the quiet guidance of incentives that no longer reward the repeated displacement of harm.

From Individual Choice to Systemic Direction

When many individuals respond to adjusted signals, patterns begin to change at scale. Investment follows demand. Production adapts to what is rewarded. Activities differentiate in response to place, capacity, and ecological condition.

Coordination emerges not through agreement, but through shared direction: fewer advantages flow toward harmful practices, and more toward those that preserve conditions for continuation.

What This Is — and What It Is Not

The Pilot’s Wage is not presented here as a solution to be accepted. It is offered as an example — a concrete illustration of how economic adjustment can redirect behaviour without coercion.

Whether it is adopted, modified, or rejected is less important than what it demonstrates: that economic systems can be organised so that responsibility is supported rather than penalised, and sustainable choices become economically viable rather than exceptional.

Facing the World, Again

To face the world is to remain attentive to it: to see how structures shape what becomes possible, and how small adjustments can open unexpected paths.

The question is no longer whether ecological consequences matter. They already do.

The question is whether economic participation will continue to ignore these consequences — or begin, quietly, to respond.

Once this possibility becomes visible, the remaining question becomes how responsibility takes shape in practice.

Note: The images in this article were generated using AI.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)