10 The Austrian economist Fred Hirsch, a key figure and fundamental precursor of ecological economics, in his best-known work, The social limits to growth (1976), coined the concept of positional goods –positional goods, or status goods– as opposed to material goods: while the latter are those that allow us to satisfy our needs, positional goods are those that, due to their scarcity and high price, are consumed exclusively by the richest individuals, who buy them to signify themselves and position themselves socially.

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