Sustainability and substitution

It seems that one of the main characteristics of our democratic consumption society is the substitution property of money, goods, abilities and opinions. I mean that any amount of money can be changed into another currency or an equivalent value of any goods. Most goods only exist thanks to their "desire" value, not thanks to their "use" value. Any American, French or English ability can be substituted by a Chinese or Indian one. And any opinion can be substituted to another as they are said to be equivalent, no matter if they are accurate or not. Even in the democratic process, where opinions are just added to make a vote, they count for their quantity, not their quality. These substitution properties are a concern regarding the ability of our societies to care for common good.
In some extent, the implementation of certain sustainability principles may temper this concern : for example, implementing industrial ecology networks, caring for food miles or goods miles,or are acting for employability of local workers help giving non-substituable value to activities in terms of money goods and abilities, and consequently to opinions.