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In the face of the dominant consumerist model, sobriety and moderation have become more common incentives, but most often arouse mistrust, particularly because of the connotations of sacrifice and deprivation that they can convey. However, alternative discourses are also developed to try to recode these terms and can find an audience: for example that of the British philosopher Kate Soper who detects the extension of an “alternative hedonism”, or the more militant Pierre Rabhi, who tries to promote a “happy sobriety.” This contribution proposes to analyze the bases of such propositions and to appreciate their social significance, in this case based on three criteria (borrowed from Erik Olin Wright): their desirability, their viability and their achievability. In order to identify the ethos promoted, it is first of all a question of characterizing the nature of the conceptions and propositions that underpin this ethos and which aim to make it an attractive model for individuals and the community. Because the sketched model comes into tension with the economic order of the “consumer society,” the claim to constitute an individual and collective alternative is then tested, in this case by the heuristic lever of the three preceding criteria, which offer another way to study these logics of defense of moderation and their robustness.