Monday, May 7, 2012

Toward new social thinking

It is way past time that historical inadequate slogans like socialism and capitalism were dropped. 
We know Karl Marx and all centralized social models fail. 
We know Adam Smith free markets and deregulation fails. 
Why? 
We need grasp what is really happening. There is no causality in groups, all social causality is via the individual mind. It follows that all social legislation and regulation is not 'social' but operates via individual psychology. 
Most people are ethical, but some are not and in the absence of active constraints they will abuse their position. 'Rules' are the tools that moderate and guide action. 'Rules' are the apps that guide community wealth and health.
It is not a matter of more rules or less rules, more controls or less. It is only a matter of which rules work and which do not. 
We need forge a set of rules that (1) enables individual commercial creativity (2) moderates individual greed and corruption (3) achieves a balance whereby people are able to say 'I can live with that as fair'. Then we need focus on doing those things that build the economy, since we need wealth to sustain our community health. 
Poverty is not willed away, it is defeated only by a stronger economy. We also need to ensure in the long term our expenditure is less than our revenues, I have no wish for my grand children or great grand children to curse the debt legacy I left them.
I look forward to the time when politicians bend their thinking to find rules that work most for everyone in a society focused on citizens wealth and health and where everyone is accepting of their lot as 'fair' in relation to their effort, skill and their start position.