The State We're In

Being the first of an eight part series of postings on the subjects of the Virtuous Economy and the Common Good. The topic headings are:

The State We're In
The Virtuous Economy
Investing for the Future
Overall Wellbeing in the Virtuous Economy
Virtuous Exemplar Institutions
The Virtuous Economy and The Common Good
The Virtuous Economy and the Good Society
Getting There

This was the title of an insightful book that was written over a decade ago by Will Hutton and both book and title are still highly relevant to the economic and social situations that the country finds itself in today - times of austerity and uncertainty induced by greed and supported by fantasies about what constitutes a viable economy.

It has become increasingly clear that our society has surrendered the stable and proven values on which it was based for so long. It has also forsaken its leading role in manufacturing.  As a result of this dual abandonment it has lost its way both in economic and societal terms.

As a consequence of this, the contentment, and in large measure, the legitimate pride and self respect of the people, their expectations for the future and the perceptions of our country have also diminished. National pride is not a sin, loyalty is a virtue and confidence is a fruit of a virtuous economy.

This, regrettably, is the state that we now find ourselves in. It is the state that we have allowed ourselves to be gotten into - and it is the state in which we are likely to remain or return to so long as the underlying issues of the ethical foundations for both individual and corporate behaviour are not addressed. There is a state of diminished resource - or rather the realisation of the true level - rather than the misrepresented level - of resources at the disposal of the nation.

This is because there is no wishfully thought eighteenth century  'invisible hand' that will guide us through this distressed condition as it was thought to do 250 years ago. The 21st century future will be what we ourselves make it on the basis of this simple realisation of our present state, the way to restore a secure foundation and an awareness of the common good.

The state of the economy in recent times has become as much a moral problem as an economic one - although the economics alone are dire enough. Unless issues related to the absence of worthwhile values are resolved, the present circumstances are certain to be revisited and the wellbeing of the population will continue to be neglected.

The values that are now regrettably lacking in society were once internalised by organisations as well as individuals. They were taken for granted and were largely unspoken. Not only are citizens now regarded as profits fodder rather than people to whom a genuine, valuable and above all trustworthy service is provided, but the number of organisations that can be regarded as ethical by consumers is rapidly diminishing.

Companies, including household names once respected, regularly 'discover' that child labour or appalling working conditions underlie their brands and their profits. And corporate tax avoidance, the disgraceful extent of which is now being revealed - and the consequent avoidance of social responsibility and the common good - continues to grow apace.

There has been much talk in the past few years of the consequences of financial de-regulation. But more important than this is the rampant moral de-regulation that has spread throughout so much financial and commercial activity, resulting in a lack of sense of service, loyalty, honesty, integrity - and indeed any sense of the public interest and the common good.

What is more, the burdens of the recovery will not be evenly distributed throughout the population and are likely to be borne in  greatest measure by those who had least to do with the banking crisis and who gained least before the situation came to a head and by the bulk of honest, hardworking ordinary people.

However, those who through their avaricious, unprincipled and incompetent actions brought the economic crisis about will suffer least of all. They will complain about the damage not being forgotten, continue to take their grossly offensive bonuses or further inflated salaries and threaten to move their companies out of the country. So much for the hand that fed them.

To avoid such circumstances and the chosen consequences, we need to re-found our economy and our society as a whole on core values. In such an endeavour, the recently produced 'Twenty Four Dispositions' and what follows from them should receive a prominent place.

For many years there has been a continuous obsession with economic growth - growth as measured by numbers that is, regardless of what it consists, if anything, the burden on the environment and heedless of the distribution of well-being. This continues to be so.

It is not at all clear that further increases in the scale of economic activity, before we have learnt how to do this with proper sustainability (in a national as well as an environmental sense) or with reference to population wellbeing, are desirable.

If yet more growth is to occur at all it must be with reference to how the increase bears on the common good and what the associated costs are in human terms for present and future generations. It is better to think of the country and the world as being borrowed from our children rather than inherited from our forebears.

It has been apparent for some time that, at least beyond a certain level, increases in material wealth do not produce a sense of greater wellbeing in the population. Belief fades in bric-a-brac as a generator of contentment. The overt  - and sometimes hidden - costs of immoderate economic growth are human, environmental and societal and are reflected in the stresses on individuals, families and communities.

The remorseless and obsessive quest for economic growth is based on the questionable assumption that such growth is desirable in its own right. Alongside this has been the relentless corporate drive for ever increasing profits - or so called ‘shareholder value’ - regardless of the consequences for the people whose work produces the wealth, the communities in which they were once founded and the nation that has nurtured them.

In all of this we have as a population been unduly compliant in the deceit and as a consequence the people have become prey to the conduct of a rootless, asocial plutocracy and the slippery wealth of which they are forever in pursuit.

Rampant selfish materialism not only ravages the natural environment but it breaks down social bonds and stultifies the human spirit. Not all growth is good and not everyone would agree as to what, if any, is sustainable.

The relentless drive for ever greater profit with which corporate management and ownership has become obsessed suppresses a deeper, more considerate and more responsible side of human nature that we need to rediscover. There has been a decline in solidarity, as well as trust, with one another.

Essential social structures weaken and eventually break down as a result. Confidence and trust have been severely eroded - between individuals, between people as customers with companies and between people as citizens and the government - and in fact between the state and its people.

There is increasing awareness that the unquestioned push for high statistical measures of economic growth can be inimical to the quality of people's lives and vital social structures such as the family. This in addition to the pressures placed on the environment. It is therefore not a case of the Clintonesque slogan: ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ so much as ‘It’s the stupid economy’ that we have unfortunately inherited.

There is a vain quest amongst some who can afford it for emotional well-being gained through extravagant, even downright dissipated consumption. Excessive consumerism has the characteristics of a social disease - one in urgent need of cure -  and it leads inevitably to a condition of disappointment. ‘Consumption’, it is worth noting, is a word that was once used to describe a state of serious ‘ill-being’ - tuberculosis, a wasting illness - with the concept of waste ironically still appropriate in the different context of today.

Sales pressure is part and parcel of consumerism, and as long as the associated tide of advertisements and unsolicited approaches succeed in generating wants that we did not even know we had, we will be tempted to borrow more and waste more.

As a nation we have become loaded with worldly goods at the price of dependency on other countries with governments having very different and long range ambitions. The casting aside of self-sufficiency runs in parallel with increasing self-centredness and being self interested, self absorbed and self regarding. Debt financed purchasing, 'casino capitalism' and a permissive and defeatist attitude towards globalisation are rotting the links within communities.

Some large companies, instead of being the sources of national and local pride as they once were have, in the hands of rootless and unprincipled management become profit monsters and creatures of the  globalisation process.

In this country no sectors have suffered more from this negligent attitude than manufacturing and engineering. This decline reveals the most appalling lack of grasp and vision for not only is there no more creative activity than that of making things, manufacturing is also an important cultural activity and a source of national and regional pride.

In fact manufacturing reveals whether or not you can 'cut it as a country' and the long decline is a sign of cultural as well as economic malaise. It is telling that we not only don’t - but appear no longer to want - to make things.

However, there are some positive signs that this is at long last being recognised in some political circles, but there are no short term fixes and strategic policies and their associated investment (rather than exhortations and wishful thinking) are thin on the ground.

It is tragic that as a country we are ceasing much of our historic role in manufacturing. Our machine tools (mostly foreign made these days) are sent overseas and loyal employees, who are soon to be made redundant are, to add insult to injury, obliged to train the foreign staff who will be taking their jobs. The country needs to relearn how to create again instead of trying to live off the buying and selling of others.

In allowing globalised companies to do these things that our forebears would have regarded not just as disloyal but as insane, we as a country also lose our self respect as well as our self sufficiency and a sustaining part of our national culture goes by the board. All of these things are sacrificed on the altar of private shareholder short term profit.

The trust that is so much needed in society today is undermined by selfishness in this and other forms. We need service before self, loyalty to friends and family of course, but also to colleagues, compatriots and country.

Not only do we as a society now lack a common code of core values, there is no longer a universal standard for honesty - nor are there norms of respect. This is evident in many ways including the push by banks for sales of unnecessary financial 'products' and unsought loans to consumers.

In the leery eyes of the media, government is too easily equated with incompetence and even vice. In fact good government is a necessary virtue, aiding and abetting the achievement of common goals and involving itself actively in this process and the search for the good society.

The economy is not a series of balance sheets on which everyone should, in that deplorable phrase, ‘do the math’, it is a joint endeavour, it is the combined effort of millions of people and the asset strippers and bonus builders need this inserted firmly into their selfish heads. A reconstituted National Service should start at the top.

Prosperity is by no means an ignoble goal, but it is important to bear in mind that affluence is a condition and not a value. The true worth of an economy is found not in the numbers themselves nor in league tables but in the social and moral values that underlie these numbers and which are so important in determining public wellbeing.

So in this frightened and litigious age when, as individuals, good people are rendered fearful of the tamest everyday risk and in these trade-crazed times where overly empowered companies and their agents take actions contrary to the common good and also take enormous risks to the ultimate detriment of the common wealth, we should step aside from the ever-anxious drive and consider the makeup of a virtuous economy.