Saturday 22 November 2008


"The roots of social order are in our heads, where we possess the instinctive capacities for creating not a perfectly harmonious and virtuous society, but a better one than we have at present.......Pre-eminently this means the encouragement of exchange between equals. Just as trade between countries is the best recipe for friendship between them, so exchange between enfranchised and empowered individuals is the best recipe for co-operation. We must encourage social and material exchange between equals for that is the raw material of trust, and trust the foundation of virtue". (Matt Ridley, The Origins of Virtue).

And the reason for the current economic collapse.......... lack of trust.

2 comments:

troutbirder said...

How about greed?

Peter Alfrey said...

Yes indeed.

I assume you are referring to destructive greed. Not all greed is destructive- greed for fairness and a beautiful world is the sort of greed that will bring about constructive changes. Greed for money at all cost is simply stupid- little bits of paper or numbers on a computer screen- trying to collect incresingly large sums of that is a plain and simple mental illness- it is an addiction. Unfortunately we have been living in an increasingly addicted world for a while- it is time for change - there is no better opportunity than this current world economic collapse (almost like a mental breakdown) for the pheonixes to rise from the ashes. This is a window of opportunity and environmentalists should get ready for action.

Well that's what I reckon anyway.