Mind the Gap

So, six months has passed in Mandatory Lurking world.

And a lot has happened. Although in some ways, nothing at all.

• Career break
• Travel
• Georgia
• Credit Crunch (makes it sound like a chocolate bar)
• Weddings
• Raves
• Birthday
• Back to work

I'll be breaking all this down in my 2008 Rules Part two, to follow shortly.

However, I thought I'd pontificate on responsibility. This seems to be the crucial problem facing our society and indeed the world, specifically, a lack of responsibility by virtually everyone. This is why we've created an economic system which emphasises short term profits for individuals over progress for society. This is why children are growing up unable to read or concentrate because their parents aren't bringing them up properly. This is why knife crime is rising. This is why war is still taking lives uncessarily all over the world.

The crisis brought on by this failure of individual and collective responsibility has given the state, so badly buffeted by the post Bretton-Woods economic liberalism and further by the 1980s economic and political reforms, a chance to reassert itself.

The tragedy is that government (in the UK at least) has been so undermined by its own slavish adherence to the pro-market dogma that it is inacapable of acting unilaterally and innovatively. All of the solutions have been attempts to prop up parts of a failed system. The government should be using this opportunity to CHANGE the system and move away from the individualism of the outdated cod-philosophical justification of greed that has so wrecked our world, economically, politically, socially and environmentally.

We need a SOCIETAL approach, not an INDIVIDUAL one.

In the language of the vanquished, we need to internalize the externalities. Goods need to have REAL costs reflected in price, not just incidental costs. So the price of oil should cover not just the cost to the trader in extracting and shipping it, but all of the associated costs - the damage to the environment, the social costs of the labour and materials, and, most important, a premium added to cover the cost of replacing the oil as a fuel source.

If society were able to over-ride selfish short-termism in this way, we would be able to make decent long-term decisions about our lives and those of our descendants to come, as well as the earth. At present ourselves and governments can only take short-term decisions which discount the future to zero. Governments make decisions based on staying in power another few months - companies make decisions about short and medium term profitability, individuals make decisions based on instinct and cash.

The 'credit crunch' and the downturn are all about the gap between responsibility and current reality. In not taking responsibility for the long-term consequences of our actions, we have destroyed our economy and are destroying our world.

It's time to grow up.