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A lot of navel searching has been going on since the credit crunch hit.
What surprised the Old Man is that so many people were caught by surprise. It is relatively easy to see the weaknesses in the capital system as it exists currently, and crashes are an intrinsic part of the process of balancing markets.
So there are a lot of questions about whether there is a better way of doing things; of managing or handling economies, of States, of large political entities.
The assumption being that, whilst the present meme; free-market neo-liberal leaning capital economies, is poor, there is no historic alternative that even looks close to being attractive.
But the generally liberal, non-interventionist, egalitarian principles which are supposed to underlie a ‘good’ democracy need not be abandoned completely.
There is a way forward, of this I am sure, but before a new ideology is framed or built, there need to be solid foundations.
For the Old Man, who has searched navels for a very long time, the foundation of a political, social or economic system must be an ethical system. Without establishing what the state is for, what the purpose of the state is, and what moral basis exists as its primary justification, nothing will be built at all.
That ethical system could be founded on Phenomenology.
Perhaps this is an idea who’s time is coming.
I’ll write more on this later.
Be good.
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