Obviously the current social structure presents
too many problems and too much irrationality, so it can't be sustained
much longer. Surely something has to go through and profoundly alter
the current state of affairs.
We've left too many spaces to poverty and malnutrition,
to human rights abuses, to misuse of natural resources.
Family is the basic institution of our society
and we haven't paid enough attention to its daily needs or to education
and recreation needs; we haven't paid enough attention to children
protection either. We haven't taken proper care of drug addicts
and the armed conflicts and wars reasons either. At the same time
we haven't managed to emphasize the transmission of ethical and
spiritual values and social coexistence as a way to impose these
ideas and life guidance over the materialistic obsessions and the
most selfish feelings.
Violent clashes between human groups by race, by
gender or sexual orientation, by ideological and political differences,
by cosmological-philosophical and religious differences, by ancient
hatreds transmitted from generation to generation, are issues that
we've allowed to progress too much. Obviously also the so called
common crimes and street violence have progressed at an alarming
rate, creating a feeling of insecurity which is unfortunately consistent
with what happens in the social structure.
The Catalan social activist Agustí Chalaux
said that love and solidarity -intelligently expressed in economic
terms and in an appropriate institutional structure-, can provide
us the most of gains. Manifestly, this intelligent social philosopher
had the boldness and steadfastness of developing a complete social
project, which is integral, comprehensive and feasible, and as a
whole, accomplishes to solve the most serious problems of our time;
but his words and ideas, which circulate in certain academic scopes,
have not yet reached -as they should- neither the more prominent
and important mass media nor the political decision-making ambit.
The previous paragraphs have identified a series
of social coexistence problems that the vast majority of people
will clearly identify as serious or very serious troubles, which
we are clearly dealing with -as a society- in a very inadequate
way.
Let's see, we try to tackle poverty and destitution
through international cooperation, through national social programs
financed by the tax system, and recently, through the well known
millennium development goals. Obviously these mechanisms have proved
inadequate.
On one hand, we try to solve the problems generated
by drug trafficking, smuggling of goods -particularly the smuggling
of weapons- and the so called common crime through a repressive
and punitive system that without doubt has given very few and poor
positive results so far. And worse, our prison structures are so
overcrowded and damaged that rehabilitation and reintegration of
the offenders is a mere theoretical target which is not reflected
in reality.
We're not clearly managing education as we should,
at least in some regions and within certain social groups; dropout
and illiteracy still remain too high.
Today, values education is promoted by many educational
institutions, and is certainly reflected in some educational content
and also in the publicity that some educational institutions perform,
but then, when students fully integrate themselves into civilian
work life, they find companies which carry legal and illegal/deceptive
accounting practices, as well as corruption and abuse of authority
at various levels, widespread tax fraud, kickbacks and bribes, public
officials who hasten administrative procedures for a small commission,
irregularities and abuse committed by both employers and employees,
high level professional speculators and also occasional opportunistic
speculators who enrich themselves in an unmerited and unfair way,
etc. And given this reality, a lot of people leave their principles
aside wondering: Why not me too?
Climate change and environmental degradation are
a palpable reality, but regulations -both at international and national
levels- are inadequate and grossly atomized. The evidence on ecological
damage and the economic assessment of these damages are set with
excessive slowness and difficulty, and indeed the recovery of damages
as compensation is late and happens in very few cases, so this course
of action today does not act properly, neither as a source of deterrence
nor persuasion.
However, money is the major distributor of resources
and opportunities, and could be an organizational element acting
with greater strength than the spiritual and moral principles. But
of course, as Agustí Chalaux well said, the money we currently
use is neither informative nor responsible, and as a direct result
of this factor we live in an economic-monetary chaos, though it
provides a predictable overall development, fluctuating between
certain limits.
Nominal money and an intelligent currency engineering
that allows the complete tracking of the payment chain and transfers
on a global level could mean a very important roll in our coexistence
relationships and in our social development. To a large extent today,
the judiciary and the Government must act in hugely uncertain environments;
and telematic money, proposed more than twenty-five years ago in
the Catalan academic field, could represent a radical shift to this
situation.
As soon as the chaotic situation and the possible
change in the nature of money are considered, many will be convinced
that the only viable solution for our sick socioeconomic structure
is to move towards a higher degree of automation in the financial
management, including the use of virtual currencies and also including
a substantial improvement in the standardization and centralized
management of historical transaction databases. This may well star
out with a single country or a monetary union, but sooner or later,
we should be able to cover almost the entire planet; otherwise we
would be leaving a too valuable space to tax havens.
Tax havens are the weakest side of liberal capitalism.
The sometimes pompously called "International Financial Services
Centers" are the cancer of the liberal and competitive economy.
Taxes and fees are the price to pay for a civilized society, but
attention: tax evasion and tax havens should not be fought with
inspections and punishment, and certainly not with calls for solidarity
and morality. A suitable financial institutional framework -where
tax evasion and tax havens are practically and basically non-existent-
should be established; an appropriate financial institutional framework
should be established, in which tax evasion and tax havens are basically
almost impossible to carry out.
These thoughts end up here with a recommendation
and an invitation to readers. The social order and the problems
of our time are everyone's responsibility and we would do wrongly
if we conveniently leave these matters solely in the hands of technicians
and/or the rulers of the day, and/or the heads of the international
organizations. Each one of us at our own level and according to
our abilities in this regard should have a careful attitude, in
creative innovative thinking, in seeking information and solutions,
and of course also in the dissemination of these concerns by word
of mouth and/or through the available media.
We, who for some time have deepened in the solutions
conceived and expressed by Agustí Chalaux, confirm that the
marked path could provide us such great benefits, that their mere
enumeration could easily make believe we're describing a unattainable
and unrealizable social utopia. But utopia is urgent and necessary.
We're not asking the eventual reader to believe
this lines as is; we're only asking you to take into account the
recently expressed points of view, and to become acquainted of this
topics the best that you can, for example by appropriate Internet
searches, for example visiting the sites listed below:
http://www.bardina.org, http://www.chalaux.org
In the web sites listed above, there is plenty
of information on the recently marked issues, both in video and
text format, and indeed in different languages: Spanish and Catalan,
but also English, French, Italian, German, Galician and even Esperanto.
Inform yourself the best that you can, and form your own opinion.
We set social structure together, and together
we must reorder it and improve it.
Juan Carlos Anselmi Elissalde.
