The Price of Civilization_ Reawakening American Virtue and Prosperity - Jeffrey D. Sachs [75]
The second is institutional, involving the political role of the large corporations. We must maintain a judicious view. Our major corporations are invaluable to society as highly sophisticated organizations that manage large-scale, technologically advanced operations all over the world. Yet they have become a threat to society by using their lobbying power to dictate the terms of legislation and regulations. The license to operate as a company does not include a license to pollute our politics.
The third is moral, concerning the nature of modern democracy itself. In America today, there is little systematic public deliberation, and the public’s views are rarely taken seriously in the political process. One key policy decision after another is adopted behind the backs of the public, often in direct contradiction to public opinion. We need to return to a spirit of true deliberation at all levels of society, one that reconceives politics as honest group problem solving, grounded in mutual respect and shared values.
Toward a Global Ethic
The eighth step toward economic recovery is mindfulness of the world, and most importantly the recognition that today’s world is deeply interconnected economically and socially, albeit with considerable discord and confusion. No significant economic trend in any part of the world leaves the rest of the world untouched. The 2008 Wall Street crisis quickly percolated to all parts of the world economy. AIDS and the H1N1 flu virus similarly spread quickly around the world. An El Niño fluctuation in the Pacific climate causes weather disturbances worldwide, and these in turn trigger sharp movements in global food prices, such as the surge in grain prices in 2010.
Just as we’ve created a national economy riddled with advertising and propaganda that threaten our well-being, we’ve created a globalized economy that lacks the necessary cooperation to keep it stable and peaceful. The combination of unprecedented economic interconnectedness on the one hand, and the deep distrust across national and regional borders on the other, may be the defining paradox of the world economy today. Many of our major global problems—climate change, global population growth, mass migration, regional conflicts, and financial regulation—will require a much higher level of political cooperation among the world’s major powers than we have so far achieved. Without sufficient trust across national borders, the growing global competition over increasingly scarce resources could easily turn into great power confrontations. Without trust, there is little chance for the coordinated global actions needed to fight poverty, hunger, and disease. Without trust, governments will be at the mercy of footloose global corporations that move their money to tax havens around the planet and pressure governments to lower tax rates, labor standards, environmental controls, and financial regulations. Mindfulness of the world therefore really amounts to a new readiness to adopt global norms of good behavior that aim to protect poor countries as well as the rich, weak countries as well as the powerful.
The great theologian Hans Küng has undertaken a profound effort during the past quarter century to identify a global economic ethic based on the world’s leading religions. Küng found that diverse religious traditions share fundamental ethical standards regarding economic life and behavior, which can enable the world to identify and embrace a truly global economic ethic. According to Küng, the common thread of conviction is the Principle of Humanity: “Being human must be the ethical yardstick for all economic action.”14 The economy should fulfill the basic needs of human beings “so that they can live in dignity.” From this basic humanistic principle, Küng identified several ethical themes with universal standing: the importance of respect and tolerance for others; the right to life and its development;