Business Politics And A moral Compass

The angry marchers we see in Greece do have a point. It is not their fault the country is in a mess but they are being asked to pay the price. It has always happened that way.

Kings used to decide to go to war and it was the poor bloody infantry that paid the price of their ambition. The rich wanted to become even more rich and the poor peasants had to starve as their lords and master earned more by grazing sheep than allowing a peasant to farm the land. Ordinary people have always suffered at the hands of the rich and powerful.

These days we have that thing called democracy and it has certainly improved things. We are unlikely to starve because our local lord is more concerned about his deer than he is about us local peasants but we do still have to pay the price of the errors of those in powerful positions.

The politicians, financiers and speculators have a lot to answer for. In many cases, the majority I hope, politicians get things wrong through ignorance or misunderstanding. Nobody is perfect and I am sure we would all get some things wrong if we were given power and authority but maybe we would be less enthusiastic in claiming we had the answer to everything.

The financiers and the speculators have no defense other than to say if they get it wrong they lose money but they seem to have no morals or moral compass at all. There seems little doubt that people would have died last year as the speculators raised the price of basic foodstuffs by bidding up the future value of crops. Food shortages are likely to increase in the future so this is something that needs to be tackled on a global scale.

There is an argument that says that market speculation which causes people to die is just the law of supply and demand and that it would settle itself eventually. This was always the way things worked hundreds of years ago. It is said that there was food being exported from Ireland to sell on the market even while the Irish Potato Famine killed thousands from starvation. It may have happened but that doesn’t make it right and it would not be considered acceptable today.

People in powerful positions can change the lives of everyone for the better or for the worse but they never have to pay the true cost for their mistakes when they get things wrong. Those people who have the power to change things also have a moral duty to try to get it right for all the people and not just a few of their friends and co-workers.

In an ideal world we would not need any regulation at all. Everyone would behave in a responsible and considerate manner. Unfortunately that just won’t happen anytime soon and we have seen the bankers and speculators bringing the economies of the world close to collapse so they could feather their own nests.

Politicians too must not be able to simply do whatever they fancy and do untold damage to certain sections of the community or even the whole country. They have a duty to the whole country and must do everything they can to ensure that the country now, and in the future, is a better place to be than it was before they arrived on the scene.

It is not easy for us to judge. Some will say Gordon Brown played a huge part in getting the country into debt and allowing the bankers to scam everybody and take enormous sums of money out of the real economy so they could earn huge bonuses. Others will claim ‘he saved the world’ but history will decide. He certainly leaves office having presided over one of the most disastrous periods of our economy and it is hard to see how he could not have played an enormous part in our downfall.

Somehow the world must face up to the problems of speculators. Making money is all very well but watching people starve and economies collapse purely for greed and to make money is not acceptable. I do not think for one minute that the speculators are consciously expecting people to starve thanks to their actions but that can be the result as they play their financial games with the food people need to be able to afford if they are to survive.

Politicians and speculators need to face up to the sometimes unintended consequences of their actions as we all should to ensure that our actions and behavior do not damage other people around the world..