Prime Minister Gordon Brown responded to the economic crisis by calling in March for "a return to the values of the good society." A true son-of-the-manse, he invoked a time when "hard work and effort was valued along with enterprise, honesty and integrity." Certainly, there is a consensus across British politics that our values are in crisis as well as our economy.
The Joseph Rowntree Trust's Contemporary Social Evils report declares Britain is beset by problems like drink and drug abuse, family breakdown and rampant individualism. Similar concerns about "Broken Britain" led Tory shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley to suggest the recession might be "good for us," because "people tend to smoke less, drink less alcohol...and spend time at home with their families." The predominant critiques suggest today's crisis is a symptom of our addiction to consumption, and a good society should focus on well-being and happiness instead.
The global crisis is regularly presented as "payback time" for human greed. The Labour-left group Compass notes approvingly that the recession is working as a corrective against "individualistic and materialistic attitudes." Others argue for a "new corporate ethics," with financial risk-taking and rampant capitalism indicted by events. But is the recession really a problem of ethics or morality? Is there a danger the new anti-capitalist ethic amounts to little more than risk-aversion and paralyzing regulation? What about innovation and experimentation? If we demonize the aspiration to wealth as "greed," how will society reward success and encourage ambition, and the competitive spirit that so often drives social progress?
We are told to reject "me, me, me" individualism, but must we choose between selfishness and altruistic sacrifice, or might we form bonds of solidarity around collective self-interest? And is a bit of individualism really so bad anyway? Debating what we mean by the Good Society allows us to imagine how society could be rather than accepting the status quo. But as we search for a new kind of politics, will we rekindle idealism or instead adopt "post-recession virtues" that - far from allowing us to move society forward - will reconcile us to less ambition, less freedom and less capacity to shape society?
Bio
Claire Fox
Claire Fox is the director of the Institute of Ideas (IoI), which she established to create a public space where ideas can be contested without constraint.
Fox initiated the IoI while co-publisher of the current affairs journal LM magazine (formerly Living Marxism). The IoI has since worked with a variety of prestigious institutions in Britain and abroad.
Fox is a panelist on BBC Radio 4's "The Moral Maze" and is regularly invited to comment on developments in culture, education and the media on TV and radio. Fox writes regularly for national newspapers and a range of specialist journals. Fox has a monthly column in the Municipal Journal.
Dr. Evan Harris
Evan Leslie Harris (born 21 October 1965) is an English Liberal Democrat politician. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Oxford West and Abingdon from 1997 to 2010, losing his seat in the 2010 general election by 176 votes to Conservative Nicola Blackwood.
Born in Sheffield in 1965, he is the second son of South African immigrants disillusioned with the apartheid regime. He was educated at Blue Coat Secondary School, Liverpool. After a year at Harvard High School in North Hollywood, he went to Wadham College, Oxford in 1985 to study physiological sciences (BA), and then medicine at Oxford University Clinical School from where he qualified as a doctor in 1991.
He was selected to fight Oxford West and Abingdon for the Liberal Democrats in 1994. Following his election in 1997, he was a junior health spokesman, then spokesman on Higher Education, Science and Women's Issues.
Luke Johnson
Luke Johnson is Chairman of Channel 4 Television and Risk Capital Partners. Luke also writes a weekly column for the Financial Times and wrote for the Sunday Telegraph for eight years.
He was Chairman of PizzaExpress during the 1990s and is currently an owner and Chairman of Giraffe restaurants and Patisserie Valerie. He has also owned companies in recruitment, dentistry and retailing.
He graduated from Oxford and worked as a stockbroking analyst covering the media sector in the 1980s. He lives in London and is married with two children.
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman is Director of the Einstein Forum. Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Neiman studied philosophy at Harvard and the Freie Universitat Berlin, and taught philosophy at Yale and Tel Aviv University.
She is the author of Slow Fire: Jewish Notes from Berlin, The Unity of Reason: Rereading Kant, Evil in Modern Thought and Moral Clarity: A Guide for Grown-up Idealists 2008.
Brendan O'Neill
Brendan O'Neill is the editor of spiked. He started his career in journalism at spiked's predecessor, Living Marxism, until it was forced to close in 2000 following a notorious libel action brought by ITN.
O'Neill writes widely for publications on both sides of the Atlantic. His journalism has been published in the New Statesman, the Spectator, the Guardian, The Sunday Times, the British Journalism Review, the Press Gazette and the Catholic Herald in Britain. He is also a feature-writer for the Christian Science Monitor in America and for the BBC in Britain.
He writes a weekly blog for the Guardian website, Comment Is Free.
He is a British correspondent for the Polish political weekly PrzeKroj, and has written for newspapers and magazines in Australia, South Africa, Canada, India, Germany, France, Italy and Denmark. His work covers everything from war and terrorism to free speech and junk food. He was a consultant for the book Human, published by Dorling Kindersley and winner of the British Medical Association Medical Book Award 2005.
Downward trend in the business cycle characterized by a decline in production and employment, which in turn lowers household income and spending. Even though not all households and businesses experience actual declines in income, they become less certain about the future and consequently delay making large purchases or investments. Consumers buy fewer durable household goods, and businesses are less likely to purchase machinery and equipment and more likely to use up existing inventory instead of adding goods to their stock. This drop in demand leads to a corresponding fall in output and thus worsens the economic situation. Whether a recession develops into a severe and prolonged depression depends on a number of circumstances. Among them are the extent and quality of credit extended during the previous period of prosperity, the amount of speculation permitted, the ability of government monetary and fiscal policies to reverse (or minimize) the downward trend, and the amount of excess productive capacity. Comparedepression.
Excellent discussion, each of the speakers was quite entertaining.
Johnson's intro made sense from his perspective, but as the moderator correctly pointed out, a job for most people is not enough, in fact, is what prevents most from actually having a meaningful life. And his readiness to risk is curious, especially if others are supposed to absorb the downside of such risk, precisely what is being seen worldwide. Then later he redeemed himself in saying that consumption is not evil, so the disconnect is how best to coordinate everyone's freewill safely and fully, & not whether consumption is evil or not.
Neiman was spot on, i.e. happiness is the key, and that is what we must focus on. Neiman was so sharp in lucidly pointing out so many things, and particularly that the market in fact is not a great voting mechanism, when the choices it offers themselves are not of our choosing and full of false dichotomies and plastic junk.
O'Neill appeared at times to be leaning towards defending the excesses of those completely disconnected from reality, which in fact are a major cause of downturns, but he then redeemed himself by showing that we are ready for something new, as this age old pattern keeps repeating.
That something new is obviously a Wageless Economy-Robotic or WE-R for short... all other discussions are a waste of time, where people are simply discussing matters from their own perspectives and not from the perspective that works for everyone, which this new economic model clearly does.
O'Neill excellently pointed out that blaming decadence is intellectually deficient as it is simply a symptom of the lack of a system adequate to optimize everyone's freewill efficiently.
Harris makes great points too, farewell to Kings & Queens... unless we are all crowned, which the WE-R can provide, i.e. a system that manages freewill scientifically without interfering with it in any way, and yes it is possible, whether you understand it or not is not relevant, but is certainly preferred that you do.
The disconnect visible in the discussion centers on this lack of understanding how things really work, and how technology is the answer to all problems, not half-backed dangerous technology like vaccines, terrestrial nuclear energy, GMO etc, but fully thought out technology as discussed in MagnaCarta Nova that puts all humans first, no longer treating them as machines but as the reason for all machines. This new economic model is a complete departure from all previous models which were really the same system. This new system, being so different, cannot be really be understood in the terms of the previous systems. It is post-cap-soc-communist, so it really is worth taking a look at as the current systems are brought to their knees and dismantled, it is great time to know where we are headed: The New Way
Indeed, the presenter makes a great point about anti-humanism, which is really just the wicked elite, not the good elite, wanting to get rid of all the humans who are figuring out how they became the wicked elite in the first place. This is nothing new, it has been going on for eons, and yes it really is this simple. No one enjoys facing those whom they have ripped-off, so it is best they simply be ripped all the way off into their graves they conveniently reason.
All the more reason to move forward with the WE-R which addresses all these issues scientifically as it removes the ignorant grip of the rip-off-artists from the wheel of destiny, while allowing them to rejoin the human race they have robotized without even realizing it to achieve their freedom in direct zero-sum game fashion at their victims expense in lock-step proportion.
Speaking of New Words, as one of your audience members alluded, please check out this piece on the New WORD Order
Thanks for the Institute of Ideas, fantastic forum, everyone is asking the right questions, we are getting very close to seeing the answers embedded in the questions, now that we are asking the right questions.
And to the excellent point of what else can we Open Source posed from the audience, we can open source everything, in the Looming Battle Royale between Free vs. Fee, as everything is everyone's no matter what those who have deceived us to the contrary "believe", this really is the key, especially when medicine is open sourced, not just for the obvious reasons, but also to expose their tricks, i.e. that they are intentionally contaminating the public with mercury creating all the autoimmune diseases, that are currently being hidden behind Intellectual Property barriers, i.e. trade secrecy.
Yes, read the classics, which influenced each of the links above, and obviously the panel members' excellent presentation and agility in addressing these issues.
Yes unrestrained economic growth, we have an entire Universe to explore and populate, lets get on with it !!!
member. 
