A collective entity’s ability to prosper depends essentially on its relationship to time. Human life is composed of both predictability and uncertainty of varying intensity. We cannot know when and how we will die, but we can take life insurance. Economically speaking, the unpredictability of death need not create unpredictability for people’s families. In a decent society, which takes seriously both equality and the common exposure of its members to life’s unavoidable vicissitudes, solidarity with unknown others creates institutions for coping with a common fate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The welfare state constitutes the most morally robust and effective risk management: it is based on the recognition of the common existential condition (we are beings vulnerable to illness and misfortune) for the collective response to the contingency of individual life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A country thrives to the extent that the state bureaucracy possesses the analytical ability to discern patterns concerning the quality of life of its citizens (“What is happening?” “What will happen?”), and the knowledge and will to intervene in these patterns (“What will we do? How? When?”). If (for example) we know how a pandemic spreads, the externalities produced by an economic activity, or adverse demographic developments, we can intervene to address them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It takes a will to know and a will to act. Knowledge is provided by institutions\u2014particularly technoscience and state (and international) bureaucracy. The will to act is formed, mainly by the leaderships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We think about the future seriously when, knowing our needs tomorrow, we consciously limit our options today. Parents save for children’s education, workers are deprived of income today in order to have a pension tomorrow, the government avoids excessive borrowing. However, a competitive political system, such as liberal democracy, operates on the time horizon of short-term electoral cycles. Long time is taken into account insofar as political competition is anchored on a few constants, which capture consensuses. Consensus shape self-evidently binding values (for example, integrity in public life, fiscal prudence) and produce collective goals (pro-Western geopolitical orientation, need for institutional reforms, integration of immigrants), the realization of which in the future requires the undertaking of commitments in the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A country with toxic partisan rivalry and politicized public institutions makes it difficult to create shared political values and collective goals. Moreover, it undermines the institutional memory and learning of the state bureaucracy, since it already includes party-dependent institutions in the short-term horizon of political competition. The ethics of responsibility for the future\u2014the long time\u2014requires this limitation to the present. It is a virtue that, on a collective level, all parties and especially state governments must consolidate if they want to have a future.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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