State of Economy and right to information

Almost everyone who reads news and occasionally scans the opinion pages of the newspapers has given some thought to the state of modern economy. The crisis that appeared in mid-2008 is an unprecedented failure of financial systems. Personally, having had a chance to work in a financial corporation during the time, I realized like many others, that a deeper introspection of the consumer driven economy would follow the crisis. Since then, those in the media have given us complete opposite outlooks on the crisis. Some have called this the end of the neo-classical economics while others don't think this is going to be more than a cyclical crisis. There has been for example, a lot of discussion about whether a consumption based economy is sustainable or not. There are those who have always thought that consuming at one end of the world and producing at the other end doesn't usually result in desirable uniform growth. An extreme case like that of the current crisis arose when the sellers of risk ended up forcing the production of risk. Fundamentally it is not much different from the colonists lashing the farmers in poor countries to support high production in the world, or merchants burning harvests while people starving at some other place in the world. Of course, that is the nature of our systems; and to some extent, humanity itself. To make it all fair we have rules and regulations. A game without rules, most of us would agree, can't be played for long. The good news is that rules aren't that many and are really simple to follow. But again, it is hard for businesses to follow rules that inhibit profit-making. After all the profit-maximization functions don't take parameters like happiness and pain as input. Hence despite all law and order, when the manager of a company takes charge he is more likely to see the revenues and sales than his moral responsibilities or goals of the society. There lies the fundamental inadequacy of the regulations and the pretentious self-criticism of the media. It would take a lot of effort and time to understand why honesty and integrity in our world are mere vanities of the poor and working class. What I've found rather amusing are the attacks on large corporate firms in the visual media - from Michael Clayton to Avatar. But sadly other than minor insults and complaints against "large" bonuses there hasn't really been much thinking or introspection on the matter. We still don't have an alternative to large corporates. To generate more jobs and revive the economy, we would still need the corporates, the CEOs and their compensations. It is just not possible to shun everything and start over, not for most of us except in an avatar-like fantasy. We neither have escapes from our basic tendencies of trying to be rich and powerful nor do we possess enough desire to start things over. For those reasons and many others, the current system isn't really going away. There are ways of slow evolution which the system might adopt, but neither our basic tendencies (of hunger, avarice and desire) nor the resulting economic system can be put on hold for even a little while. What would happen for example to our political goals in the global arena? Where would America be if its not the most powerful and the most benign country in the world?	A sudden reversal of our system is neither feasible nor desirable. We still would continue to be an industrial society. Mixing go-green, savings accounts and Buddhism is great on paper, but unless we embrace fundamental changes in our system, all of it would only amount to hypocrisy. The acceptable way of solving the current crisis or attempting to do so, in my opinion, is to establish transparency in our systems. The deeper thinking on goals of the individual and society would automatically follow. In our current system, it would be argued that freedom of the individual to get the information he wants is very limited. The laws of this country have put so many filters on the information through devices ranging from security concerns to corporate interests that the laws curtail the freedom of the individual. I emphasize on freedom on information not just because it is the fundamental right of an individual in the society, but also because it is a way to avoid and put a check on the kind of failures that a banking system or other systems (governments included) would run into. In a true capitalist system, transparency would provide the opportunity to monitor and control large financial systems. After working for financial companies for a significant part of my life, I do feel there is a sheer lack of transparency. The transparency is really hard to embrace, because the business model of the banks itself is based on opaqueness. The "proprietary models" and "sensitive data" are actually just shields to profits. If people do not demand the information that is used for determining policies applicable to themselves, there is no possible way for people to take control of what is desirable for them. Mere complaints through art and insincere political allegations to developing economies (like China) wouldn't really reverse the trend of increasing lack of control over corporates. It is not surprising that our political leaders, with so much control in their hands easily manufacture the political consent to go on war for purposes that have nothing to do with the wishes and interests of the people. The world certainly seems to be better than when in the Cold War era and so I think the policy response would be more than protectionism. Also Internet and Information can really provide a cheap way to access information, unlike ever before. What is still needed is a sincere effort in the direction instead of visceral allegations against unknown enemies.