The Ethical Economy

If capitalism before it collapsed in the West was about ownership of things and processes and intellectual capital that could be valued and stored and transported, the new ethical ecomony, it says here, is about establishing and maintaining a network of ethical and reciprocal binding ties or relationships. In other words it is about community, solidarity, tradition, of faith kept across space and time with respect for human worth and dignity. Of course one question is how to monetize this social capital so that it can be bought, sold, hypothecated, sold short, bundled into derivatives and further leveraged. Another better question is how to prevent it being montized by the forces of a capitalism that is clearly bankrupt morally and ever more obviously bankrupt economically. The ethical economy is pretty close to the economy of love and care and giving that some of us associate with the voluntary sector. "Love among the ruins," to take a phrase from John Browning. Small business, by the way, locally owned, is not too far removed from the ethical economy. A network of face to face ties and service provided reliably is how you build such a firm, with your own name on the door and your own reputation at stake. That these business owners are often devout is a fact worthy of respectul consideration. Ethical systems undergird ethical relationships. Whence cometh these? Religion, the arts, philosophy. It may turn out that it is these that are our priceless, now eroding social capital.