According to their founding fathers, capitalism and democracy could not
function without respect for moral rules based on fairness and transparency.
They have both become procedures empty of values, meaningless. The obsession
with individual freedom has in fact led to the tyranny of caprice and the
absolute right to change your mind at any time, on all subjects, including
respect for contracts; and thus, ultimately, to the apology of disloyalty.
We see it today in every dimension of our societies: no contract holds any
more. Neither the contract of employment. Nor the sentimental contract. Nor
the social contract. This is the reign of every man for himself. Here and
now. Nobody has reason to be honest with others. Nobody has any reason to
participate in community life. Not everyone believes that more tax as a way
to help others with their money; and not to be helped with the money of
others.
And as morality is to enforce each others’ rights, disloyalty produces
de-moralized societies, literally. Society is divided into two categories:
those who cannot afford to pay taxes and those who can afford not to pay
taxes.
However, morality is the condition of being in good spirits: a de-moralized
society is a society demoralized. No one can indeed be in good spirits, that
is to say the desire to move forward and create, if the basic principles of
loyalty of citizens to one another are not respected.
This is particularly true of France : working more and longer, but it does
not feel any more like an ethical society, it no longer considers that the
rich have reason to be ethical. It envies them, but does not admire them any
more. For France, the scandal is not poverty any more, but wealth. It
concludes that the rules of life in society deserve to be trampled.
The current affairs are serious incidents of this heavy evolution. They show
that the rich earn incomprehensible amounts of money for the other French
people. And they are able to find ways not to pay taxes that other French
people would find fair that they pay.
This de-moralization of society led to his demoralization: Why make an
effort to work and create when fortune smiles only at the richest, the most
beautiful, the most powerful, their friends or their obligees? Why study
when the Grandes Ecoles are reserved for children of their alumni? Why think
about the future when it necessarily belongs to others?
This demoralization of France explains much of its loss of competitiveness,
because it explains most of the general weariness, of this kind of implied
strike, this subterranean dissidence that characterize societies in decline.
For France, this is really no time to lose morale. This would only
accelerate the current crisis. This would only make the leap more difficult.
It is therefore urgent to restore morality of the country. To restore
fairness and transparency to one another. From there, everything will ensue.