The Global Economic Crisis

1) The economy expresses the nature of human relations: The economy is an expression of human nature and reflects our human relations. This is why it must match the level of development of humanity. Thus, we must understand the characteristics of the global-integral reality, where we are all interdependent. The integral reality emphasizes the need to achieve mutual guarantee in order to obtain economic and social prosperity and utilize the advantages of adjusting human relations to the global-integral system. The laws of the new, mutual guarantee economy will reflect this transformation in human relations. Only such a process will guarantee that the economy is stable, efficient, and maintains a sustainable balance.

2) The reason for the economic crisis is the gap between the existing system and the one required in a global-integral world: The crisis is first and foremost a crisis of human relations, resulting from the chasm between the individualistic and competitive nature of our current life-systems and the systems required in the global and connected world. That world dictates that we connect by creating ties of mutual guarantee, caring for each other’s needs, and cooperating for everyone’s benefit, including our own.

3) The shattered economy is not the reason for the crisis, but its result: Dealing with the global crisis must be thorough, addressing not only the symptoms, but changing the fundamental values of society and human relations. Only such a change will lead to the construction of a new economy, a just, more prosocial and balanced one. Only if we understand that the solution is in our relations with one another will we be able to find the right solutions for the crisis.

4) The need for a new paradigm: Neither the method nor the existing economic systems and theories were built or are intended to cope with a global-integral reality. Thus, the paradigms must be changed from the root. A new global economic theory is required, based on the premise that people conduct relations of mutual guarantee, and aspire to an altruistic socioeconomic model that demonstrates the advanced stages of a society that has adopted such relations as a way of life. If we remain in the current capitalistic paradigm, based on the principle of “the invisible hand,” we are hindering our ability to carry out the required change because economists and theoreticians support minimal government intervention in the market forces. They assume that the optimum balance will evolve naturally, for the benefit of the people whom those models are meant to serve.

5) Replacing the economic toolbox: The traditional economic toolbox for dealing with crises has failed us in this crisis. All the bailouts, rescue programs, and incentives given throughout the world relied on a single, old and familiar economic school by which the solution to the crisis lies in different combinations of monetary and fiscal expansions (depending on the country). All the bailout and rescue programs since 2008 not only failed, but aggravated the crisis by preventing us from treating its cause, although they did try to cope with the symptoms. We must urgently assume a new paradigm, as our current one is inadequate for the new network—the global socioeconomic system into which the world has evolved and the interdependence that this network has created.

6) The crisis as an opportunity: The economic and financial crisis is leading experts and decision-makers to realize that there is a need to adjust human relations and the socioeconomic systems derived from them to the required form of relations in a global-integral world. That world is pulling people closer together, prodding them to care for one another, and cooperate sincerely. It is leading them toward social cohesion, demanding that we replace aggressive and exaggerated competition with concord with the laws of the global-integral system. Narrowing the gaps between the systems will result in immediate relief in the crisis.