Ethics

The worldview of a modern “Western world” representative is shaped by many centuries of struggle with hostile factors in the environment, in combination with individualism, typical for European civilization, and constant uncertainty in tomorrow, associated with frequent wars, revolutions and other social cataclysms, which European history, beginning from the Roman Empire, was fairly rich in. In the foundation of this worldview lays the profound subliminal fear of the future.

In modern economy this fear has found its expression in the four principles of economic behaviour: reserving, insurance, privacy and security. The authors consider these principles undoubtedly useful, in extent adequate to the real risk level; however, as soon as they become fundamental guidelines for the economic agents, they are fraught with serious obstacles to markets functioning – in particular, insufficient information, inefficient extra costs, idle financial capital, etc.

Authors believe that the implementation of the human and resource economic system will gradually change ethical principles of individual’s behaviour from reservedness to openness, from fear to confidence and from individual profit-maximizing competition to cooperation. The first shift is induced by common unlimited access to information and unrestricted participation in state governance; the second by a sufficient level of social security as well as stability and predictability of economic circumstances; the third by just income redistribution, explicit ideology of the balanced exchange between individual and environment and the open governance system that encourages cooperation and understanding of the notions of common good and collective responsibility.