What sort of world do we want?

The sad news of the loss of 9000 jobs at Rolls Royce came through yesterday. Including their families that will be at least 30,000 people directly affected. If you include the loss of jobs in the supply chain to RR and the impact on the surrounding areas there will be at least 100,000 people severely impacted. What will they do?

Julia and I were talking about this and we both recall articles written in the sixties imagining a world where we did not have to work - mechanisation would replace people. Instead we would be able to concentrate on the "finer things of life" whatever they might be; the arts, leisure activities etc.

The question is have reached that point yet? We judge the success of countries and people purely in economic terms. Bigger is seen as better, we must work or we are seen as some kind of scrounger or weirdo. We must get a job to have the house, the car, the partner of our dreams. But is that what life is meant to be all about?

The communist system doesn't work, witness the USSR and some of the South American countries that have flirted with it. Unfettered capitalism doesn't work it just increases the divide between those that have and those that don't. The countries that emerged after years of colonial rule started out with such high hopes; yet in many of them the ruling class that emerged clung onto power and the money that passed through and became totally corrupt with massive accounts in offshore banks.

In many countries in the west we have a form of regulated capitalism that sort of works but still leaves many on the margins. Today, thanks to the Covid-19 lockdown many have been "enjoying" a slower pace of life. We are finding new ways of working. I like many others are getting fed up with the isolation, but not with the peace and quiet. Not hearing the roar of traffic or the overhead planes. Pollution levels are dropping and for once "we can see clearly now".

I don't have any answers just a nagging feeling that there must be a better way of doing things than we did. If we don't learn from our past mistakes then we will repeat them. The problem is that those in power are caught up in the CV-19 crisis and wondering what to do next. Nobody is taking a long term strategic view and I have probably been isolated too long!