Zukunftszeugen VII - Ricardo Petrella Index Interview Transcript 1 Transcript 2 Transcript 3 Transcript 4

				2. Limits of Globalization: The Need for a "World Social Contract" Could you illustrate your idea of a new "global social contract?" That means that we have to define principles, institutions and mechanisms to which we give a priority in our individual and collective ingenuity to create common wealth. Well, as I just said, common wealth means, that everybody has access to water. Everybody has access to food. Everybody has access to health - today, even in our societies, the developed societies, an increasing number of people have bad access to health in our societies. So you can imagine how the situation is in Latin America, Asia or Africa. So, the global social contract means - well, it is not me, who has to invent all the principles and institutions, and neither you, and so - it's a contract, which means, it is a process where the citizens - it's an implicit contract, not a roundtable we would design - and it is social because it says that the social fabric, the social choices are much more important than the economic and technological condemnations. And usually and even here, in this Aventis Triangle Forum, we have the given impression, that we give the first priority to economy and technology. And everything comes from technology and economy. And then, the society has to adapt. Five years ago you published the famous book "Limits to Competition." Do you think these arguments are now even more valid? I think it is even more valid, because now our leaders are still more and more dominated by the competitiveness ideologies. I would say that my book didn't change anything, it didn't have an effect on the leaders' choices. On the contrary they continue the rhetoric of competitiveness. Even now, in Lisbon, you remember the last summit in Lisbon of the fifteen [European Union] heads of state. Well, all had a credo they celebrated, called competitiveness. And they told young people: "The future for you is that you have to contribute to increase the competitiveness of European economy. And your most brilliant, important task for the future you have to do, is to contribute to the competitiveness to E-Europe in 2015. You know, in 2015, the E-Europe will be the most competitive region in the world." This is what our leaders are telling you. So they didn't change at all. All the contrary. I must go further: I could even have not written the book. We have still the same. So, the World Social Contract would be a remedy to the ideology of competitiveness? I think that this is the alternative. And on the contrary, what my book - if I can compensate a little - contributed, was to enable civil society - NGOs, activists, active citizens - to have arguments, to have the weapons to argue, to say: There are alternatives. And I guess, that "The Limits to Competition" together with many other publications, many other books and actions from some intellectuals, have precisely offered the scientific legitimization, the scientific arguments to all these groups that than have than succeeded to stop the MAI, the multilateral agreement on investments, the Seattle, Washington, Montreal conventions. The book maybe have had influence to these peoples, but not on the leaders, not on the political segments of society. How could these leaders be convinced to agree to help the citizens to develop a social contract? Well, this is strangely enough: Today it is the task of the citizens to educate their leaders to become sensitive to a lot of principles, issues, of problems. And not inverse. Because in the last thirty years precisely the leaders have not educated the citizens. They have educated them to say: If you are the best than the future will belong to you. And if you are the loser we can just have compassion for you but you will not belong into the future. It wasn't an education that the leaders in the last twenty years have given the citizens. And now, the citizens are in the streets. And the leaders say: Hey, are you crazy? And they respond: No, we wanted to be there. We wanted to say our voice to the Genetically Modified Organisms, we wanted to say our voice on financial capital. We want to be part of the environment. We want to reclaim the cities. There is a movement in England that says "reclaim the cities," give back the cities to people. TOP
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