Column

If ever we needed to know what Life after the End of the World would be like, the year gone by gave us a graphic account of it. It is, we’ve learnt, one long morality play in which the army of the virtuous will slow-burn greedy fat-cat bankers and overly acquisitive consumers over the raging fires of political correctness.

For, in this black-and-white parallel universe, it’s easy to see why the economic world as we knew it ended in bruising global recession and turmoil, from which it is still to fully emerge: it was because the core tenets of the prevailing established economic order were consumed by greed. And for us to feel good about ourselves, we must now make some ceremonious sacrificial offering, organise some bilious blood-letting. Somebody, somewhere must pay.

The first act in that rite of exorcism is already under way in the UK and elsewhere, with the announcement of a ‘supertax’ on bankers’ bonuses; the argument being that at a time when the rest of the economy is still reeling in recession, it’s sinful for the industry that needed to be bailed out just the other day (but has since been miraculously returned to profits) to be doling out big payouts to its employees.

The ‘demonisation’ of the banking community has been advanced even further by comments from British officials that much of the banking industry was “socially useless”.

Such sentiments have effectively set the stage for a likely flight of capital, but have, unsurprisingly, proved enormously popular at home, given the political mood of the moment consequent on the year-long public agony arising from a down-and-out economy. And feeble protests from bankers, who are unaccustomed to being forced on the defensive, that they might be compelled to pack their bags and head for countries that offer more salubrious tax regimes have only given rise to cheery farewells.

That sense of schadenfreude, of being insensitive to the misery of others (and perhaps even delighting in it), extends also to overleveraged homebuyers and overeager consumers who, in the popular perception, had it coming because they were driven by greed at a time of make-believe prosperity.

Yet, morality plays aside, if the economic engines of the world are to start humming again, it’s going to require human ingenuity and a healthy dose of that selfsame human ‘greed’ that got the world here. That’s because, as easy as it is to take the moral high ground about it, the foundations of our economic structure rest on the requirement that all of us contribute — as ‘greedy consumers’ — to keep the wheel spinning.

In fact, much of the innovation that drives this world — and on which a robust recovery might hinge — requires a critical mass of greedy consumers and spenders who will pay good money, in some cases for things they probably don’t even need. Without that covetous core of society, there would be little or no incentive for companies to corral science and technology and put products on the market. That was demonstrated starkly last year: as consumer spending spiralled down in large parts of the world, the number of patents registered fell dramatically.

All this is not to say that there aren’t parallel universes, with alternative lifestyle choices on offer, where you may opt out of this consumer game and find other-worldly rewards in, say, doing some deep breathing in the lotus position. It’s just that it won’t be actively contributing to an economic revival.

The good thing, though, is that most of us are covetous enough, and sufficiently fond of the Good Life to push ourselves to realise it. And here in India at least, we’ve moved some way down the road towards embracing the concept that it’s a legitimate aspiration for individuals and companies to do well by themselves.

“Profits — don’t mention that dirty word!” former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru famously told JRD Tata when the latter suggested that it might be a good idea for state-owned enterprises to stop sponging the exchequer. Today, we’re happy to talk ‘dirty’ on that count.

Perhaps some day we might even embrace another ‘dirty word’ and accept the concept that greed, as Gordon Gekko said in Wall Street, is good.