Abstract

I: Can We Survive Abundance?

The article analyses the problem of abundance. For a brief period of a century and a half, Western governments followed a policy of nonintervention in the socioeconomic system, a policy, arising from the belief that the efficient operation of free markets also provided the individual with increasing freedom. However, the favorable effect sought was never achieved to the extent assumed by much nineteenth-century economic and political thought. The problem of deciding on appropriate policies was greatly complicated by the fact that many of the actions that can be taken to safeguard the basis for individual freedom tend to destroy the free-market mechanism, and vice versa. The fact that many existing policies are designed to support either the continuance of the free-market mechanism or to protect the individual has resulted in increasingly polarized fears about the direction in which the socioeconomic system is moving.