Planning on how to grow an economy should be exciting for leaders in business and politics. It should not be a chore or a mundane incidental piece of thinking but should be shared and a concern of the nation. Wales can extend the capacity for growth but only if it focuses on business growth. I was invited to speak at the Plaid Cymru conference this week.Plaid Cymru through Ieuan Wyn Jones the Deputy First Minister holds the economic portfolio.This is a critical position as Wales needs to increase its competitive position. A conversation was held with business leaders.
I confirmed that I did not want to go back to the days of 1976 when the the Welsh Development Agency began operation nor indeed 2006 pre recession.Nor indeed 1936 when the Government intervened to create the Treforest Industrial Estate. But Government intervention is still important.
The 21st century is an extraordinary time as we move through a period of opportunity but we can move into the mindset of darkness which could easily pervade our inner selves, if we let it.
The people of Wales will only create opportunities by performing and not complaining.
But we should not be choosing between dogmatists who believe they can impose final solutions on creative talent and “light hearted illiterates” who despise knowledge and think of only giving what the public want .This is no choice at all to creating an atmosphere for a new society in Wales.
The policy makers we need are those who will constantly think of human society and corporations as a living thing of infinite variety, which is not to be chained to political rhetoric or tied to their systems but helped to resist the bad and realise the good that is in it that can be promoted in us.
The internet shapes opinion and knowledge is the key and this is obtained from deliberation. Who is paid to do this? Plato in his “Republic” said that kings should be philosophers and philosophers kings. This might be difficult for those in public life today. Public men and women may not be philosophers but they must see their roles as adding a real value to the State and not be deluded that they can create or really have a great effect on shaping wealth.Private and public sectors must work together. Political economy is important but it must know its limits and destructive powers by working together it will work- without it non - competetitive practice will predominate.
We cannot base politics on only giving people what they want. Politicians feed the process not opinion from a base of knowledge. Plato confirmed the need for knowledge in those who govern. The evils of when knowledge and opinion are confused. What belongs to knowledge needs to be taken into opinion.
“Some try to represent political economy as being dry, cold abstract science, which has no warmth of feeling to spare on suffering humanity…This is far from the truth ;on the contrary, political economy produces feelings so intense for the removal of theses evils , that it will not permit us to rest satisfied with mere declamation, but impels us to examine deeply into the whole matter to discover the true causes of the wretchedness, and the mode by which it may be removed, or at least alleviated” James Wilson, founder and editor of the Economist November 1843
