Voices of Mexico no. 45

Our Voice

Paradoxically, the great technological information revolution of the end of the millennium has also brought great uncertainty. Globalization brings with it both opportunities and enormous risks, and it is these risks that now perturb the euphoria we have felt since the fall of the Berlin Wall as well as the possibilities of economic development and redistribution of income. Adam Smith's invisible hand seems to be pressuring some countries and forgetting others. Hobbes' Leviathan tells us once again that it is unwilling to disappear from the scene.

The struggle between Adam Smith and Thomas Hobbes has still not concluded. The state cannot take charge of everything, but neither can the market function as the only supposedly fair mechanism for redistributing resources. Today, we continue to have need of the nation state to put a limit on speculative capital, which in its desperate striving for quick profits loses sight of the fact that the entire financial system may be affected, the economies of many countries unbalanced to the degree that the whole world econo­my could go into recession, to the detriment of everyone, including speculative capital itself.