The practically uncontrollable increment of the general budgets of revenues and expenses of the State in the practical entirety of the countries, and in particular in Spain that we are concerned with, is a reason to meditate briefly on their performance and influence in the accumulation of wealth in society. It is not about lecturing on disjunctive interventionism or non interventionism, broadly dealt with in recent economic literature, but centring ourselves on the way of intervention, on the direction of our effort and performance with regard to the attainment of a greater economic value by citizenship.

The fundamental question is not that of non-intervention, as you can invoke from ideological currents with anarchical nuances, but of intervening without a fuss and with more and more effectiveness in certain aspects considered many times outside of the economic environment, but that in fact have a strong influence on the creation of economic values. Read for example ethics, exemplariness, loyalty, industry, diligence, generating trust, and justice. There is an important field of performance in the direction of defence and installation of the appropriate legal framework to obtain maximum deployment of the sources of value in the whole socio-economic environment.

In the contribution of the State to the generation of social, human and economic wealth there are two very different styles and moods. One is that the public authorities self attribute all the successes and achievements of citizenship, multiplying their presence in all the cliques of the cultural, economic and social ecosystem. There is nothing that is done in some urban neighbourhood or some rural hiding place that is not due to the decision of a mayor, the political perspective of an autonomous consultant or the Central Government's omnipresent promoting watch. Even in the most insignificant actions or the most unimportant works and rests it is necessary to incorporate them to the positive balance of the leaders in power.

A totally different disposition is the one that consists of giving protagonism to the potential wealth of civil society opening channels for its activity and the State keeping a low profile, quieter and more hidden but possibly more effective. This second style would overturn its resources and efforts not in doing for itself, but in getting things done, in helping and easing the work and activity of individual people and companies to which it should serve.

The purpose and dignity of state action is not in a quantitative increment of its own economic might represented by the portion of the GDP that it controls, or by swollen budgets, or by the growing number of officials. However, it lies fundamentally in knowing how to strengthen and channel - never supplant - with its actions, free and responsible performances by the economic agents of the whole social system. It is more anonymous and hidden, with effectiveness but without conceited protagonism. In this way it will be able to substantially increase the economic value available to all individuals in the society that it should represent.

The greatness of a State is in knowing how to stimulate its citizens towards the attainment, for themselves, of more humanity indexes in the use of their material resources, and not in the obsessive control and quantitative growth, in private, of their properties, privileges and powers. Its reason for being is service to the citizens' goals. An increase of state magnitude cannot be confused, as it frequently happens, with effectiveness and increase of social well-being. Its power is delegated and the protagonism should correspond to the vitality and freedom of the common citizens. In this way we shall all improve and the public authorities will have their appropriate and intimate personal satisfaction of doing what should be done without already obsolete deliriums of greatness.

Joseph John Franch Menéu
Diario 16, Tuesday September 28th 1993