The most modern conceptions in the Economy fit it between the behavioural and human action sciences. The different free choices between feasible alternatives that are made in everyday life, and that condition the economic processes of assignment of resources, are impregnated with the tension towards ultimate objectives that each person thinks about or discovers as more convenient in life. Human choice is framed in a dynamic and continuous process, immersed in time, where the decisions taken in former periods interact with present and future choices.

The individual selection of lifestyles or behaviour models that are carried out in the course of time and with the competition of different cultural, ethical, political, social, family, transcendent or insignificant conceptions are not inconsistent with the Economy. Each person can choose a plan of life, that is to say a sequence of actions with those that, according to innate tendency, they hope assure an approach towards interesting and good experiences that compensate and make them happy. The basic human necessities of food, dress, housing, sex, security, freedom... etc, establish limits logically on possible lifestyles. However for a long time the individuals of modern societies of the West have, essentially, achieved levels of opulence that allow them to go beyond the biological minima that determine behaviours.

The Nobel Prize for Economy, James Buchanan, explains exactly this in The Reason for Rules highlighting that today's choices can shape, in a hard to quantify but real way, tomorrow's preferences and those of later on. The individual "builds" himself for his performance and his being in the future. He builds what will be the unit of choice at a later date, as well as the group of options which he will have within certain limits in the future.

When recognizing that the choices made now affect those of tomorrow and later on, the study of these issues has to imply a kind of "preferences of preferences" that order the rest and allow to rank the different possible futures valuing some more than others. The choices made in the present will tend to reflect those preferences.

As soon as the human being is aware of his continuity, it is perfectly human, rational and intelligent to try to condition future choices positively and in advance by means of self-imposition of certain rules or restrictions of behaviour that will allow him to reach his most valued ultimate objectives. Success in the next Olympics, for example, will be achieved only with a renewed disciplined effort of performance, freely carrying out certain self imposed rules and norms.

All this implies the selection of a group of moral precepts that guide present and future choices using intellectual and emotional resources that leave a kind of nearly-permanent habit that tames undesired behaviour and makes it more feasible to reach the meta-preferences. The explicit purpose will be no other than eliminating possibilities of acting in forms or ways that are considered inefficient to carry forward the preferred program of life. Each individual can reduce his option margins freely and consciously in the form that he considers more profitable with a longer reaching perspective instead of simply responding to what appears.

Although with all the nuances and parenthesis that the use of collectives implies, we can make a similar analysis in the case of an organized political entity. The history of that collective unit, described by the " choices" made in each period of the past will limit the group of possible options that the collective can be faced with today and the individuals that form it. In turn, and from that the current political responsibility, the choices made today by the collective will modify and condition the available options in the future through the influences on restrictions and preferences.

The laws, institutions, customs, behaviour habits and traditions of the community have a decisive influence on the typically economic variables and they end up reflecting in the government accounting. Behind the continuous increases in expenses and public deficits that augment the accumulated volume of Public Debt, are many negative habits in citizenship and politicians that can be summed up as a lack of authentic ethics that refuse to act with responsibility for themselves preferring that others solve their personal problems. An irresponsible preference for consumption and for the short term over the long term also takes place, with rejection of the future and an increase in the load that future generations will have to bear.

The current situation of acquired commitments and negative habits are reflected in those macroeconomic figures and in the General Budgets, conditioning the margin of manoeuvre more and more to overcome the bad state of the Welfare State. If Public Expense was less and Debt was at a more moderate level, future possibilities of recovery and revitalization of the economy would be immense. But the situation being as it is, it is only possible to appeal to that renewal of moral habits and political customs that make possible, with their repercussion in strictly economic measures, the dawn of a new ethical and economic regeneration of future generations. The Spanish economic situation is demanding a substantial stimulating political and moral change. The longer it takes to come about, the worse it will get.

Joseph John Franch Menéu
Professor of Political Economy
Autonomous University of Madrid
Gaceta de los Negocios