SAD DECEIT OR SELF DECEIT 

SAD DECEIT OR SELF DECEIT

María Moliner’s dictionary of Spanish use explains that to deceive is to make somebody believe, with words or in any way, something that is not true. Later on, one can also read that to deceive oneself is to distort the truth for oneself when it is not pleasant or satisfactory. 

  The past electoral campaign, centred on the personalities of González and Aznar, I believe has led to a certain advertising fraud, converting our elections into presidential ones, when in fact we were selecting deputies for the Congress: teams, closed lists, parties. As important or more than the leader’s personality is the footstool and the unity of criteria in each parliamentary group. In turn, the socialist speech has been centred on an easy recourse to political fear of a so-called draconian right that I do not think that González believed in his internal jurisdiction. 

  Leaving to one side the possible political deceit or self deceit, and limiting ourselves to the economic area, I do not believe that Felipe González, with his international and governmental experience, is unaware of what we can extract from some of the important ideas of Von Mises that are common doctrine about the capacity of capital to generate future employment and wealth. To explain that capacity he tells us that all human person’s originality and singularity is simply based on the fact that man makes an effort to maintain and invigorate his own vitality and that of his descendants and neighbours in a conscious and deliberate way. 

  If we designate capital to that financial figure dedicated in a certain moment to a specific venturesome activity, the distinction between means and ends leads us to differentiate between investing and consuming, between business and family expense. The resulting sum of valuing the group of goods dedicated to investments – capital – constitutes the point from which the whole economic calculation and the basic mental tool to manage in an economy are originated. It is also necessary to indicate that previous saving invariably protects each step that man takes towards a better standard of living. Because of this it is necessary to affirm that saving and consequent capital goods accumulation constitute the base of all material progress and the foundation, in definitive, of human civilization. Without saving and capital accumulation, according to Mises, it is impossible to aim even towards objectives of a spiritual type. 

  Due to closer and closer world interdependence, the irreversible opening of the Spanish economy and the more and more flexible and sensitive freedom of capitals due to advances in communications, computer science and in financial systems, what should worry Felipe and his party is not the demagogic self exile of certain people in case the ferocious wolf of the right comes along. He should be concerned about the free self exile of capitals that can glimpse large dark storm clouds in the Spanish economic reality if there is no correction in the following areas: political-social climate, high fiscal pressure, government finance situation, the very high bureaucratic, labour, picaresque and politically and charitably interested pressure. Our future leaders will have to bear in mind the risk of silent self-exile of capital until better times can be hoped for. A serene and quiet reflection is sufficient, to draw a clear conclusion and to silently stamp a simple signature so that millions of pesetas stop the setting in motion of the mechanism of generating employment and real wealth in Spain to begin to work in other places. Millions of these types of decisions are taken daily without a fuss and with freedom throughout the world and in all possible directions. It is no secret that in the world financial centres and the managing departments of different companies, there is a certain spontaneous and automatic inexplicable fear in these dreadful times, of the pink tinged Socialist areas on the socio-political and economic world map. 

  A certain degree of dignity demands recognition that there are times in which it is better to lose responsibly telling the truth, than to win ambitiously hiding the demanding political and especially economic and financial reality. It is more serious when that possible deceit wastes away, instilling political and economic fear among the weakest, most impotent and needful sectors. That deceit, although maybe it is democratic, does not stop being all the same a sad deceit. Maybe it is a sad self-deceit that the most destitute whom verbally and electorally it was sought to aid and help, end up paying for. 

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