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CHAPTER I

4

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4. ...despite the unfavourable cultural and political enyirpnBent

Even so, it is not an easy task; on the contrary, it is likely to be over-ambitious, at least for the moment; a moment in which the wind of aggressive conservatism, of wild deregulation, and of over-stressed competition is powerfully blowing all throughout Europę.

And this is why the challenge to official and well established technical expertise becomes a difficult but unescapable preliminary task, despite the fact that policy and oplnlon aakers tend to refuse analyses which are too demanding in teras of attention and comprehension efforts. And despite the fact that innovative cultural elaborations are disadvantaged in comparison with customary orthodoxy, sińce the latter tends to be accepted even if it is not fully understood, simply because of the persuasive strength which derives from well established confomism.

5. We are facing a negative sum gamę

General eąuilibrium models -the core of economic orthodoxy-represent the economy as a gamę in which the interaction among selfish players produces the maximization of the prizes which are available for the whole of the parti ci pating players. Our main point is that this could happen only under certain circumstances, which depend on the environ«ent in which the gamę takes place and on the rules according to which the gamę is actually played; and both the rules and the environnent are neither 'natural' nor *fixed' by any standard of judgment. They are instead subject to change, along a seąuential path in which the number and the ąuality of players, as well as the rules of the gamę and the resulting overall performances, influence each other. And the point is that present circumstances are such as to determine the prevalence and the likely extension of negative- sum games.

This is mainly due, though not only, to the fact that the competitive games, which were previously taking place mainly among individuals playing within fairly isolated systems, are now taking place also among systems; and while individuals compete (both within and across systems) under relatively stable rules, systems tend to compete each against the other through continuous and strategie adjustments of the rules themselves. It happens thus that the systemie results of the gamę drastically change.