Outdated ideas, new times, guaranteed obsolescence. Despite my anthropological optimism, I am not a deluded person who blindly believes in the learning capacity of human beings. Beyond a certain age, unless there is a pressing need, we find it difficult to change the chip and tune in to another conceptual dial.

Abundance and success are not usually ideal circumstances to get rid of prejudices, abandon outdated paradigms and face pending challenges. For this reason, adversity can be an ideal platform to unlearn, to formulate some questions and to work hard to solve them. What have we learned from the crisis? Frankly, not much. I expected more from the different interlocutors involved. Here are some of them. Government, tenuous and late reaction to status so serious. Prisoner of its initial autism -it denied and minimized the crisis until the overwhelming evidence suggested a change of tone-, it continues to angelically refer to a happy future. I fervently hope he gets it right, but I say that something will have to be done to earn it.

businessIn the case of the bankers, caution, any generalization is an injustice. If I go by the statements of the president of Goldman Sachs, "bankers make the work of God", it makes me dizzy. A bit daring to put God in the income statement, he seems enlightened. If you look at the performance of some boards of directors, -many of them were in the stratosphere- you can conclude that progress is very modest. If you look at the compensation systems, there is nothing to congratulate ourselves on. In general, they are still subject to the double dictatorship of short-termism - immediate urgency takes precedence over philosophical questions that have to do with the health or toxicity of the institution - and of numbers. You can be an authoritarian boss, treat staff as your exclusive property, and if the results go your way, you have a papal bull. And to think that a large part of the problems are due to a Kafkaesque, unfair and counterproductive incentive system!

Regulators, where were they when the storm occurred: incompetent, distracted, lacking the resources to perform their delicate function? I detect two worrying tics. On the one hand, curtailing the freedom that talent and creativity require. The totalitarian is always crouching, waiting for his opportunity. On the other hand, insisting on the naivety of self-regulation. Many, if left to roam free in the jungle, become dangerous predators.

The most transparent and upright cultures are found in those countries with a secure and independent legal system. To go from Economics to ethics without going through the law is "liberal" recklessness.

Unions. With a modest membership and entrenched in the big companies, it is surprising the share of power they have. The speech of their leaders is still anchored in the demonization of the private initiative, in the triumphalist and interested exaltation of the public. Useless Manichaeism for a century that needs a more open mentality. I am against making layoffs cheaper, but from there to blocking the labor reform, average is a long way. Given that the Government does not take a single step without the authorization of the unions, its ideological reading of the crisis is worrying. Why are employers the targets of its diatribes? Some of them deserve it, because they are unscrupulous and unsupportive, but the vast majority of them are fighting against the tide.

How many small and medium-sized business struggling to survive, with difficult access to credit bank, without any banner coming out in their defense? How many self-employed and entrepreneurs trying not to drown in an unleashed sea, while the bulk of the population travels as employees in huge ocean liners paid by all? An endangered species in a kingdom of politicians and civil servants, who takes to the streets for them? Being small is their crime, their closure goes unnoticed, while the big ones continue to approach the State's manger.

I reiterate my point: learning is scarce. We spend a little less, we cry a lot, we lobby, and we snuggle up to the warmth of power to live off its crumbs. Hope is the last thing to be lost. As the game goes on and it will get even more complicated, we will have to keep on fighting. Four million unemployed and our children need something more than our blindness and selfishness.