By Demetris Georgiades
A few days ago, I attended a conference on competitiveness. Why is the European Union losing ground? In which sectors has it already lost the game, and which should it focus on? What needs to change? How will artificial intelligence and new technologies affect the economy? And many other, equally important, questions.
The conference was being held a few hundred kilometres from the nearest airport. So we travelled to a hotel the day before. The next morning, ten to fifteen of us found ourselves at the stop, waiting for the bus. After about half an hour, a brand-new bus appeared, with a capacity of 50 to 60 people.
I couldn’t resist commenting: “Good start. We’re off to discuss how to improve Europe’s competitiveness and productivity, twelve people in a bus for sixty.” I didn’t even mention the waiting time or the distances.
The reply came instantly: “If only that were Europe’s problem.”
Answers of this kind have always troubled me. They reflect a mindset in which a mistake more or less stops being a mistake because somewhere else there is a bigger one. We justify our own wrong behaviour because someone else is doing something worse.
If resources and time are limited, of course we must prioritise. We should start with the most important problems and work our way down to the smaller ones. But when we can fix something without sacrificing something else, why not do it? The fact that a bigger problem exists is no excuse for ignoring the smaller one.
We encounter this mindset everywhere: in our daily lives, in business, in the state and, perhaps most typically, in politics.
AKEL, for example, criticises an action by the government or by DISY, and very often the response does not address the substance of the criticism. It is the familiar line: “Who’s talking? You did worse.” And of course, the same argument is used in the opposite direction too.
This ultimately becomes our yardstick. Not whether what we did is right or wrong, but whether we can find someone who did something worse.
The logic can be stretched to the point of absurdity. Even states, when criticised for their actions, resort to historical comparisons: “Remember the Holocaust. Remember what Hitler did. What is happening today does not compare.”
And so the bar keeps getting lower.
Because ultimately, instead of judging our actions by what is right, we look for someone worse in order to feel better about our own.
In the end, we all need the worst.
