Enlightened self-interest is simply about making short term sacrifices for long term advantage (deriving from common goods, or from the value of relationships, etc...). It is also about making investments in others, in the community, in the common pot, for future use by all and by oneself.

What is missing in today's world are these concepts of sacrifice, of investment, of the future. Instead, we have an exacerbation of personal gratification (and instantaneous at that), or consumption, and of the present. We are narrowing ourselves.

The question is; is this coming only from the idea that every value should be expressed (and measured) in money terms, and evaluated by market mechanisms (a permanent way to set some form of instant valuation) - and discussed on the basis of the very short term evolutions of its "price"?

• is it possible to make it clear that some values have no price? (i.e. separate politics from economics, and especially from finance)

• within what belongs in the economics/financial realm, can we make it clear that some things should not be valued only by their short term price?

• or alternatively, how can we make sure that long term considerations get incorporated in that instantaneous price?

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes