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CREATING FUTURES
Economic performance, local initiative, citizen's responsibility, environmental responsibility, and prizes in agriculture. The former are all proof that France's "peasants" may remain innovative in their region, while being actors in local development. France's agricultural success is a result of its farmer's courage and will to succeed. In this way, France - a European green space - will be able to keep its agricultural and peasant roots alive. The strong h u m a n presence of the farmer who not only inhabits but shapes the landscape will remain part of French culture. However, the average citizen must help the producer and pay for the quality as well as some non-negotiable products or services which are nonetheless useful to the community as a whole. The main message from the agricultural sector: Globalization has its limits. If we do not protect the sectors that constitute part of our national identity and corresponding patrimony, we run the risk of disrupting our society by disturbing how we live and relate to one another. This risk should concern all ofus, but it threatens developing countries even more. Developing countries bear the hallmarks ofacceleration in terms ofrural exodus and shattered social structures. The result is the urban jungle, accompanied by misery and pollution. In other words, ticking time bombs that future generations will inherit. What to do? One thing is to recognize that some sectors are naturally protected from international competition. These are essentially services provided nearby, or goods whose bulk prohibits long distance distribution. There are also a limited number ofsectors t h a t should be protected and regulated, such as architecture. Otherwise, every city will soon look as if it were poured into the same glass, concrete and steel mould of the Modern-International style. Lack of cultural diversity will stymie the urge to travel among tourists seeking exoticism. "Open to the outside and thus the laws of the market, while organized from within to preserve national traditions which sustain basic relationships." In a nutshell, this is the prevalent model of social liberalism in certain North European countries. Their unwritten motto: As much market as possible and as much state as necessary to free up trade while ensuring solidarity and favourable arbitration in the long term. Clearly the idea is to be for more market and more competition wherever public monopolies are entrenched (not to say sclerotic) and to be for greater public intervention wherever the law of the marketplace is blind to collective interests.
Flexibility with a Human Face: The Need for State Responsibility With respect to the labour market, flexibility ranges from the American, or wild type, in which everyone can work without any guarantee ofliving above the poverty line to the French, blindly rigid variety, in which everything is done to maintain the established order and the workers'