Different futures and political philosophy

On Friday I was giving a key note speech at an Innovation luncheon on The Future of Science: Can Queensland keep up? As part of it I talked about the kinds of challenges that we all face and an advocacy of how science can help us move from a thoughtless and careless world to a more thoughtful one. As soon as I'd finished the question came: " Do you support capitalism?" What was left unsaid, but clearly implied, was that the creation of different futures was somehow socialist and therefore contrary to the prevailing world view. It is so easy to dismiss challenges if you can label them as failed or dangerous.

My reply was as follows. "Socialism as it was practised in the 20th century, and capitalism as it is practised now, are both inadequate and incomplete as a dominant logic to address the challenges that confront us. I'm not sure if what we need is a new philosophy but surely we need better mechanisms to understand how to balance private and public good and smarter ways to balance financial and resource capital with the capital demands of nature, society and people. We also need to understand how to measure what's important like well being and happiness instead of assuming that an increase in GDP is all that matters. Furthermore. it seems that a few of our public and private leaders have already figured this out and are creating strategies accordingly." Could it be that the idea of political philosophy is an idea that has reached its use by date and that what we need now are new frameworks for policy creation and community discussion?