This atmosphere stimulated an openness to creative ideas and innovation. Although some individuals would lose, the system as a whole would move forward with the risk-takers. They made capitalism what it is. Yet today those responsible for running the system in the West seem to be turning against it. Risk is now for averting not embracing, seen as a vice rather than a virtue.
Some explanations try to blame the general intensification of competition in a global economy.
Others emphasise the new threat from East Asia in particular. Probably the most common explanation is the pace of technological development. New technology is widely blamed for creating a range of global risks, from increased pollution to climatic change. These explanations for the rise of risk consciousness do not really explain anything. They remain at the level of assumptions, appealing either to chauvinist prejudices about foreigners or to Luddite prejudices against technology.