Ray,
Equally good to hear from you again after my long silence.
At 16:20 16/08/98 -0700, you wrote:
>Keith,
>
>Great to hear your voice. I don't agree with every point but the points
are as
>always, well made. How is the chorus? Are you still singing?
Yes.
>
>Your point about the lack of balance between the internal and external
forces was
>helpful to me.
I don't think I made the point very well. But another feature of Asian-type
crony capitalism is that it depends upon quite temporary relationships
between friends, family members, and so on and, what with the accession of
money and power, these relationships easily break up. My bedtime reading
lately has been "The Soong Dynasty" by Sterling Seagrave. The three
daughters and three sons of "Charlie" Soong in different ways virtually
controlled vast chunks of China in the 30s and 40s -- militarily,
politically and financially. Yet it all fell apart in the end.
I think we can make the same points, as I said in an earlier
>post today, about the fragmented opposite of Crony Capitalism. The
Fragment
>and Conquer Capitalism must always try to do away with it's enemy, the
>government, while Crony Capitalism tends to work through the government.
I
>think of Tor Forde's referrel to Braudel who, according to my limited
reading,
>was advocating a kind of state capitalism. Of course Braudel was French.
And again, monopolies always fail. The more successful ones are those that
persuade governments to enact protective legislation. But protectionism
only works for a while, weakens their main purpose and causes them to lose
touch with reality and new needs. You mentioned somewhere else about banks'
delay in clearing cheques. The same applies in this country. Banks have had
a privileged position for most of this century. The result, though, is
that, huge though they are, they really don't know what their future is
because their raison d'etre has been taken over by different bodies (Mutual
Funds, major firms obtaining investments by issuing of bonds, etc). It is
quite possible -- probable in my view -- that banks will disappear
completely in the next ten years when the smartcard comes along and other
completely different types of businesses take over the banks' functions.
>Also you said:
>>What happened in S-E Asia is that, in their precipitate rush to get into
>>the glamorous exporting industries (rather than, say, the domestic retail
>>sector), cronyism subsequently needed to stretch into non-national
>>businesspeople in the West. However, if the latter were prevented from
>>investing in the glamour industries of Asian countries, or if their
>>investments produced too low a return, or if private backhanders were
>>likely to be exposed by the Western media, then the network could not
>>extend further.
>
>I find the takeover of the Canadian Garth Drabinski's empire by the
>"stockholders" led by the likes of Michael Ovits is a similar situation.
What do
>you think? REH
Sorry, I don't know anything about this.
But let me outline the "Hudson Oscillatory Theory of History". This is that
the whole of human history has been swings of the pendulum between
government-dominated society and free-trade domination. Governments (of
successively quite different sorts) could only hold sway while they had
complete possession of the existing dominant weaponry. (Two brief examples:
the bow-and-arrow proved the death of tribal-type government; the cannon
finished off principality- and free-city type governments.) The
nationalistic governments that held sway until the end of the Second World
War had possession of the latest "weapon" -- the artillery-regiment
(whether on land, sea or air). But the nuclear bomb (and other even newer
weapons such as cyberwarfare and germ warfare) has meant that
non-governmental bodies can now destroy nation-states. That is why they are
weakening now at a fast pace and why trade is now being released again from
governmental domination and protectionism. Undoubtedly another new type of
military-based governmental system will evolve (probably universal in
nature, but very possibly not) but one cannot possibly forecast what form
it will be -- it will take decades to become clear. But this is why free
trade, both "desirable" and "undesirable" (e.g. the Mafia, Multinationals,
small specialised firms with world-wide markets) are now reviving in a big
way.
The S-E Asian countries -- still the old-fashioned type of hierarchical
nation-state -- will take time to disappear, but disappear they will
because their peoples, like Soviet citizens of recent history, will see
that the rest of the western world will be maintaining economic growth
while they flounder.
Nation-state governments are failing everywhere. Free trade is reviving. As
one writer in today's "Independent" says, in an article which I haven't yet
read, "The world is becoming one big tax haven". Nation-states are becoming
increasingly incompetent (and the Y2K problem may finish off their
tax-gathering systems altogether) and a lot of new things are stirring. It
all looks (and is) pretty chaotic. But this is the reason why, after a
couple of years of pretty intensive writing and thinking on Futurework
List, I came to the conclusion that no overall policy, certainly no
government-led policy, could solve unemployment problems or determine the
nature of future work.
Keith
_______________________________________________________________________
Keith Hudson,6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
Tel:01225 312622/444881; Fax:01225 447727; E-mail:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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