I wrote: You don't say how you regard the balance or trade-offs
between the two.
And Arthur replied [quoted in full because it's succinct]:
I would have voted for more control over foreign investments and
allowed those that actually provided a net benefit for Canada.
I did a report for the Science Council years ago on this. I
interviewed the CEO of the Canadian operation and interviewed the
person to whom they reported abroad. Same for head of production,
marketing and R and D. Did this wherever it was possible to do
so. Results were interesting and astonishing. In many cases the
Canadian branch plant president with large office, large staff
etc., reported to a very junior person at head office. One case
in point. The pres of a Canadian pharmaceutical company reported
to someone in NY who was responsible for Canada and South America.
Imagine my surprise when this junior person with a small office,
maybe a cubicle was the person overseeing the Can operation.
The R and D was even more interesting. I found that a Can plant
with R and D operations next door didn't even speak to each other.
The head of R and D only reported to the operations abroad. The
lab had a global mandate to do a certain thing but it was part of
a global MNC. While it was in Canada for grants and other reasons
it could have been abroad. Employed Canadians, yes but very
little else to do with Canada.
I could go on and on. Subtle losses with foreign ownership.
Often hard to measure but there nonetheless.
The game was over when Mulroney said "Canada is open for
business". FTA and NAFTA also helped to seal things.
Thank you, Arthur. That's about what I thought, although it paints in
detail I couldn't have imagined.
Which somehow leads me back to a paragraph you wrote earlier:
As I wrote some years back. The wage/skills profile of society
will come to resemble that of a 747 aircraft. Stewards and
stewardesses in the cabin. No matter how long they work for the
airline they will never become part of the skilled and highly paid
class up front flying the plane. A bi modal distribution of
skills and a bi modal distribution of incomes. And what about the
passengers? They will be entertained, fed and plied with drink
and videos and supported -- as long as they continue to consume,
ie., maintain effective demand.
An aircraft doesn't have the right configuration or command structure
to capture my take on this phenomenon. A ship with the owners aboard
might be better.
So the passengers are just cargo. The crew has to be treated a bit
better because they run the engine room, maintain the nav gear etc.
But the officers, who know how to navigate, understand the sea and the
weather and know the capabilities of the ship itself have all been
crammed into the pilot house. The ship's owners have commandeered the
bridge. And they don't know anything about all that navigation and
seamanship stuff, even less about boilers, turbine and bunker heaters.
So they issue commands that will take them for a good cruise. The
officers know better but follow orders because, well, they're
officers, y'know, and besides, if they didn't they'd be demoted to
deck hands.
Well, not to stretch the metaphor too far. The idea is the the
emerging bimodal distribution puts the proles (as they were called in
_1984_) in the big peak and the educated hard-core techies and the
technocrats in the smaller, more prosperous one. But there's a
smaller group yet, typically wealthy but not necessarily defined by
wealth, that makes decisions that have global consequences. I reckon,
from my position of relative ignorance in the domain, that these
people are chiefly in financial trades or are suitably connected
politicians (where "politician" means anything) or the ruling elites
of sovereign states.
This smallest and most powerful group is too large and heterogeneous
to be a cabal but arguably could be called a conspiracy. And they
either lack any of the knowledge necessary to conn the ship,
intransigently believe, without real supporting evidence, that they
do, or simply don't care what happens to the passengers, crew or the
ship itself. The ship is, after all, to big, well-appointed, superbly
equipped and, you know, *floaty*, to sink or run aground. And anyhow,
we're *risk takers*, 'cause that's what you have to do to be a winner.
Protests from the officers -- those who aren't totally co-opted by the
guys on the bridge -- are merely irritations to be suppressed or
endured.
"Uncoupling" seems to have a different canonical meaning in finance
but it seems to me that there is a potentially disastrous uncoupling
of the whole of finance from social goals, even from basic chemistry,
biology and physics. The guys on the bridge are uncoupled from
anything to do with the ship or the other people aboard.
Well, I'm going to shingle off onto the fog here if I don't stop.
- Mike
--
Michael Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada .~.
/V\
[email protected] /( )\
http://home.tallships.ca/mspencer/ ^^-^^
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