This is a followup to the previous post . Like i said i might end up writing 20 posts in this series. Can’t help writing ! I am mighty impressed with various speakers here that i am hell bent on documenting stuff from those lectures that impressed me a lot
This post is on the 19th Annual E.F. Schumacher lecture in 1999 by Jerry Mander.
This post may appear negative. But i think it is very important for today’s b-schoolers, engineers and everyone else to understand the system they are in and this talk is a good one in that direction ;)
Economic Globalisation: The Era of corporate rule
Jerry Mander holds degrees from Columbia University (in economics) and the Wharton School of Business. He is a writer and activist. Interestingly, one of his most famous books is titled “Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television” !!. From the little i could read about the book here and here… I think i can say that the arguments have some stuff in them and can’t be dismissed right away :).
Anyway back to the current lecture..
“The advocates of economic globalization like to describe it as an inevitable process, the result of economic and technological forces that evolved over centuries into their present form, almost as if they were forces of nature. Although global trading activity and concepts of free trade have existed for many centuries, their earlier forms were entirely different from the modern versions in scale, speed, impact, and intent. The modern version of economic globalization did not grow from nature like some kind of weird dominant plant or animal; it is not an accident of evolution but instead emerged directly from a set of institutions and rules created on purpose by human beings for a specific goal: to give primacy to economic—I should say corporate—values above all others“
Very true. Infact, i sometimes wonder why a lot of us take most of the systems of today for granted without questioning any of them. Like Buddha once said, i think we have to question everything around, reason it out and only then accept ;). Ofcourse, you and me accepting the system or not may or may not have any impact on the overall outcome. But that is not reason enough to not have an opinion :P
“The net result is what many of my colleagues call “monoculture“—the global homogenization of culture, lifestyle, economic practice, and ideology with the corresponding sacrifice of local traditions, values, arts, and traditional small-scale economic practices. The days when it was fun to travel to so-called exotic places on the globe are already nearly at an end. Soon every place will look and feel exactly like every place else, with the same restaurant franchises, the same chain hotels, the same clothes and malls and superstores, the same streets crowded with the same cars, the same high-rise architectural expressions, and increasingly the same television programs, music, and art. With every place the same, there will be scarcely a reason ever to leave home. Our lives will be forever deprived“
Though it might sound a bit extreme… I partly agree with this passage. I myself had this feeling when i visited a lot of places. Infact, take out the towns and villages.. most cities in India look similar for me . I have stayed for considerable time on and off in Hyderabad, Pune .. stayed for a couple of months in Delhi, Bengaluru and also visited Mumbai, Chennai etc in periods spanning decades :P . Today, i feel there is this monoculture in most cities. I see a similar monoculture in Lucknow as well. I don’t know whether it is good or bad. But i think it need not necessarily be the only way :)
“The gap between the wealthy and the poor within countries and among countries is rapidly increasing, and globalization accelerates the problem by separating people from their traditional livelihoods and by creating a terrible downward pressure on wages everywhere—including Third World countries, where low wages comprise the only so-called comparative advantage, meaning that if wages are not kept down, there might be no jobs at all“
In the past few months.. these two things interested me the most. In most of my economics classes Ricardo’s Comparative advantage theory is considered as a holy doctrine. I wonder why! And the thing about losing traditional livelihoods is the reason for the insanely large urban slums we see today :( Tough times these
“Such is the degree of concentration of wealth that right now the world’s 475 billionaires are collectively worth the combined incomes of the bottom 50 per cent of humanity”
“A recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington, D.C., shows that American CEOs are now paid, on average, 419 times more than assembly-line workers. That’s the highest ratio in the world.”
This was a 1999 article. From wiki i understand it is now 325 times instead. Not that it makes it any better though :P
“If anyone still clings to the idea that big corporations are more likely to employ the world labor force, to the idea that size begets jobs, here’s another shocking statistic from the Institute for Policy Studies: the two hundred largest corporations in the world, and they are getting larger and fewer all the time, account for approximately 30 per cent of global economic activity, but they employ less than 1/2 of 1 per cent of the global work force. Economies of scale! By that I mean that as companies get larger, it becomes more efficient for them to replace thousands of workers with robots and other machines“
“And as large companies begin to dominate their industries, they drive out smaller competitors who would have duplicated certain tasks, creating duplicate jobs. Such economies of scale are intrinsic to globalization. They include mergers and consolidations, and they inevitably result in fewer jobs, not more“
I am searching for the 2011 figures on this. But i think this has been the norm of late. “Downsizing” is the buzz word these days. I myself was a part of a downsizing routine in my previous company during 2008-09. Again, nothing right or wrong.. it is just interesting to observe the paradoxical nature of “Scale”. I have always been told.. “if you axe some jobs and make the company more efficient, the guy who lost his job will soon find a job in some other company ie., the markets will take care of him”. Is that mechanism really working is what i am not sure of at this point of time :). The brute fact end of the day is .. companies will always say.. “listen.. we are not a charity“.
“These bankers, who had made very bad loans, found themselves in a desperate panic soon after. Their way out was, in effect, to make the taxpayers pay them for their horrible mistakes. Bankers were rescued, not countries. So much for free-market ideology. What we actually have here is free market for taxpayers, workers, and middle-class consumers but protectionism, socialism, and cronyism for banks and corporations“
This is not an article about 2008 recession mind you! .. It is about the 1997 east asian financial crisis. So what has changed really ? Nothing :P . I myself would be working for a corporation soon .. i think it is important to be aware of what is happening and atleast have the intent to change the business-as-usual . Going by the fact that between 1997 to 2008 nothing has changed i don’t really hope for big changes in the future too :P .. but it is important that such things are read ;)
“To use terms like “empowerment” to summarize the benefits of computers to us is to thoroughly misunderstand what power is about in a real political and economic context. Computers may help individuals feel powerful or competent, and I don’t deny that they are useful in many ways. But they do nothing to counterbalance the corporate centralization of power via these very instruments. Quite the opposite. In my view computer technology will turn out to be the single most centralizing technology ever invented. For while we sit at our personal computers editing our copy and sending our e-mails, transnational corporations, bankers, and speculators are using their global networks, spread out everywhere on the planet, using them twenty-four hours a day with far greater resources and with faster and better machines at a scale and speed that makes our level of empowerment pathetic by comparison“
So truly, what kind of revolution is this? Why do we fail to see who the big winners are? Despite the considerable usefulness of the electronic revolution to us as individuals and activists, it nonetheless has far more to offer the multinational enterprises than it ever will to you and me. So as you use your computers for your good works—and I do not suggest you stop doing so—just keep in mind who else is using them. And let’s stop calling them “empowering.”
This perspective of computers is very shocking to say the least :P I know of one other person who can say such stuff .. Kirkpatrick Sale. May be i am too easily convinced or may be he is really correct i dunno.. but i still sort of like this line of argument.
“The Union Carbide explosion in Bhopal caused tremendous damage, killing and injuring many people. In the same series of stories in my book I also told about the Exxon Valdez oil spill in Alaska, which caused an enormous amount of pollution and killed many animals. In both cases the heads of those corporations made announcements the day after the accidents occurred; they said they were horrified at what had happened. One of them said he was going to devote the rest of his life to correcting the damage his company had caused and he was taking personal responsibility for it. Within two weeks time he’d been told not to say that again. The board of directors pointed out that taking responsibility for what happened would affect the company’s bank loans and their stock prices and would put them in a bad position in terms of having to compensate for losses, and so on. Both men were obliged to defend their corporation as not being responsible for what happened“
Scary thoughts these! Though the part about bottomline pressures, stock prices is real. I think corporations can do damage control in a much better way.On that note i end this post.
