This morning I heard a commonly repeated slogan among many Western politicians and academics, “Job creators hate uncertainties.”
It is as generalized as it is misleading and confusing.
First, there are all kinds of job creators. Not all hate uncertainties.
Second, there are all kinds of uncertainties. Not all are necessarily deserving of hate.
For example, innovations and new technologies create uncertainties, because they upend existing business models/systems/processes. Typewriters may be rendered obsolete by word processors. What would a business do with old typewriters that they spend all that money on? And word processors may be rendered obsolete by some other new technology. Should businesses spend money on word processors?
See, all that uncertainty. But that’s all inherent part of risks of business, any business.
Businesses that thrive, thrive despite uncertainties, because they cope better than their competitors. They cope and exploit risks, where others cannot, to squeeze out profit.
In such risky uncertainties, small businesses often do better, because they invested less in the old, and they have little to lose in adopting the new. Granted, small businesses do fail a lot, such is the risk of gambling on one’s future to become bigger. Immigrants risk no less uncertainties, given that they are forcing themselves to confront cultures/social/political processes that are completely alien to them. Even the early American colonists and the Founding Fathers of US, did they not risk uncertainty in the creation of a new nation in a strange land?
It is sad to see how the West has become risk averse, (even as they level the same accusation at the Chinese young).
You hear the word hints in the West: “Protect”. Protect what/whom?
Protect the Have’s, the wealthy, the elites. Once the 1% have gotten what they wanted, they want more, but they also don’t want risk theirs for “uncertainty” of higher taxes, etc. So, they whine, “All these uncertainties are really FREAKING me out. I think I might leave and take my money with me.”
And that creates an uncertainty for the West as a consequence, I suppose. Somehow the money will disappear, economies will collapse??
It sounds like a credible threat of blackmail, until you think about it.
Where are they going to take the money? Nowhere. Money don’t disappear. And the governments are capable of legally take the money as taxes.
What are they going to do with the money? Stuff it in mattresses and wait for them to rot?
Of course, it’s not just the 1%, some small business owners are droned enough to come to believe in this BS. (Risk aversion brain washing ongoing). Somehow, many of the new generation of business owners are taught somewhere to avoid uncertainties. They might as well just sell their businesses now, because the only certainty is uncertainty.
*All this is a perfect analogy on the Decline of Western power in recent years, where the governments are finding themselves unable to respond to the risks of uncertainty in the changing world, in trade and in international relationships.
US political mentality reflects the growing fear of uncertainties of rising competing powers, translating into a general fatigue of spirit. Instead of seeing opportunities, the West throws up walls to “protect” themselves.
It is the same human struggle story. The Have’s protecting themselves against the Have-not’s.
But this is not some Mongol invasion. It’s simple competition, which the West has forgotten. If you don’t risk uncertainty to compete, you will lose to those who are able to adapt to the new uncertainties. The old ways die, because they cannot adapt, not because the new ways consume the old ways. The new ways merely replace the old ways, until perhaps they too become too old to adapt.
The Old Order may fall because they cannot change the nature of their own Order imposed, because you cannot rationally IMPOSE typewriters onto the world that had a taste of word processors and computers.
ersim says
“Survival of the fittest”???