The case for intangibles.
The arrow direction of economic development is moving from tangible to intangible.
Every farming out activity of a firm, every concentration on its core competences is a sign of movement from tangible to intangibleness.
Intangibleness it is almost alien to us tangible beings. Accustomed by sheer power of the elements to hold tangibles. To fight for it. To defend it. To accumulate. To be in despair if dispossessed of the tangible.
Witnessing how hard is to acquire. How dangerous you become if you have it too much, we ended up wanting it even if perhaps it lost all practical meaning.
Tiny countries, devoid of natural resources and vast territories or colonies, gave us theorists of a science that deals with the scarcity of tangibles: Scotland, Austria and Germany.
Time was money. Today killing time is money. The traveling of Jay is the revenue of the travel industry. His killing time is the money. As is the Australians, Taiwanese and Japanese that flock to Bali and Lombok.
Tourism, the second industry after oil, is the industry where time is not money. But people killing time is money.
When we look to the wireless industry and we see that the market will teen agers. Teenage is the age of the time to kill. Teenagers with cash is a market sought after. It is sought after because teens have tyime to kill and killing time is whwre the money is. Just ask the drug dealers trying to hook teenagers into drugs.
We look to a developed world, the OECD, where the channels are already dug. The roads and bridges are built. The generation, transmission and distribution of electrical power supply is implemented everywhere.
Commercial property and houses are all in places. Always forgot is the fact that for over 50 years there were no major wars in the countries that really matter. Wars destroyed wealth and infrastructure. People are -for the first time in history- inheriting property and wealth. They inherit it at an age that they have already kids -the teenagers I mentioned above.
And they have not had time to kill. So they want to handover part of their wealth to their kids now instead of accumulating it and handing it over when they are dead.
Tangibles still live on in the world of the pauper. There they are pauper because they lack tangibles. But in the OECD, there is no place for tangibles anymore. So those economies have to run on intangibles.
But lets not forget that they are most -or were until recently- driven by a protestant ethics. You've got to earn the bread with the sweat of your face. You have to save for the rainy day. Work hard and accumulate.
These people are uncomfortable with the intangibleness of the economy in which they act. They have cognitive dissonance in this respect. All the cognitions they have -fed by the Max Weber protestant ethics, clash with this world of plenty. This world where a second generation is grown on the joblessness. A world where the welfare state provides. A world where countries from all over the world vie to supply them with whatever they want, from Kiwis to consumer electronic and clothes. From fresh strawberries in winter to fresh cutflowers unloaded every morning at Schipol in a 747.
The case for the tangibles can only remain if we put the pauper to work productively. Meaning foreign direct investment in those countries. Or importing these paupers as mass migration to make do a tangible economy. |
