This is the text of Aristos Doxiadis' lecture for Stavros Niarchos Foundation Lectrure,
delivered at Yale University on 5 December 2011. The slide presentation is
below the text.
I feel deeply honored
to be delivering the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Lecture this year. But I also
feel slightly out of place and out of time as I speak. I will be presenting
ideas that have been developed over several years about what is specifically Greek
in this crisis. Yet by now every country in the European Union is threatened.
Events of historic importance are taking place in the space of just a few
weeks. What happens on Friday at the EU summit may have a huge impact on the
global economy for the next ten years. Yet here I am, talking about one small
country, and how it is different from some of its neighbors.
Still, I will defend
the need to understand the local. I have metaphor to offer, about earthquakes:
Global capital markets, which are the transmission mechanism of the crisis, are
like the shock waves of earthquakes. National economies are like the
different buildings in the path of the wave. Some are well constructed to
withstand the shock, and survive with just a few cracks. Others will fall,
inflicting great pain on the occupants. And some are like canvas tents, which
are barely affected.
Many economists are
like seismologists, analysing the big picture that creates the waves. Others
are more like civil engineers, trying to understand how different local
structures behave, in earthquakes as well as in tranquil times. And some, like
me, are the anthropologists of building: why do some people build with wood and
others with concrete? When earthquakes strike, naturally the news is full of
seismology. But later, it will be time to build again, and we shall need to
re-examine our assumptions about buildings. So, on to the Greek story.
[SLIDE 2]
We tend to look at the
crisis in Greece, or in any other country, in terms of macro-economic
magnitudes: GDP and debt and so on. But behind these numbers, there are
specific goods and services that are produced and traded. And behind the
goods and services, there are people in households and in firms, who decide to
work in particular ways and to consume and to invest. And behind the people,
there are institutions that enable or hinder their actions. And the people also
have prevailing mentalities, or in other words a culture, that guide them in
economic behavior.
The diagram
illustrates this, to help you keep track of where we are in the lecture. I am
going to focus on the three items on the left, that is, on what goes on behind
the numbers, and the sectors. What happens there, in my view, can explain most
of the difference in how different countries perform in terms of GDP, trade,
deficits, and so on.
[SLIDE 3]
First, though, about
the macro-magnitudes. The broad story is well-known: the Greek state
became insolvent before any other EU country, because it had by far the worst
combination of four magnitudes: Government deficits over many years;
government debt (which is a stock figure, deriving from the flow of
deficits); trade deficit; and savings rate. It is the combination of the four
that made Greece the sick man of Europe, much more than any other country in
the European periphery.
Most of the discussion
in Greece has been about the first two figures: the government deficit, which
must turn into a surplus soon, because nobody is willing to finance it anymore.
And the debt, which is now so high, that nobody believes it can ever be repaid
in full. Roughly speaking, eliminating the deficit is the hard work that the
Greek state must do. And writing off much of the sovereign debt in an orderly
way is the hard work that global and European institutions must do. Both of
these issues are directly political and highly controversial; so they have
hogged the limelight.
But on a more
fundamental level, it is the high trade deficit and the low savings rate that
matter more. These were persistently, over many years up to 2009, the highest
and lowest in Europe respectively. I will not dwell on the numbers here. I am
more interested in exploring why the numbers happened. Why is Greece a
deficit country, both in government and in trade?
[SLIDE 4]
The next level is to
look at the sectoral composition of activity. What services and products do
Greeks produce and consume? This will reveal structural weaknesses in the
economy that will not be remedied by fiscal policy or by high-level
negotiations with creditors. In Greece, this weakness is encapsulated in the
popular phrase: “the frappe economy” (frappe being our national daytime drink:
cold, shaken, instant coffee). It refers to low-value added, easy
to provide services, related to leisure and to location, and to tourism, of
course. This is not a very accurate picture of the economy, but it does
contain a lot of truth.
In broad terms, over
the past thirty years Greece has tilted too much towards nonmarket public
services, and towards marketed private services that are not however tradable
internationally (like retail shops, lawyers, doctors and hairdressers). I will
have some more to say on the sectoral composition later, but for the moment let
us try to explain why this happened.
This is the part where
Greeks specifics come into play.
[SLIDE 5]
Look at how production
is organized, first. Greece is an extreme outlier in terms of the number of
self-employed and of small businesses.
[SLIDE 6]
In the so-called
‘non-financial business economy’ (NFBE) 57% of those employed are either
self-employed or employed in firms of under 10 employees. The value of this
index for EU-27 is 30%. Italy comes second with 47%, Portugal third with 42%.
France is at 27%, the UK at 21%, Germany at 18%. (2007)
[SLIDE 7]
In the economy as a
whole, (which includes agriculture on the one hand, but also banks and
government on the other) 35% of the labor force is self-employed, or unpaid
family members. This is by far the highest figure in the EU, but also the
second highest in the OECD, after Turkey. In the US the corresponding number is
7%, in Germany 12% and in Italy 26%, and in all of the OECD 16% (2007).
[SLIDE 8]
You may well ask, why?
How did it happen that we have so many small businesses – vineyards, olive
presses, rooms-to-let, mini markets, doctors’ practices, theaters, clothes
boutiques, clothes makers, IT workshops – and why so few large employers?
The short answer is
that we owe it first, to history, and more specifically to the Ottoman state,
which prevented primitive accumulation of capital as it occurred in the west;
second, to the institutions of our modern state, which assist the survival of
small business but make it hard for them to grow into large enterprises; and
third to our culture which makes it hard for us to cooperate.
Institutional bias in
favor of the small scale has been so strong since the beginning of the modern
Greek state, that neither the 1.5 million of incoming Greek refugees in 1922,
nor the huge wave of poor immigrants since 1990 became a permanent proletariat
for big employers, as has happened elsewhere. It was small employers who became
rich in farms and in building sites on the back of the immigrants.
I believe that
self-employment, micro-employment and family business is a stable and
fundamental institution in our economy, perhaps the most fundamental. Their
share in employment and output will not shrink under normal circumstances. Not
even a long and deep recession will change this. Only a revolution in
institutions would.
If that is so, we
should accept the following: it is institution that determines specialization,
not the other way around. That is: because we are a society of small business,
we do not build electronic devices; rather than: because we don’t produce such
devices we have small businesses. This insight often escapes policy makers.
They believe that with the right funding and infrastructure we may grow
competitive businesses in industries that require a larger scale. In every era,
small businesspeople will do the work that suits them. Yesterday diving for
sponges, today letting rooms to tourists, tomorrow what?
Family strategies are
distinctive in this small ownership environment, and quite different from what
you might find in most of the western world.
The family will seek
stability in polyergy (a term coined by G. Dertilis): having
varied sources of income, as many as it can find and appropriate. There is family
solidarity: multiple incomes require multiple hands. The father has a
petrol station, the son studies information technology for the upside, but if
it doesn’t work out he will not starve. The daughter preferably becomes a
teacher or a municipal clerk – something secure which leaves free time to care
for elderly parents and for the next generation. If the family shop does well,
the whole family will work there; if not it will be maintained by one or two
members. The system is admirably stable, flexible and long-lasting.
In a small-ownership
economy household saving and investment is also different. It
is channeled, quite rationally, into real estate and into education. In western
economies savings are invested collectively through pension funds, mutual funds
and bank deposits. They end up funding industry, technology, infrastructure,
and in general, sizeable organizations. In the Greek micro-economy monetary
savings have few reliable collective outlets.
Human capital takes a different
form. In western economies human capital can develop in standardized career
paths – that is, by building relationships inside
organizations. Higher education is useful mostly as a first step in a career –
if the jobs market does not demand it, the young will not insist on getting it.
In small ownership, the value of a person is vested in their individual characteristics.
The jobs market does not give clear signals. I want an engineering degree not
in order to work at Volkswagen, but because I will have numerous options, as a
reseller, contractor, consultant, retailer or just possibly a middle manager.
That is why families overinvest in education for the young: in English language
tutorial schools, in university exam tutorial schools, in living expenses for
out-of-town studies, and even for studies abroad. In national accounts these
expenses appear as consumption, but they are investment.
[SLIDE 9]
Moving beyond firms
and households, to the institutions that appropriate resources and that
regulate the economy: the next distinctive characteristic in Greece is the wide
prevalence of rents, most of which are conferred via the political system. Note
that I define rents a bit differently from the standard economic definition. In
broad terms it is unearned income which derives from privileged access to a
scarce resource. The operational term is ‘privileged’, i.e. a particular, special
income, that is not available to the population as a whole. For example, if a
country provides for a basic pension for all citizens over the age of 65, this
may be unearned income, but it is not a privilege: it is based on a simple and
general rule which applies to a big category of citizens. I would not call that
a rent. If, however, as is the case in Greece, some professionals get higher
pensions at an earlier age, just by warrant of belonging to a particular
occupation, this is rent.
Politically conferred
rents are the result of clientelist politics, i.e. of the politics of the
particular rather than the general. They come in many forms: sinecures in the
public sector, privileged pensions, investment subsidies without any impact on
development, extraordinary profits of government contractors, and graft. They
also derive from regulations which allow some people to overcharge in the
market (restricted professions, regulated prices, prohibitions), and, less
obviously, to the benefits of breaking the law when your competitors are
conforming. In this context, corruption in the sense of taking bribes is just a
special case of rent harvesting, which in most other cases is legal.
It is important to
note that rents are widely and democratically distributed. Especially after
1980, most households could get some benefits from the system. Democratic
legitimacy was strengthened by new institutions that made access to rents more
impartial: the state started hiring based on standardized examinations (ASEP),
and the university entrance mechanism eliminated the possibility of personal
favors. If people have to work hard and to compete honestly in order to gain
access to a position, nobody questions whether the position itself is
parasitical. And the privileges attached are considered fair.
There are also
substantial non-political rents in the private sector. Tourism
income includes a major rent component, since visitors pay first for location
and then for service. Transfers from ships and emigrants are the fruit of real
work abroad, but for the receiving local economies they act as pure rent.
So rent appropriation
mechanisms are quite varied, but they have a common effect on economic culture:
almost all Greeks, from large business owners to small landowners in islands
and to municipal clerks in villages, believe it is natural to have some income
which derives neither from work nor from risking capital. If they cannot have
it, they feel wronged.
The dominance of
rents, or rentocracy, will shape politics and administration and culture. To
name just the most important effects briefly: It fosters a Zero-sum mentality:
rent does not contribute to growth, it only shares in what is there. It breeds
populism, whose fundamental strategy is to shift responsibility for the whole
to the opposite pole, the enemy. We, the people, fight for our share of the
pie, it is others who are responsible for the size of the pie.
Rentocracy also
abhors measurement: rentiers do not need to measure the world;
producers do. Rentiers will haggle. Producers will plan inputs and outputs and
will try to maximize the margin between the two. The rentocratic state behaves
like the rentier. It bargains constantly with various groups, and always gives
a little more than it started out to. It is not constrained by an absolute
limit for expenditure. It ends up invariably in deficit, which had not been
planned.
Beyond fiscal numbers,
society in general does not demand measurements, either for pollution, or for
the quality of hospital care, or for the impact of policing on crime. There is
no pressure on public services to count and to evaluate. That is how we get to
‘Greek statistics’, long before anybody intentionally tampers with the numbers.
[SLIDE 10]
On to culture.A lot of
talk in Europe and in Greece is about the mentality of Greeks, which is somehow
different from most western people, and which lies at the root of behaviors
such as corruption or excessive consumption. I think there is truth in this,
but not in ways that are usually discussed. I disagree that Greeks are lazier
than others. And I disagree that our economic culture is in some sense a
vestige from the past, i.e. that we have not embraced modern rationality. I
think that a fundamental aspect of our economic culture is opportunism, and
this is a rational and modern trait, albeit short-sighted. I refer to
opportunism in the game-theoretic sense: a tendency to break rules, or to
defect, if that will lead to tangible short-term gain.
We are society of low
trust and of low social capital; this is borne out by several cross-country
surveys, such as the World Values Survey. It is also common experience, when
you do business: in venture capital, in which I’ve worked, trust and
cooperation between founders and investors is a major problem. Many deals have
failed because the parties had different agendas. I have compared notes with
colleagues from northern Europe, and there are a lot of things that they can
take for granted, which we in Greece could not – starting from basic reporting
of facts and numbers.
I have often asked
myself, why this difference? My tentative explanation is that over several
centuries Greeks missed out on two fundamental processes that can foster
cooperation among strangers. One lies in the domain of anthropology: the
process by which the Western person has internalized, or “individualized”, the
rules of society. The Catholic Church and later the Protestant movements have
been instrumental in this. The Greek Orthodox church, with its emphasis on the
mystic and the hereafter, took a different route.
The second process
lies in politics and economics, and it has to do with building and reproducing
hierarchies, which impose rules from above. In the West, feudalism, monarchy
and the Catholic Church interacted to create the absolutist state which was mandated
to rule and guide society. The bourgeoisie inherited this state and reinforced
its role of societal guidance. In parallel, during the industrial revolution
large business hierarchies were developed, which assigned stable positions to
workers and clerks. Such things did not happen in Greece: we overthrew the
Ottoman state rather than developing it, and we resisted economic hierarchies.
In other words,
advanced western economies were founded not only on free markets and individual
incentives. They were founded on hierarchies (vertical rules) and on strategies
of cooperation (horizontal rules). Successful and hegemonic capitalism is free
markets embedded in a society of rules and responsibility. Otherwise, it is
either a jungle, or a community of corner shops. We Greeks have subscribed
neither to vertical nor to horizontal rules. We are neither obedient nor
cooperative. If we have avoided the jungle, Russia style, is because we have
kept the corner shops.
So we may not be good
at governing the commons, but we have developed some admirable economic
institutions for dealing with opportunism, which western technocrats find
peculiar. Take post-dated cheques, as a means of trade credit. Each
party is responsible for the counterparties they choose. Name and reputation
count. It is remarkable that no recipient of these cheques will try to cash
them before their designated dates, even though legally they could do so. If
they do, they will be effectively expelled from the market. The legal framework
that supports the system is also quite efficient and predictable, uncommonly so
for Greece. It reinforces trust among transacting parties because it carries
immediate sanctions for an issuer who cannot cover the cheque, without
involving the bureaucracy of banks as intermediaries. This is an institution of
peer-to-peer credit, which developed spontaneously from below and is based on
personal responsibility. We should be fostering such institutions, not be
thinking how to banish them.
Opportunists are not
inherently crooks. They are ‘rational egoists’. They will conform to rules if
they think it is in their interest. In an environment where most people are
cooperators and where opportunism is punished, opportunists turn into
cooperators. Greeks get can work very well within American institutions, once
they are sure that everyone else also plays by the rules. But if opportunists
are a majority, to begin with, it is very difficult for the group to converge
towards cooperative behavior. The issue here is path dependence. In this
context, I think that Greek opportunism can be turned into an asset in the
future global economy. More on that later.
[SLIDE 11]
Let us see now how
small ownership and rent appropriation combine in the big picture. To do this,
we’ll go back to the sectoral composition of the economy.
One fundamental
distinction is between tradable and non-tradable industries.
[SLIDE 12]
Here is an indicative
list. On the left are activities which by their nature cannot be provided from
afar, and are not subject, therefore, to international competition. On the
right, tradable goods and services, that compete in global markets.
[SLIDE 13]
Another distinction
has to do with size and organization. Some activities, such as public
administration or telecoms are delivered by large hierarchies with many
employees. Others, such as hairdressers, in small shops. In between there is a
whole spectrum; in furniture, one can find around the globe the whole gamut,
from one-man shops to firms with thousands of employees; the same true for accountants.
The reason I am
putting up this diagram is that each of the four quadrants operates under a
different set of constraints, institutions and regulations. I’ll talk about
that in a moment, but some numbers first.
[SLIDE 14]
This is how the labor
force was distributed in the four quadrants in 2007. If we go back to 1992, the
tradable sectors accounted for about 38% of all employment; in 2007 that had
dropped by 13 points to 25%. These 15 years saw a massive shift of resources from
the right hand to the left hand column. Now a shift to non-tradables is a
common pattern in most post-industrial economies, but there are different
routes by which this happens. In Greece the shift was excessive, as witnessed
in the very high and persistent trade deficits, over many years. The trade
deficit was financed by government borrowing. This created excessive domestic
demand, which tilted the balance to nontradables.
But, and this is very
important, the effects of politics went far beyond an excess of demand. By
regulation and by rent creation, they shaped an institutional framework that
encouraged people and firms to move away from anything that was exposed to
global competition, to the cozy world of lifetime employment and protected
professions.
Take the upper left
hand, i.e. the organized, hierarchical, non-tradable group. Government, banks
(retail banks), telecoms, public works contractors. Here competitive pressures
are negligible, and employment protection has been high. Most Greek labor legislation,
as well as pensions and social benefits, were shaped by the corporatist
bargains and constraints within this quadrant; these then spilled over to the
rest of the economy, where they were neither viable nor enforceable.
The bottom left
quadrant is the domain of the self-employed professional and of the family
shop. Many of the activities here were regulated in ways which restrict
competition, and/or were supported with generous pension schemes; especially
the white collar, university-degree trades (lawyers, pharmacists, engineers).
Others grew without special protection, on the basis of family strategies of
upward mobility. There are tens of thousands of excess doctors, teachers, etc,
either active or in-waiting. To survive, doctors have created excess demand for
their trade, and teachers or nurses have exploited the weakness of public
services to set up complementary private services. Having provided an
alternative, they have also lifted the pressure for public services to improve.
Others had no special privileges (building tradesmen, restaurant owners,
shopkeepers), but they were able to remain independent because of the
institutional bias against large companies; and they were able to make a
living, because of the demand generated by the twin deficits.
The picture is very
different in the tradable industries. Here the state cannot provide much
protection or rents to businesses. This is forbidden by the rules of the EU and
the World Trade Organization.
In the bottom right
hand quadrant there are about one million jobs. About half are in agriculture,
about 30% are in manufacturing, and the rest are in services. In so-called
‘manufacturing’ most of the jobs are in workshops: bakeries, carpenters and
ironmongers, seamstresses. In services, they are in tourism.
Institutional protection is limited. It has been substantial for parts of the
agricultural sector, via the Common Agricultural Policy, i.e. for farmers who
grow wheat or cotton in central and northern Greece; but not for producers of
fruit and vegetables. Most of the quadrant survives on a mix of skill, hard
work, and by the weak protection afforded by distance from the efficient large
competitor. Tourism and many of the farms also rely on natural advantage.
These are
entrepreneurial occupations. They have to respond to changes in technology and
competition, they are directly affected by globalization, they do not turn to
the state for subsidies and regulation, they must manage cash flow, and in some
cases they also hire and fire. At the same time, they have lower social status
than the protected professions in nontradable lower quadrant.
One factor in survival
is low compliance to regulation. But low compliance has a price: they must keep
below the radar by keeping small. The transition from self-employment to being
an employer is especially tricky: if they can hire without paying all the
non-wage costs, it can be profitable; if they abide by all the rules, it may
not be. For these businesses, the large influx of immigrants since 1990 has
been a bonanza.
Finally there is the
quadrant of organized, sizeable companies that compete in the world market. As
you can see, it is minute. 2.5% of total employment, by the official definition
of a big company of 250 employees or more. Even if we stretch that definition
to include all firms with more than 20 employees, the quadrant is just 6.5%.
To make a long story
very short, this is because regulation spills over from the cosseted large
nontradable quadrant to this one, which has to compete against foreigners. And
because small firms have an informal advantage in being able not to comply with
regulation. And because there is a general ideological and institutional bias
against capitalist production. And because salaries in the public sector grew
much faster than the private competitive sector could afford. In summary, the
most attractive career paths, the better business opportunities and the highest
margins were all in the non-tradables.
Steady growth can only
resume if there is a large shift of resources back to tradables, into new
viable competitive businesses. In terms of jobs this shift may have to be about
15% of total employment. That is, 750 thousand people will have to move into
different activities from where they were in 2008.
[SLIDE 15]
How can this be done?
This complicated diagram illustrates the various paths by which new jobs may be
created. The arrows on top pointing down are foreign direct investment, the one
on the top right pointing up is growth by large domestic firms, and so on.
The point of drawing
these paths is the following: each of the arrows reflects a specific type of
shift of resources, which involves different types of actor, different policies
and different human consequences. This one, (upper right hand) for example, is
about existing firms that have excess capacity because of the downturn, and can
easily expand their business if demand picks up; or if, by devaluation, they
gain a cost advantage. In a good scenario, they may also invest in additional
plant. Here, the business model exists, and so does the management team. They
will just hire more employees, who will move easily into jobs that are waiting
for them.
This transition (lower
middle) however, from a small nontradable business into a new tradable one,
involves people risking a move into a new job that they will have to create
from scratch. It involves, for example, a doctor who has spent a dozen years
becoming qualified now deciding to start a small export business. There will be
a sense of failure, of dislocation, of great risk before and during that move.
It is not just a change of jobs, it is a change of identity.
Policy makers and
economists tend to focus on the paths with the red arrows, i.e. on foreign
direct investment and on the expansion of existing, sizeable players. My view
is that in the case of Greece these can have very limited impact. It is the
green arrows that we should be trying to encourage, by any means possible. That
is, the rapid creation and growth of tradable micro-businesses. This is not a
standard model of export-led growth, but then Greece is not a standard economy
in this respect. We will have to invent a model based on wide ownership,
polyergy and the small scale. This is where our institutional comparative
advantage lies.
[SLIDE 16]
So, going back to the
broad analysis, what must we keep, and what must we change?
The small scale is, I
believe, exogenous; a constraint. Of course, we should have an environment
which enables small firms to grow into big ones, and we should do this mostly
by leveling the playing field of compliance. But it is mainly the outlook and
the strategy of the small firms themselves that should change. Can they
transform their offering? Can they become more competitive?
Families have important
assets in trying to build new businesses: Ownership, and experience with
multi-tasking, and investment in education. So there is a solid foundation
there. Bureaucracy and regulation are big barriers today, but governments can
remove these if they decide to do so. This can mean real cost savings quickly.
What about rents in
the non-tradable economy, which distort incentives for entrepreneurs, and which
impose heavy costs on everybody? This is where the crisis becomes an
opportunity. Fiscal constraints are making it very difficult for the state to
continue to award incomes to special groups. Those rents that have a direct
fiscal cost are already being cut. Those that derive from regulation, such as
closed professions, could survive in the crisis, of course. The troika is
pressing to remove them, and there seems to be majority of public opinion for
liberalization. But change is by no means certain, and the political struggle
around this will continue.
What if Greece were to
quit the eurozone, how would this affect the shift to tradables? Economists who
are not very familiar with the Greek situation, often say that it would be a
great help. In terms the immediate impact on relative unit costs, this is true
of course. But for this to lead to a sustained growth of exports other things
must happen as well. Entrepreneurial energy and capital must flow into new
businesses in the uncertain world of global competition. This will not happen
if the state is able to print money and to run deficits that will continue to
finance cozy privileges. So, as the eurozone is at last starting to impose some
sort of order on the Greek rentocratic system, exit would give a second wind to
it. Rents are the main reason why we should avoid the drachma.
Finally, on
opportunism.
[SLIDE 17]
At the start of my
talk, I defended the need to understand the local. To end, I will offer some
thoughts on how this particular local may help us think about the global. Greek
opportunism, I believe, is the normal behaviour of the homo economicus, the
‘rational egoist’; the opportunist defects in the absence of strong enforcement
of rules. In many other western societies, people are not rational egoists,
they are more cooperative by pre-disposition. They are, in the words of Elinor
Ostrom, “conditional cooperators”. But the foundations of that predisposition
may be eroding. In postmodern societies collectivities become fluid, identities
are shifting, uncertainty is increasing, along with individual choice. It is
the world of Ulrich Beck's do-it-yourself biographies, and of Richard Sennet's
culture of the new capitalism. Hierarchies are losing their control over the
self-interest of the individual and internalized rules of cooperation are
dissolving. If this is so, then Greek opportunism may be a glimpse of the
future of the West.
Will this be a
dystopic future? Maybe yes, maybe no. It will pay to observe how Greeks, who
did manage to build a good life in the past 30 years, will cope with this
crisis. The news is not all bad. Hardship has brought anger and conflict. But
it has also brought out new civic initiatives, as people realise that the
paternalistic state cannot deliver anymore.
Teachers stay on after
school, to help pupils in need, voluntarily. Guerilla gardeners are cleaning up
the cities. Farmers are forming new cooperatives. These are not mass movements,
but they do show how individuals are rediscovering the benefits, and even the
pleasures, of solidarity under pressure.
On another level,
global markets and technology are creating a new framework for stable
cooperation among opportunists. The web and social media, common standards, and
workflow management tools, render each person’s contribution transparent,
and can make much of hierarchy redundant. Individuals or small teams can have a
global presence and global reputation. A lone programmer is now able sell her
services all over the world. For the first time in history, goods can be
produced collectively and responsibility apportioned individually. These are
tools of cooperation for opportunists. Beyond business, they can leverage small
amounts of voluntary work into major contributions to collective welfare (as in
Wikipedia), and can allow the maintenance of some collective goods without
asking for big personal sacrifices. Could it be that Greek individualism can
now find a creative role in the world economy?
It can happen; but to
build a whole new national economy around such small scale endeavors, there
will have to be a connecting tissue: institutions that support the individuals,
and most importantly, a new public narrative. Greece will be a testing ground
for shaping a new narrative out of the rubble of a failed model.
What could be the
building blocks for that? Perhaps it will be common role models. Perhaps
clusters of similar businesses, and networks of peer-to-peer learning. Perhaps
it will be public services with equal access for all at a good minimum
standard. Perhaps a new respect for the commons, based on information and
transparency and individual responsibility. Perhaps new models of local
democracy. I believe and hope that it will be most or all of these. But I
may be very wrong.
So, watch this space
and find out.
So, watch this space and find out.
0 σχόλια:
Post a Comment