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Friday's Phrase: "new economy" |
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Friday, 24 September 2004 |
24 September, 2004: What do you get
when you cross Rudyard Kipling’s ’Just So Stories’ and George Orwell’s
‘Animal Farm'? You get the “new economy”, O my Best Beloved…
It’s fair to suppose that when the globe first turned on its axis there
was an ‘economy’ in place. Hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers
were the wealth creators of their day. This persisted for several
thousand years until the 1990s when we happened upon the “new economy”.
The creation of a ‘new economy’ simultaneously took for granted the
existence of an ‘old economy’.
The ‘new economy’ threatened all in its path, especially the ‘old
economy’. Then the ‘old economy’ shifted its momentum into ‘new
economy’ activities. As the spotlight on the ‘new economy’ dimmed, the
‘old economy’ emerged as an engine of ‘new economy’ growth without the
risible financial management that doomed most of the ‘new paradigm’
kids (the ‘old economy’ had some skeletons in its own closet when it
came to corporate governance) on the global commerce block.
New vs. old
There followed a ding-dong battle between new and old. The new economy
was set to inherit the space vacated by the old economy and then the
new economy went bust. The old economy could scarcely afford to take
the time to chortle as it counted the proceeds and feared for its
future in stepping into the shoes of the upstarts.
The change was explicit. “New economy good, old economy better”, Orwell
would have averred. Kipling would have countered that this was “The
Butterfly that Stamped”.
Now it’s getting messy. The remnants of the ‘new economy’ can today
only be called ‘the old new economy’. The new wave of innovative
companies are maybe the ‘new new economy’ The ‘old economy’ is still
the engine of the ‘new economy’.The ‘new economy’ retains its status as
a term of derision: they thought they could change the world and then
they didn’t. The ‘old economy’ is not much better. It’s a
dot.com/smokestack hybrid which can’t quite work out why it’s still
standing,
despite the limpness of its offering.
There is not, and there was not ever, a ‘new economy’. There’s an
evolution of technologies and the economies which they underpin, which
in turn are either new, old, juvenile, adolescent, schizophrenic,
middle-aged or senile. Check out which one you are dealing with…
Jim Chalmers
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