October 30, 2000 New Thinking:
A new economy lie
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October 30, 2000
A new economy lie
By Gerry McGovern
There has always been a certain innocence about the Internet. Like its New Economy cousin, the Internet has been about hope. It sang a “change is good” mantra.
On the Internet, everyone was a publisher. The small were as big as the strong. Borders and geography were collapsing. Freedom was in the wires. Information was wanting to be free. Making money was for tomorrow. Today was for making waves, for making big ideas bounce into life.
Again and again, I heard advocates of the Internet talk about how it was the ultimate exercise in democracy. That old economy government was out and new economy ultimate freedom of speech was in, dude! The myth was that the Internet was the vanguard of the new economy that was going to change everything for all of us for the better.
Nothing could be further from the truth. If you think that the Internet reflects true democracy, you’re living a big lie. The Internet is right now, at best, democracy for those who are on the Internet. The new economy is pretty good for those who are in the new economy.
There are a lot of people who are not on the Internet and not in the new economy. For many of these people the Internet is and will likely remain as remote as Mars. The right hand of the new economy may be breaking down borders with its globalizer, but its left hand is busy building economic walls between those who are in and those who are out.
Because, let’s face reality. The divide between rich and poor has never been as wide. New economy principles will make that divide wider and wider.
Let’s for a moment look at the home of the new economy: California.
According to a recent article in salon.com, “California's economy is still booming, outperforming the rest of the country by many measures since 1995. But at the same time, income inequality in California is greater and growing faster than in the rest of the country taken as a whole, and compared to almost every other state.
“In late August a San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank study reported that median family income dropped by 4 percent from 1989 to 1999, even though it rose 8 percent for the rest of the nation. "In 1998," the bank reported, "a greater number of Californians lived in poverty, a smaller number were in the middle class and a majority had family incomes below those of comparable families living outside of California." Only the top 30 percent of families outperformed the rest of the country.”
The reason for the above is simple enough. The information worker belongs to an elite group who principally employ brain over brawn. The very technology that the information worker creates automates skilled trades that more ‘working class’ people used to do. Factories become more automated and/or else move to low wage economies. Thus, in the California new economy you find people working in Taco Bell who earn less today than they earned five years ago in a computer chip factory.
Unchecked, the new economy introduces a new form of economic slavery, where the getting-richer information workers are served by the getting-poorer poor.
Gerry McGovern
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The divide between rich and poor has never been as wide. New economy principles will make that divide wider and wider.
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