Asian Godfathers

Asian Godfathers There has always been opportunity for the astute to accomplish what is known as asset farming, and the variants are as broad as domestic or native conditions provide (Studwell, 2007). The British in Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and the Dutch in Indonesia, perfected asset farming, the idea being that an entity focused on extracting and exploiting assets from a country as quickly as possible will also have no interest in sharing the wealth generated from those efforts (Studwell, 2007).

Marginalized people function as a labor force to withdraw the assets from the land or to exploit the business opportunities that can be manipulated to generate personal wealth for an elite group (Studwell, 2007). Though Americans, by and large, do not benefit from a corrupt government -- in the pure sense of the word -- business entities and private interests have succeeded in establishing networks of lobbyists and government workers that directly and indirectly confer benefits exclusive to those entities and private interests (Studwell, 2007).

One might consider this situation to be corruption by degrees and, in fact, the Obama administration with the Presidential Order of 2009 -- and a series of earlier Congressional Acts -- have attempted to cork this revolving door that compromises representation of the demos and unfairly confers benefits on select groups of powerful and wealthy entities. In past eras, notably the Golden Age, financiers and industrialists who became exceedingly wealthy with the aid of strong political machines were called robber barons (Studwell, 2007).

Though many of these wealthy industrialists and financiers did engage in extensive and generous philanthropy, they simultaneously built incomparable personal wealth (Studwell, 2007). The first industrial revolution, the second industrial revolution, and now the disruptive technological revolution creates a wealthy class of people based in the revolutionizing industries -- though there is, due to the durability of great wealth, a large degree of overlap (Studwell, 2007). Iron, textile production, and steam engine / steam technologies drove the first industrial revolution (Studwell, 2007).

The second revolution was built up around steel, electricity, chemicals, and railroads (Studwell, 2007). The disruptive technological revolution has been a product of digital innovation (Studwell, 2007). An industrial economy was established through the first industrial revolution and it has seen remarkable multiples since that time (Studwell, 2007). Each of these revolutions contributed to Gross Domestic Product as both export and import were basic to the industries (Studwell, 2007). The growth of monopolies and oligopolies established by the wealthy industrialists of prior eras changed the landscape of the free market (Studwell, 2007).

Oligopolies are vulnerable to their own members as barriers to entry are high and collusion among the members with regard to pricing and timing of supply availability are essential -- OPEC is most well-known of the oligopolies (Studwell, 2007). Monopolies are essentially the extreme expression of capitalism; where they exist, in the pure sense of the word, the free market has ceased to function (Studwell, 2007).

The notion of a free market is ideology since a market will never be completely free of some governmental intervention in the guise of taxes, price controls, restrictions that serve as barriers to entry, or anti-trust policies (Studwell, 2007). The Asian Godfathers are not so very unlike the wealthy industrialists of the Golden Age who established entire industries and hired immigrants as the supporting labor force (Studwell, 2007).

While social groups rose up in protest of the conditions that workers were subjected to, the original intent of the industrialists was to obtain maximum labor for minimum compensation (Studwell, 2007). And only through the slow and bloody establishment of labor unions did workers' rights get factored into the equation (Studwell, 2007). So it is with the Asian Godfathers. The primary difference between the Asian Godfathers and wealthy, opportunistic Americans is the level of participation in competitive export businesses (Studwell, 2007).

Studwell argues that Asian Godfathers experience most of their success in industries that are protected by their governments, which does not include exports business (Studwell, 2007). Businesses in which monopolies can be established -- like commodities, gaming, and distribution of domestic products -- are exploited through cartels protected by the government and though outright political corruption (Studwell, 2007).That said, improvements in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in Asia has largely been the result of revenue earned in export businesses (Studwell, 2007).

If this is so, then the Asian Godfathers have not contributed substantively to increased GCP in their countries, and so, in effect, they have not created wealth (Studwell, 2007). Question 2 "Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me," wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1926 short story entitled The Rich Boy.

The 1996 Forbes List of the 25 richest people in the world contains the following people from south-east Asia: Numbers 4, 6, 7, and 24 on the list live in Hong Kong; number 16 lives in the Philippines; number 17 lives in Indonesia; number 22 lives in Malaysia; and number 23 lives in Singapore (Studwell, 2007, p. 199). Certainly the Asian Godfathers have succeeded at creating personal wealth, expropriating it from the free market, the native assets, and the workers who are the foundation of their wealth-generating machinery (Studwell, 2007).

However, and this is the premise of Studwell's work, the industries and the locations in which the Asian Godfathers conduct their businesses have not been developed commensurate with the wealth expropriated by the Asian Godfathers (Studwell, 2007). The wheels of the monopolies established by the Asian Godfathers in areas such as port facilities, banking licenses, and raw materials are maintained through cronyism, nepotism, and bribery (Studwell, 2007).

Studwell argues that the Asian Godfathers reflect the their local economies rather than shaping them, in much the same way that the European and American industrialists and financiers of the Golden Age were products of the political and economic circumstances of the time and place (Studwell, 2007).

"Centralized governments that under-regulate competition (in the sense that they fail to ensure its presence) and over-regulate market access (through restrictive licensing and non-competitive tendering) guarantee that merchant capitalists -- or asset traders, to use a more pejorative term -- will rise to the top by arbitraging economic inefficiencies created by the politicians" (Studwell, 2007, p. xix). Growth in East Asia may be approaching a situation of diminishing returns as the rate at which grow has occurred --.