Newspaper Page Text
J
)
Wa
PAGE 4
THE MERCER CLUSTER
JANUARY «, 1*72
THE MERCER CLUSTER
Joe Parker, Acting Editor Ed Fisher, Business Manager
The Mercer Cluster is a weekly student publication of Mercer University. The phone number is 743-
1551, extension 221. The address is Box 29, Mercer University. Office room 328 CSC. The Cluster
welcomes letters from individuals expressing their views and opinions on any subject. The letters
must be signed by author and typewritten, double spaced. Deadline for contributions is 6:00 p.m.
Monday. Names can be withheld from publication upon consent of the editor. The Cluster reserves
the right to re-edit or not to publish any letter not in good journalistic form and style. (Unsigned
editorials are the opinion of the Cluster and should not be confused with news stories. Signed columns
and cartoons are the opinions of the authors and not the Cluster. >
Apathy
Few people like to read about apathy.
The truth hurts. Fortunately it is not the
function of a newspaper to write about
what people like to read. Mercer
students are apathetic. They don't at
tend SGA meetings. They don't attend
committee meetings. They don't vote.
They don't express their opinions
constructively. They don't know the
members of the Mercer community.
They don't care.
They attend their classes. They do
their homework, They read their text
books. They complete their assign
ments. They cram for their tests. They
ihake good grades. They stay within
their structured little lives. They never
touch anything or anybody. They are
never touched.
A Mercer student's first concrete
impression of their campus was the
moderate, sophisticated voice of the
Dean of the College of Liberal Arts
saying that the purpose of a liberal
education was not to produce liberals
but to liberate.
There are some people here at Mercer
truly dedicated to this ideal. In fact
Mercer offers a greater chance for a
true education than most institutions.
This makes It an even greater shame
that more Mercerians don't take ad
vantage of It.
There is nothing wrong with good
grades unless you think they mean you
are getting a good education. There is so
much more to education.
Try a new experience. Get involved in
something.
THE CLUSTER STAFF
Acting Editor
Joe Parker
Sports Editor
Tom Robinson
Consulting Editor
Marsha Matthew*
Special Assistant to Editor
Tom GortJy
Editorial Assistant
Doris Walters
Artist
Linda Ojle
"Seadog"
John S«.*da
Feature Editor
David Jennings
Staff Writers Ann Parman. Jeff Leetun. Charles Carter, David Pearce. Alan Young. Laura Wattles,
Paul T. Bowen, Jay Merritt. Scott Eckley. Brady Siglar, Ron Middleton. Jim
McClellan, Mike
Slreetman.
Advisor
Michael Cass
BUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Business Manager
Ed Fisher
Circulation
Sandy Frost
Advisor
W.R. Johnson
Campus Colloquy
(Director of the renowned
Hudson Institute. Hermnn Kahn
is a futurist, physicist,
mathematician, and specialist
in national security affairs. An
international lecturer and
prolific writer, j
An issue which will affect the
lives of all of us during the next
few years will be the evolution
of the world economy. There
will be changes which are likely
to prove surprising, and for
Americans possibly even a little
disconcerting. The university
student of today, if he enters
business or industry, is likely to
find himself working for a new
kind of enterprise which can
play a role in the late 20th
century near-revolutionary in
its economic impact.
The center of
productive economic gravity is
beginning to shift from the U.S.
(and Soviet Union) to Europe,
Japan, Pacific Asia, and to an
increasing degree China, Latin
America and even elsewhere.
Moreover, this physical
establishment of industry in
foreign lands often retains a
foreign or multinational-often
U.S.-corporate identity. Thus
U.S. industry abroad is often
called “economic colonialism."
This is not unreasonable,
although it is not true that these
industries are “tools of the
American government,“or the
reverse, that "the American
government is a tool of these
industries," or even that there
is usually a flagrant ex
ploitation of the country where
these industries are
established.
The basic pattern that is
emerging is one in which the
multinational company
produces for home markets in
foreign subsidiaries where
production costs are lower. This
obviously is likely to increase
pressures for protection on the
part of the host countries. But it
is also likely to increase
pressures for working out
solutions to common problems.
As these companies grow in
importance in terms of their
influence on worldwide
production and in their
marketing, financial,
technological, etc. capabilities,
they should play an in
creasingly dominant role in
international economic
relations.
One major danger is, of
course, that the U-S.-the great
advocate of free trade
measures in the past two
decades-will no longer take this
position. It .is little wonder that
the U.S. has been a willing
campaigner for free trade. Our
economic advantages have
been so great over the last
three decades that-had their
really been unfettered trade-it
would have been an American
world in a much more fun
damental sense that it is or has
been. It also would have been a
much more integrated and
unified world economy.
In fact, for a number of
reasons, the free world chose to
reject this kind of in
terdependence with American
commercial dominance in favor
of creating “balanced
economies" by artificially
supportin', or protecting
national Industries. But the
major characteristic of today’s
economic world is that these
national economies in Europe
and Japan do not represent
“pieces” of global economy
based on comparative ad
vantage; they represent
potentially directly competitive
“balanced" industries serving
major markets.
The world economy is this
evolving into what one might
erfer to as a multipolar and
partially competitive economic
world where the U.S. domestic
economy is but one of several
mass economics with not too
dissimilar economic bases or
mixes. As the Japanese and
European economies, in par
ticular, increase their
productive capacities, the
possibility for major
economies, in particular, in
creases their productive
capacities, the possibility for
major economic dislocation vis-
a-vis the United States in
creases. I would argue that this
evolution also makes it in
creasingly likely that the
multipolar economic world will
eviove a new synthesis; that is,
as the chances increase for
major problems arising from
direct competition between
national or regional economies,
so do the pressures increase for
evolving a new stability based
on the shift in economic power.
And I would bet on a successful
synthesis.
Basically, I am suggesting
that the U.S., while still in a
dominating position as com
pared to other countries, is no
longer inthe unique position
where its major industries are
largely immune to serious
competition and displacement.
In this respect it is now no
different from other countries.
Presumably this need not
change anything very fun
damentally, since almost all
countries have had to be like
this. But it is a new role for the
U.S. and likely to arouse certain
fears. One is a serious tendency
towards protectionism.
I think, though, that we will
escape the kind of breakdown or
drastic slowing of world
economic expansion which
protectionism could bring
about. I am, rather, an optimist
about expansion, not because I
believe a growing world GNP is
always and necessarily good in
itself, but because the greater
part of the developing world
still badly needs ‘udustry,
goods, jobs, and the economic
benefits which we in the West
have so long enjoyed in such
astonishing abundance.
For this, it seems to me that
the multinational corporation-
for all of the troubled issues of
sovereignty and national
economic independence it
ralses-can prove a
revolutionary institution in the
late 20th century. It seems to
me the most efficient means in
the world today for transferring
capital, technology, knowledge,
and working skills to the
developing countries. For all of
our efforts these last three
decades to find the right
methods to develop the Third
World, it seems to me that the
multinational corporation has
already proved the best. Simply
by applying its own criteria of
productive advantage and
profit it can bring net economic
gain to the world.