Today is the 40th anniversary of man’s first walk on the moon. On July 20, 1969, astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped out of the spaceship Apollo 11 and planted the American flag on the moon’s rocky face. Strange that US pop star Michael "MJ" Jackson passed away almost to the month of Armstrong’s moon walking anniversary — MJ having danced his last signature "moonwalk" to close an astronomic 40-year career.
Was "moon-walking" MJ an eerie closure to Armstrong’s historic first "dance" on the moon? (The thin atmosphere on the moon made Armstrong bounce his steps, as in a dance.) Perhaps MJ represented the tragic-comic capture of Americans in laissez-faire competition that ruled US society in the last 40 years until the present recession from the overdrive of wealth- and power-seeking. And yes, putting the first man on the moon was all about competition.
A space race froze the Cold War between the US and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR). It started in the late 1950s when the USSR launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik I, and soon after, the United States launched Explorer I, the first US satellite. Nearly 50 unmanned probes from both countries explored the lunar-earth system. The competition between the countries soon expanded to other planets, including Venus and Mars. On April 12, 1961, the Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin, in Vostok 1, became the first person to orbit the earth. The US bested this with Armstrong’s moonwalk, claiming history for the first man on the moon as American.
The first joint flight of the US and Soviet space programs in 1975 was seen as a symbol of the policy of détente (easing of tension) and the end to the space race. US and Soviet involvement in civil wars such as the Vietnam and Cambodian wars and the Libyan war had taxed economies heavily, on top of the oil crises and overheated demand that forced the US recessions in 1973-75. Two more recessions in 1980 and 1982 weakened the US economy. About this time, Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev was grappling with economic restructuring through his radical Perestroika, which allowed some sort of consultation and cooperation with the people — a deviation of style and concept from the autocratic party rule in the USSR. And then in December 1991, the Soviet Union was dissolved.
Add communist China’s slow "conversion" (after Mao Zedong’s death in 1976) of limited capitalistic competition to the interesting chopsuey of the emerging global economy — and leadership in space was soon forgotten by world powers. Instead, the development of nuclear weapons and the feared "weapons of mass destruction" became the new emotional crutches of the less economically progressive nations still caught in religious and ideological issues and trying to intimidate the unconcerned others. The new, borderless world economy has paradoxically encouraged jealous economic borders with the relentless competition for a new array of opportunities on a limited planet earth. Should some big nation think of going into space again?
Economics and its underlying principle of "management of scarce resources" has become the homogenous ideology that has transcended cultures and religions. The indifference of the oil-rich countries to the crests and troughs of economic booms and busts underlines the "scarce resource" measure of the real power of some countries over the rest of the world. The culture of greed is fed by the wealth of those who exploit others — for truly, what makes one rich is taken from another made poorer. Do we then wonder why there is so much plunder and theft, so much dishonesty and deviousness, in business and politics, permeating even social and family relationships? A chilling thought is that terrorism has become an economic weapon more than an ideological doxology to some groups unable to compete in the scramble for those elusive "scarce resources."
When liberal capitalism was not yet as pervasive over countries, much thought was given to competition laws or "anti-trust" regulations. This was to control over-expanded ownership of business and volume control of goods that thwarted fair competition among businesses and price-gouged the public. In the US, the Sherman Act of way back 1890 limited cartels and monopolies, and today still forms the basis for most anti-trust litigation by the US federal government.
However, in the course of time, anti-trust laws have relaxed, allowing monopolies as long as they do not make consumers worse off in the long run, particularly in pricing and quality. Thus Microsoft was acquitted from its 1998 anti-trust case concerning the merger of Microsoft Windows and Internet Explorer. And so other giant firms thrived in the American Nobel economist Milton Friedman’s laissez-faire of profit-justified competition. Alas, how many greedy corporate scams have happened, competing for corporate and even personal profit?
On July 30, 2002, US President George Bush signed into law the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, a response to the corporate scams that shattered America in the early years of the new millennium and to address the failure of good governance in business. Other countries followed America’s "act of contrition" and set up Corporate Governance Laws and Codes of Corporate Ethics. The world has since been looking up to corporate leaders (and governments as regulator) to temper the competition that has stretched supply-demand curves for businesses and stressed volatility in markets. Yet in 2009 the world is in a recession because of that devil, Greed.
Many might not be able to relate to the 40th anniversary of the first man walking on the moon in the face of what might not seem to have been the "giant leap forward" that Neil Armstrong predicted to come from his "one small step." But the cynics are outnumbered by believers in the innate goodness of man that will always endeavor to correct unfortunate mistakes.
Good corporate governance is again in the special consciousness of business as transparency and adequate controls are refined in new world and local accounting rules and regulations. The powers of Securities and Exchange Commissions and other regulators in many countries have been tightened, learning from the lessons of past scams and corporate crimes. In the Philippine Congress, Senator Juan Ponce Enrile filed Senate Bill 3197, also known as "The Competition Act of 2009," that will define and prohibit business cartels, monopolies, monopoly power or abuse of market power through price fixing and price discrimination, bid rigging, limitation and control of markets, agreement to limit and or control markets, and tie-in arrangements.
ahcylagan@yahoo.com
