Money Making is a Wonderful Thing

Ventured into Koh Lanta's main town today, although perhaps town is too generous a label to apply to the assembly of shops which line the place's only road. To my overactive imagination it has echoes of the wild-west settlements which sprung up around gold prospecting country in the States. This time the gold is the natural beauty of the island, and the propectors are the tourists.

Everything revolves around commerce here. This isn't a place to live, but a place to do business. Every building is festooned with advertising hoardings each reaching a little further into the street or higher into the sky than the one before. They all offer the same things, the actual number of products of services relatively small. The only differences being the marketing slant.

Do you want 'Tour Exclusives' or 'Eco-Tourism' or 'Travel Services'? They all mean the same thing. Due to the limited products and the fact the history of the place stretches back five or ten years at the most, walking through the town gives an immediate sense of deja-vu. How many internet cafes can a place support? Didn't I just walk past the Koh Lanta Travel Shop (no, that was Lanta's Shop of Travel).

There was only one bank, but unlike the old wild-west, I don't think it was subject to too many armed robberies. Also, bar brawls, gun fights at sundown, and the streets awash with the paralytically drunk were thin on the ground (actually, scratch the last one). The biggest danger came from walking in the wrong direction after a few beers and falling off the pier.

Anyway, I changed some of my traveller's checks but cocked-up the exchange-rate calculations and came out clutching enough Thai Baht to last a month rather than the week I had left before I flew to Vietnam. Maybe I would be experiencing one of those ladyboys--just to lighten my wallet and spread my wealth, as it were.

Actually this illustrates a serious point. The world has seriously bought the idea of capitalism. It's a great invention. I once saw a quote describing trade as a kind of magic which can turn raw materials into flashy things like iPods and laptop computers. Maybe that's stretching the notion a little, but I perfectly concur with the idea that it is commerce which is the driving force behind making these things available to all.

The big question, for me, is where is this ideology leading us?

John Maynard Keynes, one of the twentieth century's leading economists and one of the people best placed to understand and predict where capitalism will lead, once said:

"Capitalism is the absurd belief that the worst of men, for the worst of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all."

Perhaps I'm selectively misquoting him. I don't know. Trickle-down economics has often been trotted out as an excuse to leave the markets alone and let wealth spread of its own natural accord. It's true that in absolute terms capitalism makes us all richer. The problem is, it doesn't make us all richer at the same rate, and it is the relative wealth that divides people which is far more important than any absoulte measures (once basic thresholds of poverty are breached--still a way to go there which is why economic booms in India and China are great engines for raising standards of living).

Really, the developed nations of the world should be doing far more to understand the limitations of free-market economics. Some believe there are self-correcting mechanisms which will make everything all right in the end. I don't buy it for a second. Even if it is true over the long term, slavish adherence to the market will lead to plenty of strife on the way.

Goldman Sachs have predicted world oil production will peak in 2007. When US oil production peaked in 1973 and OPEC (Middle East dominated oil producing countries) lowered their production the world suffered a major energy crisis and prices rocketed. Unless we find another sustainable energy source this is coming again. Permanently.

My own tentative solution involves not aiming for economic growth but for economic stability. Increasing technology and mechanisation will continue. This will mean more productivity for less human labour which in turn will mean everyone can work less. Eventually we'd all have ten hour weeks with the same total economic wealth as today. Then we can all focus on our creative sides! Also bikes in towns and cities would be compulsory.

Seriously, if anyone knows any economics can they let me know why we always aim for economic growth and whether this means the entire future of the human race will involve 37.5 hour weeks and taking sickies. Not too ennobling a vision if you ask me.

So, I came out the bank, spent a few Baht on a couple of gifts for Luke and Mark as they're leaving tomorrow, and went for a beer to mull it over.

Bit off topic for a travel blog today, but travelling's there to broaden the mind too, right?