Page 41 - Like No Business I Know

The Outsourcer’s Apprentice

power as much as the money, was overcome when I pointed out to
them that the stock options they held would balloon in value way
beyond their salaries. So I had carte blanche. Nutrienterprises Inc.
today is run by a few computers and an outsourced management
team reporting to the board of directors. Net income is up, debt is
down, the shareholders are happy, and we are billing thousands of
hours a week for the foreseeable future. Ladies and gentlemen, this is
the wave of the future.”
“Right you are, my boy.”
Robin Steele beamed. His own cut of the increase in new business
had been substantial. Knowing a good thing when he saw it, he had
enabled Tommy Vasek to rise rapidly within P&B’s hierarchy, making
sure the young man received P&B stock in large amounts when it
went public.
“What I want to do is show you the larger picture behind this one
case. Capitalism, as it developed in the twentieth century, slowly lost
its raison d’être as the economic system of the self-reliant. The Social
Darwinism which had provided capitalism with its theoretical
underpinnings was eroded slowly but steadily by the welfare state,
with its unions and subsidies and regulations and entitlements. The
robust enterprises of Karl Marx’s day were gone a century later,
hamstrung by involvement with governments increasingly driven by
protectionism. By that I mean protection of all parties: labor,
banking, industry, consumers—nobody wanted to be self-reliant any
more. Everyone wanted Big Brother’s protection, to be cushioned
against the shocks of a world racked by warfare, social upheavals and
technological revolutions. But that won’t work: we have proved that
in this country. We were headed for bankruptcy and chaos. Moral
decline was evident at all levels of society. The prescriptions of liberal
democracy and state socialism could not effect a cure.”
Vasek’s listeners shook their blow-dried heads in sympathy. Thank
God for the entrepreneurial spirit! they thought.
“No, self-reliance has to be re-established via total outsourcing. It
will be the end of self-reliance as a fiction of welfare state capitalism
and the beginning of self-reliance as a fact of the illfare state. The
state will not wither away if it is a robust parasite on the blood and
nervous system of the economy. We should all be on our own,
negotiating everything; economies of scale are for the benefit of the

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