The Changing Caribbean Business Environment: Implications for Caribbean Business Enterprises

• Author: Courtney Blackman
• Pages: 340-348

THE PRACTICE OF ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT

340

Your generation is living in probably the most rapidly changing

and turbulent period in human history, brought about by

revolutionary developments in computers and telecommunications

which have made possible the processing, storage and

instantaneous transmission of information across national borders,

and rendering distance almost unimportant in the conduct of

multinational corporate operations. Indeed, Walter Wriston coined

the term ‘borderless economy’1 and Frances Cairncross spoke of ‘The

Death of Distance’2 — as we are now demonstrating in this distance

learning exercise.

Simultaneously, we have seen the rebirth of the ‘free market’

ideology that lay dormant during the three decades following

World War II when the doctrines of John Maynard Keynes

prevailed. ‘Free market’ economists believe that economic

outcomes should be determined almost entirely by the operations

of the ‘free market’, and that government should involve itself as

little as possible in economic activities. Keynes had argued that it

was sometimes essentialfor government to intervene into product

and financial markets in order to maintain stability and full

employment in capitalist-type economies.3

Market fundamentalism is currently in the ascendancy, with

‘free market’ economists now holding the highest positions in

the universities and ministries of finance of advanced industrial

18

THE CHANGING CARIBBEAN

BUSINESS ENVIRONMENT

IMPLICATIONSFOR CARIBBEAN BUSINESS ENTERPRISES