CONTRARY to National columnist Michael Fry portraying capitalism as the best way for mankind to conduct its affairs (This new business walked away from Scotland and more could do the same, July 23), there have been numerous examples showing capitalism as a negligent and callous practice. Unregulated free trade is every bit as likely to produce suffering as it is benefit, for the majority population. The idea that entrepreneurship is, however unintentionally, a force for the common good, is at best arguable.
READ MORE: This new business walked away from Scotland and more may do the same
While discouraging entrepreneurship is economically and socially daft, it is equally short-sighted to allow it to operate without reference to the common good.
Michael Fry seems to think that start-up innovative businesses can be strangled at birth by requirements to demonstrate some element of worth to their particular communities. Many planning applications, where relevant, are subject to such requirements, and the question arises as to why not?
Ask Nigerian farmers and subsistence fishermen as to the merits of the big oil companies being required to ensure that they safeguard the local environment during exploration, extraction, and carrying out any necessary clean-ups following their operations. Similar safeguards have too often proved to have been overlooked in such business ventures.
On how many occasions has asset-stripping been the reality, with councils feather-bedding incoming businesses only to see these same businesses depart the area to leave the communities the poorer and themselves the richer. Not to need to add that it was the communities who had financed the councils’ feather-bedding of the particular incoming businesses in the first place.
Methinks Michael Fry over-simplifies in his championing of capitalism. If he happens to travel regularly by train or merely reflect on reports as to the sorry state of this mode of public transport he might have sympathy for the trade unionists presently voicing their wishes to have it brought back into public ownership.
Capitalism is okay, in its place, like many another thing.
Perhaps we shouldn’t forget how we used to have in effect privatised government in Britain: MPs were unpaid and only those of private means could attend parliament.
Only the wealthy were even permitted to vote.
Now we have systems more deserving of the name democracy, which is another word we must be mindful of when we are minded to elevate capitalism to a status greater than its worth.
Ian Johnstone
Peterhead
AS a self-employed person who rents a rates-exempt premises, I disagree with Michael Fry’s opinion
that the Scottish Government is hostile to capitalism. He states that “there are two basic human types running the private sector of our economy” – a big red flag, queuing a sweeping generalisation and indicating a somewhat limited knowledge of the private sector economy.
Also apparent in this article is Fry’s limited understanding of macroeconomics due to his use of the “earn to spend” analogy, which has no place in the context of describing governmental spending, where the government is the monopoly issuer of its own currency, which an independent Scotland will be.
Furthermore, words and phrases such as “raising productivity”, “sustainability” and “improving our standard of living” could reside in the same sentence but it would very much depend on what people regard as “productivity”.
I’m sure many money traders in the City of London regard themselves as “productive” but others might take a different view.
It is disingenuous to make comparisons between MB, Skyscanner and Grand Theft Auto. The former proposes to use a natural resource which belongs to all of the Scottish people, whereas the latter two companies employ Scots whose brains are their raw material.
Those Scots make choices about where they choose to work but our beautiful, natural coastline relies on the Scottish people to speak for it. Hence, the need for both caution and consultation on the Scottish Government’s part, and rightly so.
I would gently suggest to Fry that his article is simply an opinion piece (to which he is entitled) but does not constitute robust evidence for his argument.
Kairin van Sweeden
Leith
AFTER a lot of soul searching i have come to the conclusion that it is now time for Scotland to become an independent nation.
Once independence is achieved i will then revert to voting Conservative to enable the “new” Scotland to deal with the immigration problem that blights the present United Kingdom.
Kelly Brown
Via email
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