Adapt and evolve… or die

Economics and Darwinism  have a lot in common. 

The Nurse has been keeping a weather eye on General Motors for a few years now – ensconced in clink at Her Majesty’s Pleasure - and she isn’t surprised they’ve gone belly up.  

Over the past decade GM resisted positive change on a spectacular scale. While many Americans turned to smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles, GM continued to focus on gas guzzling monsters. Perhaps they were too big to change quickly enough. Or too arrogant. Or too inflexible.  Or too short sighted.

Whatever the reasons, this is a sad day. The death of GM presents a salutory tale. To survive and thrive in the long term - just like living creatures - businesses need to stay lean, nimble and flexible. Or risk extinction.

Margaret Drabble could be writing about 2008

Without books The Nurse would go mental. She devours books. Locked up in here, they are her only glimpse into the outside world. Which she hasn’t seen for a very, very long time.

Today The Nurse is re-reading a tattered copy of an old favourite by Margaret Drabble, written in 1979 and set in the mid ’70s. Running across the following, she was staggered at the parallels with today’s economic situation:

Margaret Drabble: The Ice Age. First published 1979

“The collapse had been dramatic… What had happened to those days of easy money in the early seventies? What had happened to the boom, to all those spectacular profits? Why had all the confident experts been taken by surprise? Go for growth, had been the slogan, and everyone had gone for it. Now some were bankrupt, some were in jail… and only the biggest had survived unscathed. Casualties of the slump and recession strewed the business pages of the newspapers…. banks collapsed and shares fell to nothing.”

And a few pages on:

“Meanwhile the radio was informing him that there was to be a 25% increase in the price of gas…”   

It appears that nobody learned from the 1970s recession. Nobody learned from the recession of the ’80s either, or from the 1990s’ property crash. Unless The Nurse is missing something.

Does anyone else sense a pattern? Even The Nurse, behind bars in solitary confinement, can see that the economy is cyclical. So why’s everyone so surprised when it falls over every decade or two, regular as clockwork?

Deja vu, anyone?