Thursday, May 30, 2013

Brain drain vs gain drain

Following on from my last blog on poverty and the issues of globalisation I had a thought (lightbulb on).  I have been reading and studying Animal Farm which is an allegory for Russian history from the revolution onwards.  Its a great book and well worth revisiting (you can read it in a day easily).

One of the challenges that the early communists had was the brain drain.  With a system that is designed for the greater good one has to consider how to prevent the exodus of people who are not as concerned with the common good and would seek to exit the system to follow a more gainful existence where individual rewards would be greater.  To prevent this exodus the communists had to close the borders and this is what you will see today.  The challenge for the communists is that the descent into difficulties is relatively rapid and boders must be controlled quickly if the system is to survive.  Ultimately communism in a mixed world of capitalism and communist philosophies is hard to make work.

So what about the capitalist world?  Are there any similarities?  It strikes me that the answer is yes.  Whereas the communists had to close the borders to prevent intellectual drain it appears that the capitalist position is somewhat similar except that it is now an issue of wealth drain.  Money moves to places outside of the controllable system.  Individuals and businesses are free to move taking with them the wealth of the nation.  The difficulty of course is that stopping this may be impossible.

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