In France a surreal theater is going in which a transnational corporation (ArcelorMittal) is getting ready to dump some workers on the street, while a sinecure Minister (of industrial development) walks around the plants and calls for a nationalization, and at the same time the finance minister (who is something like an unofficial boss to the industrial minister) is trying to calm things and persuade investors that France is a good place for making business. The President stands well hidden behind the ministers and struggles to keep leftist voters while using crumbs to bribe corporations, for not closing jobs.
In fact, things are quite simple - France has privatized its market (of steel and much other markets) and is now trying to heal the consequences. If really nationalizing the factories, nothing will be achieved, because Mittal will supply the market with steel from his other plants from outside France, where he uses cheaper labor. The nationalized plants will go bankrupt, and the government will either have to save them with subsidies or will have to close them and take the negatives instead of Mittal.
The real solution is so simple. No need to nationalize the factories. They must be free and private, and in the middleware of "wild capitalism" and competition, fight each other and grow. The thing that is needed is just to re-nationalize the market, and kick out the corporate dodgers who want only to sell in Europe, but produce using cheap (or even slave) labor in China. Awesome duties and fierce officers at borders and customs to monitor and stop the smuggling. We can produce the steel by ourselves, we will have jobs and high salaries. And if Mittal wants to sell in Europe, he will have also to pay wages in Europe. Otherwise - we wish him a luck in selling his cheap steel in China in competition with even more liking the dumping manufacturers.
It is nonsense to nationalize the losses that would be the result of nationalizing a factory at closure. It is clever to nationalize the markets, and do not involve the Government in unusual activities such as management of factories ...
But Europe is too away from this wisdom, that can be called a new protectionism (or neo-protectionism). Instead in EU reigns a phenomenon which we can call "statoralism". I.e. state liberalism. The corporations are free to do whatever they want and the markets are open. The Government (i.e. taxpayers) takes the cost and negatives of the collapse of the middle class due to relocations of factories for getting cheaper labor for corporations.
Oh God, that's a greater rig even than the fascism with its corporate privileges...
Dobri
December 3rd 2012
