I doubt if resident politico-socio-economic “expert” Abe Margallo has had the experience of going out for the night to pick up chicks. Because if he did, he’d probably appreciate the notion that you don’t get the good ones by using lines like “please hang out with me ma’am, it’s for a good cause”, or “please have a drink with me, ‘coz I’m feelin’ really lonely tonight”.

Pick-up lines like any tool applied to mating, offer the best results when wielded in a way that broadcasts the heritable or acquired fitness properties of the flirter to the flirtee. An effective pick-up line is likely to reveal some underlying wit or strength of character that comes across — on the first impression — as sexually attractive to one’s prospect in a joint crowded by equally savvy competition.

As such, I find quite disturbing the sorts of appeals some of our “experts” make to our esteemed industrialists and capitalists for a bigger chunk of their hard-earned money to be channeled back into the domestic economy.

After reading a lengthy copied-and-pasted “on-line exchange between a UP-based community leader, a tsinay activist posting from New Zealand and [Mr. Abe Margallo] that took place about a decade ago” here I can assure everyone that the following snippet pretty much encapsulates our esteemed “expert”’s view on the matter of Big Bad Business’s role in “national development”:

What would have happened if about three decades ago the Yuchengco group of companies took the risk of competing in the electronics and semi-conductor industry instead of, say, buying up just another rent-seeking enterprise, or the Lopez, Aboitiz and Lucio Tan conglomerates together ventured into shipbuilding? Such productive enterprises would have been too adventuristic but where fortunate and successful, won’t they have hastened economic growth and other value-added benefits, driving industrial development in the country and providing fuller employments, possibly greater distributive justice and material prerequisites for civic responsibilities, and other socio-economic advantages to a good portion of the citizenry?

If we remove all the poetic fat from the above blurb we will find that Margallo lists the following “favourable” outcomes in the hypothetical scenario of the Yuchengcos’ “[taking] the risk of competing in the electronics and semi-conductor industry instead of, say, buying up just another rent-seeking enterprise”:

- hastened economic growth and other value-added benefits [to society];

- driving industrial development in the country;

- providing fuller employments [sic];

- greater distributive justice

- other socio-economic advantages to a good portion of the citizenry

Favourable for who exactly? I’ll tell you:

A bunch of people who’ve pinned all hopes for a prosperous future on the altruism of the resource-rich.

Loser mentality, to put a bit of elegant simplicity to the concept.

All the above reads out like the kind of platitudes you’d expect to hear from a hapless candidate in the usually laughable interview portion of a beauty pageant — well to be fair, beauty pageant contestants, and Governments worth their salt. But by no stretch of the imagination would you be able to find a capitalist or a cashed-up investor looking to invest in shares who would be even remotely amused by a prospectus or business plan that lists any of the above items amongst its key business objectives.

A business enterprise can profit mightily in an impoverished war zone or a society of starstruck ignoramuses as much as one could in a stable prosperous society of highly-educated, creative, and productive citizens. Why else would major Western European, North American, and Northeast Asian enterprises be allocating precious capital to mount money-sniffing safaris in sub-Saharan, Middle Eastern, and South/Southeast Asian basketcases if “social justice” were such a conducive factor to making money?

In its decision to put its capital at risk in, say, a basketcase like the Philippines, a business’s getting involved “directly in the politics of the nation” is as much an investment decision as, say, choosing the right Mercedes Benz model to include in the expat package for the executives it will field there. The prospect of manufacturing two-dollar tennis balls in a country where workers are paid $4 a day is worth the trouble of getting involved in the politics as much as it is worth the generous perks it will be providing its top honchos there (in an effort to mitigate the misery of their two- to three-year tour of duty). But doing so on the part of a Taipan would not in any way be motivated by Margallo’s list of “favourable outcomes”.

Yet Margallo carries on along the same lines of thinking …

Thus when “Big Business has refused to reinvest substantially” or, as Bocchi [whom he quotes earlier] puts it, when politically-connected economic elites and corporate conglomerates in the Philippines find it convenient to not invest or invest only a portion of its revenues in-country, while sending considerable portions offshore, [...]

Note the words I set in boldface.

Abe seems to be implying that business’s decisions to invest are based on some kind of social obligation metric underpinned by some kind of moral responsibility expected of our business captains.

Here’s a reality check though. To the latter, he adds a “warning” that…

[...] the consequence is slower economic growth in the country and less inclusive than it could potentially be.

… with my shareholder hat on I’d say this:

So what?

Would you invest your hard-earned cash in a company whose decisions to allocate capital are based on a fetish for sorry-arse appeals-to-altruism?

The onus to address the failure of Abe’s position to pass the So-What Test rests on Government. Government’s role is to regulate, stimulate, and induce; in effect, counter-balance shareholder greed. Put on your shareholder’s hat, and you are motivated by cold returns on your investment. Put on a regulatory hat, and you are motivated ideally by a warm social agenda.

If Abe was describing Government’s role in the chronic failure-to-launch syndrome that grips the Philippines, then I can agree with that to some extent. But the above excerpt which he quoted (presumably to emphasise his point), says something different.

Having decided that Big Bad Business had failed to own up to its “responsibilities” to uplift the lives of our hapless lot, Margallo then proceeds to pitch the mediocre output of Filipinos as outstanding and admirable “achievements” that one can be “proud” of.

Why, for example, …

[...] does the Philippine economy, while not taking off, manage to chug along somehow? Well, it is because of the extra hard work of non-elites or “the poor masses.”

Right. Blame the Taipans for not sharing their hard-earned money and then in the same breath put the “victimised” masses on a pedestal for churning out world-class mediocrity.

I’d rather state the quaint issue of our chronic impoverishment this way, Mr. “expert”:

We expect heroic efforts from the few and continued mediocrity from the majority. We expect the low product of the majority to be subsidised by the execptional output of the minority.

It’s simple, really™, Mr. Abe.

- Job creation is NOT a business objective. So don’t go around waving this flag at prospective investors.

- If capital is not parked in the Philippines, it means that there is something about the Philippines that is not attractive to capital. It’s nothing personal.

Some people who cannot rely on any wit or gift for gab on their part get a bit of plastic surgery done to increase their chances of getting laid.

Maybe the Philippines should be a bit more open to more creative options.

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