Software Club 210: Light Red/Club_Software_210_Light_Red_Micro_Star_1997.iso/sba/f131.sbe

Text File | 1997-01-01 | 38KB | 774 lines

@800 CHAP 9

        ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────┐
        │   EMERGING ECONOMIC TRENDS AND LEGAL ISSUES   │
        └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘

All businesses today, of every size and type, are being
buffeted by the ever-accelerating rate of change in the
business, economic, social and political environment in
which they must operate.  Part of the reason, of course, is
a hyperthyroid Congress, along with 50 equally overzealous
state legislatures and countless government agencies who
spew out reams of new laws and regulations all year long,
in ever greater volume....Which you, as a business person,
are expected to understand and apply--not to mention simply
knowing about the new laws' EXISTENCE.

While we update this program regularly, four times a year,
in order to keep our users as much abreast of the constant
ebb and flow of tax, legal and other changes as possible,
we still find each time we revise it that large portions of
the material have already been rendered obsolete and useless
by rapidly unfolding law changes and other events that have
transpired since our last update three months earlier.

But we can't blame all of the disorienting changes that are
occurring on our lawmakers, because it seems that life in
general on this small planet is becoming more complex and
unpredictable by the day.

Accordingly, while we possess no crystal ball, the following
section is provided to give you, as a business owner, a
brief overview of some of the developing trends in the
business environment that have already arrived, or that
appear to us to be just over the horizon.

        ┌───────────────────────────────────────────────┐
        │THE CHANGING ECONOMIC ENVIRONMENT--AS WE SEE IT│
        └───────────────────────────────────────────────┘

Changes in the global economic structure, in the wake of the
collapse of communism and the Soviet Union and the shift
toward more efficient, free-market oriented economies in
places as far apart as Poland and Argentina (not to mention
the vast changes going on in China, Mexico and many other
developing countries) are creating a world that will soon
look very different from the one we have gotten accustomed
to since 1945.  While most of us may applaud many of the
changes going on abroad, the net result seems to be the
creation of a far more competitive (and chaotic) world,
one where U.S. businesses, even relatively small ones,
are running up against increasingly intense international
competition, and where many firms that never gave a thought
to export markets before will find that they have to get
involved in doing business overseas if they wish to continue
as viable operations in the globalized economy.

Furthermore, even if your business is of a type or size
that seems to make foreign competition seem irrelevant,
you are still unlikely to completely elude its indirect
effects, such as:

      .  Low labor rates abroad that are causing the
         permanent shutdown of many large and small U.S.
         manufacturers, who can no longer meet the
         competition from Asia, Mexico and elsewhere, or
         who move their operations overseas to places
         like Indonesia or Thailand, where wages are
         lower.  This trend seems likely to continue,
         with a rippling effect throughout our economy,
         adversely affecting many of the small firms
         that either are suppliers to large U.S.
         manufacturers or whose service operations
         (restaurants, retail shops and the like) will
         be drastically affected as larger companies
         close plants and make massive, and in most cases
         permanent, layoffs of thousands of employees.
         This is a rude fact of modern life of which
         countless thousands of U.S. workers who have
         been permanently laid off from their jobs
         are already painfully aware.

      .  To survive in the coming years, small firms will
         increasingly need to streamline their operations,
         increase their flexibility (such as by using
         part-time and temporary personnel more, or outside
         contractors), become more efficient than ever,
         and, above all, increase the quality of the
         service they provide or the goods they produce.
         Firms that continue to do "business as usual" in
         the late 'Nineties are likely to go the way of
         the dinosaurs, passenger pigeons, and American
         VCR manufacturers.

      .  Becoming Internet-aware, no matter what kind of
         business you are in, is rapidly changing from
         a curiosity to a necessary fact of life.  While
         few companies are believed to be making money yet
         by selling their goods or services over the
         Internet (other that those who sell equipment or
         services for accessing the Internet), you can be
         certain that your competitors will soon be using
         the Net (if they aren't already) to get an edge,
         whether it be through extending their marketing
         effort, providing additional services to clients
         and customers, such as constantly updated price
         lists and product information, or by using the
         Net as a way of getting useful information.  We
         will very probably all be carried, kicking and
         screaming perhaps, onto the so-called "information
         Superhighway," if only for purposes of self-defense.
         Whether we like it or not, the Internet, or
         whatever global information interchange eventually
         succeeds it, is rapidly becoming a fact of business
         life.

      .  Increasing automation, both here and abroad,
         is also likely to have a dramatic effect on
         employment and competitiveness in this country
         and throughout the world, spearheaded, as usual,
         by Japan, where whole factories already operate
         all night long in virtual darkness, with no one
         there to run them but a lone night watchman and
         hordes of whirring robots quietly running up and
         down the aisles, picking up finished items and
         dropping off parts for other robots to assemble.

         Automation has been a factor in replacing blue
         collar labor for decades now, but with the recent
         and continual explosion in computing power and
         sophistication, vast numbers of middle managers
         and other white collar workers are being
         displaced.  With the advent of "expert systems"
         and "artificial intelligence" programs, which
         are still in their infancy, but rapidly coming
         into their own, it is difficult to say whose job,
         if anyone's, will be safe in a few years.  Or
         whose business, for that matter.  Anyone or
         anything may become obsolescent overnight in the
         new economic environment we are rushing into.

         While the ability to replace workers with
         computers or computer-driven machinery may be
         very attractive to the individual employer from
         a cost-savings standpoint, its societal effects
         are hard to predict, and may prove to be very
         adverse to the overall business environment,
         or at least to large segments of business that
         fail to adapt rapidly enough.  Things are moving
         so fast right now in the field of information
         processing, that it is difficult to visualize
         how the world and our own economy may look even
         5 or 6 years from now.  However, it seems clear
         that not everyone who is laid off can go to work
         flipping hamburgers at McDonald's -- and in Japan
         there are already drive-in fast food restaurants
         that have replaced the order-takers with smiling,
         friendly robots with voice-recognition capability,
         machines that take a customer's order over an
         intercom and fill it automatica