Do Cities Still Matter? The Economic Strength of Cities and the Economic Failure of Globalism in Promoting Regional Technological Innovation and Economic Prosperity

Abstract

There are four areas of conflict of interest between the goals of democratically elected representatives in promoting regional technological innovation, and the goals of the senior managers of global corporations. These four conflicts involve:1. a conflict over information flows between industrial sectors;2. the openness of inter-corporate career transfers of scientific personnel between existing firms and the creation of new ventures;3. control over the path of technical change in the region;4. a conflict over whether collective decisions will be based upon the cultural/political values regarding globalist/collectivist values or the indvidualidualistic values of individual freedom and reward based upon individual merit.This paper concludes that the globalist laws and policies that were implemented in the early 1990’s disproportionately served the financial interests of global corporations to the detriment of metro regions in the United States. Those laws and policies had the effect of cutting off the flow tacit knowledge in each metro region because the policies disrupted the flows of knowledge in the regional interindustry relationships that had existed before 1992.Regional interindustry relationships are the communication pathway of technical knowledge, and without the flow of tacit knowledge, the metro regions suffered a lower rate of technological innovation, and consequently reduced rates of economic growth.What was true for economic decline in each metro region in America was true, cumulatively, for the national economy. Since the implementation of the globalist policies, the national economy has suffered two decades of reduced economic prosperity punctuated by a series of financial and economic meltdowns.The globalist laws and policies could not have been introduced and implemented in an earlier time period because the enabling technology platform of global information communication technology, (ICT), provided by the internet, did not yet exist.