From: Jurriaan Bendien (adsl675281@TISCALI.NL)
Date: Sat Feb 18 2006 - 07:38:10 EST
In reply to Jerry: The question then is: *how is it possible that even with the wave of noteworthy mergers in recent years, there has been a decline in concentration?* And, then, the question: *is this trend towards declining concentration happening in other nations and will it reverse itself shortly?* I think to answer your question, it's necessary to look at what is being counted, but most probably the centralisation of capital has increased far more than the concentration of capital in the Marxian sense. As I mentioned, in Holland for example you have a very large number of one-person enterprises (a portion of which are just tax shelters), so then if you're counting enterprises only, you would diagnose a diffusion of capital. But the total capital assets of these small firms is typically not very significant compared to the corporations, and typically, the large corporations only get larger qua subsidiaries and capital assets owned/controlled, while at the same time, the practice of outsourcing and subcontracting specialised tasks to smaller firms is growing, both in the USA, Europe and Japan. So then you get a sort of "pyramid" of a holding, parent or investment company, its subsidiaries and associated companies, and then a supply-chain of smaller subcontracting companies. My brother-in-law designed some componentry for the new Airbus A380 (the rival of the Boeing 747), and he explained to me how the project of building the plane involved literally hundreds of subcontractors in various European countries as well as the USA. So then you have perhaps 80,000 people altogether working for many different companies involved in making parts of this plane, located in various countries (mainly France, UK, Germany, Spain, USA and China), being either directly employed, or subcontracted by Airbus (for an overview story, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus#Workforce_by_countries). Jurriaan
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