“You cannot protect something by building a fence around it and thinking that this will help it survive.” Wim Wenders
In America there is a push to provide protectionist status to American positions to ensure the viability of American business as well as American jobs.
Does this idea make sense for the entrepreneur?
The Internet has provided a means of tapping into a radical new business model. This model relies on the ability of a business to reach beyond the borders of their town, county, state, region and country. The Internet is proving there’s a large, but shrinking global economy.
Where once it was only society’s elite that made international purchases it’s now commonplace to find international stores that make items available to a much larger segment of the buying public.
For instance if you were to visit New Zealand and discovered the Whittaker’s Peanut Slab and fell in love with the taste and texture of the candy bar you could go online and have the product delivered to your door. If you discovered a European clock design you liked you could also go online and conduct a search for the product that could also be delivered to your home.
When you take about protectionism you often find you bolster certain existing businesses while restraining burgeoning entrepreneurs from being able to effectively create a new market.
On a global scale, the moments where protectionism made an appearance on the world stage industry discovered that it actually retarded growth and in many cases caused a severe economic depression.
“Protectionism will do little to create jobs and if foreigners retaliate, we will surely lose jobs.” – Alan Greenspan
It is safe to say that there is a global shift away from certain industry techniques. Tech industries are emerging as a powerful force in a global economy. Large retailers are capitalizing on the change in consumer demand by bolstering their in store offerings of electronic goods and services.
The media industry is rethinking how it distributes the material it provides. For instance radio is gaining a stronger presence by providing audio streams of their terrestrial broadcasts online. Newspapers are finding they must make an edition of their publication available online as, “Only 38% of people reported reading the print edition of the newspaper.” the day prior to a 2006 survey conducted by the Pew Research Center. This statistic indicates a 12% drop in newspaper reading among American adults in the past decade. It would seem that the internet is being used as a primary source for information which can benefit both readers and print media sources if they understand the dynamics of a broad internet based audience and how to tap into advertisers to help pay for this shift in distribution methods.
In short, protectionism may be well intentioned, but it only serves to atrophy the creative muscle of the most successful entrepreneurs.
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