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THE PANDORA PAPERS, AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE
This not the first time the world is informed of scandals like this one. And also we can be certain that it will not be the last one.
Some years ago, it was the Panama papers. Same thing.
Every time something like this happens, onlookers become misanthropists.
But as some would argue, stealing is an issue of opportunity. “Opportunity makes the thief”. It is quite interesting to see that the Crime Science Journal, back in 1976, did not consider opportunity as a cause, but 22 years later they did.
However, I do not think that is accurate. That would suggest then, than taking the “opportunity” out of the equation, would solve the issue of crime. And that has not happened. If we consider human beings as part of nature, we can then say – as one of the principles of Chaos Theory states – “Life will find its way”. Human beings – as Descartes stated in his Discourse in Method (1637) – exist because they think. And that thinking will always produce new – and more sophisticated – opportunities for criminal behavior.
It seems it is the human being who create the opportunities.
Accordingly, I would like to address this issue of Pandora papers from a quite different perspective.
Getting deep at the leaks from 14 sources, and the work of more than 600 journalists, we find a very interesting common denominator in the properties acquired by this new scheme. Practically all of them were in countries with a clear market economy: capitalism. It is clear than those countries have remained more stable, and the wealthy cadre of the world feels more “secure” in those countries.
I remember, some years ago, in a meeting in Amman, with the CEO of a private equity fund based in Jordan, and one of the top business men from Irak. When I was introduced, it was elicited that I lived in Miami, then, the gentleman from Bagdad told me very proud: “my family too!, in Coconut Grove”. He felt more secure having his family living in the USA.
Why capitalistic countries – or at least with a clear flavor of market economy – are more stable? Let us go to the roots of the economic philosophy defined in the XVIII century by Adam Smith – who actually was not an economist, but a moralist – considered as the father of economics.
Some researchers talk of Smith as the “young” and the “old” one. Being a young moralist, his ultimate purpose was deployed in the title of his most influential work: “An inquiry into the nature and causes of the Wealth of Nations”. The old Smith, however, arrived – as many others have at an old age – to the conclusion of the innate selfishness of human beings. Not few of them have become misanthropic.
And from the political philosophy, we find Thomas Hobbes, with his Leviathan, where most of the modern political systems are based. “Man is the wolf of man”.
Clearly both economic and political philosophies share a deep pessimism in the human nature. Hobbes propose a third party: Leviathan.
Capitalistic economic systems acknowledge the self-interested desires of
each human being – indeed, that is what makes the system work.
As the economist Adam Smith argued almost three centuries ago, what makes societies function successfully is each participant’s innate egoism.
This philosophical distinction in the market driven economy system can be explained with the help of the Nash Equilibrium. Using the classic “prisoner’s
dilemma,” the mathematician John Nash (Nobel Prize in Economics, 1994)
showed that it is precisely the non-cooperation of parties that results in equilibrium. The possibility of getting a reduced sentence is so strong an incentive for the prisoner that betrayal of his partner in crime – the most selfish choice – becomes his best option.
Both self-interest (economic philosophy), and the Leviathan (political philosophy) are the basis of those markets where most of the acquired properties in the Pandora Papers, were made.
The system itself promotes – and actually it is a theoretical principle of an efficient market – opportunistic behavior, just like the one observed in the Pandora Papers.
It will always exist, but for sure, it will be more sophisticated.
The utopian optimism of a world without this kind of behavior resides in people with a poor – or an absence – of a historical perspective.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Alejandro Ruelas-Gossi is a Clinical Professor of Strategy at the University of Navarra. School of Economics and Business. He served as Professor at the University of Miami Business School, and as a research professor at New York University Stern
School of Business Center of Globalization. He has consulted for a number of Fortune 500 companies including Sony, Microsoft, IBM, Boston Scientific, Abbot, Philips among others. Prior to going into academia, he was a senior executive at Cemex and Deere & Company. He also served for a number of years as the founding managing director of Orkestra, the Basque Institute of
Competitiveness, in Spain. He holds a PhD in Strategy from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and a Master of Science, in the Management of Technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology MIT.
PhD: Alejandro Ruelas-Gossi, Clinical Professor Universidad de Navarra School of Economics & Business
