(^456) THE WEALTH AND POVERTY OF NATIONS
not this and that enterprise, but the whole industry.* Sometimes, hav
ing learned their lesson, the last members of the branch move away,
generally to cheaper labor; that is smart, but also easy, and is evidence
of rationality more than enterprise. And sometimes, as in Britain and
in Holland earlier, entrepreneurs retire to a life of interest, dividends,
rents, and ease. That is also evidence of rationality more than enter
prise. One can understand the choice: enterprise is strenuous and risky;
who needs it?
- Does entrepreneurship matter? Some would argue that it does,
but that it is dependent on growth. By this reasoning, Britain's spirit
of enterprise suffered for want of opportunity and expansion. "Be
cause [Britain] already had a large industrial plant which in many
branches was adequate to the demands made upon it in the '80's and
'90's, the incentive to install new capacity and the opportunity of try
ing out new methods were circumscribed."^36 So we have change in
slow motion: why rush to put in electrical lines if one already has an ex
cellent supply of gas lighting? (Answer: Electricity is better and safer,
if less romantic; also much more versatile.) Especially if municipal au
thorities have sunk large sums into gas production and distribution.^37
(More related costs and vested interests.)
But Britain was not the only market for British industry. It sent
much of its output abroad, as we have seen, and foreign demand with
concomitant growth was there for the swifter and smarter, in sum for
all. As one student of the British retreat in Asia put it: "There was
nothing inevitable, for example, in the fact that Britain's share of im
ports into Hong Kong and Singapore fell between 1960 and 1980
from 11.3% to 4.9% and from 8.9% to 3.0%, while Japan's share of
imports into those two economies rose from 16.1% to 23% and from
7.3% to 18.8%. Japanese business provided what those two fast-
growing economies required; British business did not."^38
"Nothing inevitable," then; and yet one could think of enterprises,
- In the aftermath of World War II, British shipyards made over half the gross ton
nage produced in the world—1.3 million tons in 1950. These were admittedly ex
ceptional circumstances, for almost all potential competitors had been knocked out by
war. Over the following quarter century, a period that saw the introduction of radically
new ship types (giant tankers, for example) and rapid growth of the industry, British
output stood still, and then in a dozen years (1975-87) plunged 96 percent. Wipe-out.
E. Lorenz, Economic Decline in Britain, ch. 4, while pointing to protectionist policies
and subsidies abroad, notes "the failure of British builders to benefit from... high
throughput technology" and better methods of work organization, the latter due to
"lack of trust between labour and management" (pp. 90-91). See also D. Thomas,
"Shipbuilding," in Williams, et al., Why Are the British Bad?, pp. 179-216.