The Network Society - University of Massachusetts Amherst

344 The Network Society
2. The Singapore model is based on tax competition, i.e. “a race to
the bottom.” This has also been a dynamic model, although the
limitations and problems of competition have recently become
evident. As other countries can always reduce their tax rates
more in order to attract multinational companies, production
keeps moving to cheaper and cheaper countries. In the case of
Singapore, companies have moved, for example, to China and
India. The outlook is not good in the long run if the region has
not developed adequate local expertise and innovativeness,
exactly what has happened in the Singapore case. If a region is to
succeed in competition in the long run, it must have innovative
ability; it is not sufficient that the government takes action to
attract multinational companies. (The Singapore model is also
patronising, which is another problem: the government attempts
to control its citizens’ freedom, although the information society
cannot be creative if people do not have free access to information
and the freedom to think otherwise. This is a great paradox
also for China, which idealises the Singapore model.)
3. The third scenario, i.e. the current European combination of the
information society and the welfare state, has the danger of “the
dead hand of passivity.” According to this scenario, people keep
protecting all the industrial era structures of the welfare state,
but they do not recognise that the future of the welfare state is
only possible if the welfare state is reformed with the same kind
of innovativeness that the information economy has gone
through. In practice, passivity leads to a situation where welfare
needs to be cut back more and more and the dynamics of the
economy fades. People protect their own vested interests and
envy other people for the benefits that they get. This can also be
called the society of envy.
Fortunately, there is a fourth scenario. It is possible to combine the
welfare state and the information society also in the future if only we
have courage to revise this model appropriately. Therefore, under the
current circumstances, the welfare state is best defended by those who
speak for its reform through innovation. The fall of the welfare state
can be prevented by moving from a reactive to a proactive policy: we
should no longer focus on reacting to something that has already happened;
instead we should act beforehand and boldly lead the way.