I’ve known my friend Harold since high school and over the
years both of us have given a lot of thought to the problems of the Northern
Ontario economy while watching much of its traditional economic base in
resource extraction and processing slowly disappear. Harold has spent a good many years in the
economic development field and recently shared with me some partly tongue in
cheek thoughts that what most depressed rural remote economic areas need is a good Bond
Villain to pick things up.
Why? Think of some of
the most spectacular Bond Villains such as Dr. No and his underground base or
Drax and his rocket base in the jungle.
What rurally depressed economic region could say no to having their
community’s economy picked up by the fiscal stimulus of a Bond Villain
base? The typical Bond Villain base is
highly capital and labour intensive with massive material resource requirements.
A Bond Villain provides direct employment
for thousands of minions and their dependents and their multiplier effect via
their expenditure on goods and services can potentially be quite large. Moreover, much of the activity is higher end
knowledge based economic activity involving research and scientists with
important spillover effects. Indeed,
having a knowledge-intensive Bond Villain Base in your community is like having
the economic benefits of a university without all those pesky independently
minded academics mucking around. Ultimately,
the fiscal injections into the local economy can be so massive that your economic base will effectively be shaken rather than simply stirred.
Of course, what might work on a small regional scale might
be also successful on a larger stage.
One of the major roadblocks to resolving the European debt crisis is the
lack of economic growth. Imagine what
the benefits of a half dozen Bond villains sprinkled though out Spain, Italy
and Greece might be? The fiscal stimulus
provided could jump start their economies while at the same time avoiding the
obligations or requirements of having to deal with the restrictions of the IMF
or the European Central Bank. However, Greece at the moment probably perceives the IMF as its own personal Dr. No.
Of course, Bond Villains have the unfortunate tendency to
also want to destroy the planet or the human race or engage in other similarly
destructive behavior, which in the long term would tend to make the intended
effects of fiscal stimulus pointless. Indeed, this
tendency has been explored in a recent publication titled License to Fail: The
Business Mistakes of Bond Villains by Kevin Patrick Leech which makes the case
that: “IF YOU SUCCEED IN DESTROYING THE WORLD, WHO WILL BE YOUR
CUSTOMERS? In the 22 James Bond movies, the villains are often successful
entrepreneurs with dominant market positions. "License To Fail"
finally takes these entrepreneurs to task, proving that the downfall of each is
not due to the intervention of James Bond, but is actually the consequence of
bad business decisions.”I suspect that Leech's view of James Bond's effectiveness may also mean he is not a believer in activist fiscal and monetary policy.
So, Bond Villains can be the source of
successful long term fiscal stimulus provided they are allowed to work at
destroying the world but without ever being allowed to actually destroy the
world. This is of course always the
case in the Bond World as the villains are always ultimately foiled. I suppose a successful Bond Villain long-term
economic stimulus program should be akin to perpetual printing of money but
without any inflationary consequences or infinite spending without fear of
either deficits or crowding out. Such an
outcome is presently only achievable in a fictional world.
Worthwhile Canadian Initiative 
thanx sir for this useful article.
Since breaking windows causes growth in an economy with less than 100% employment, wouldn’t plans like Alec Trevelyan’s plot to destroy all the electronics in London be a good thing even if they worked?
Seriously though, aren’t Bond villain’s regional policies also failing to note Bastiat’s imperative to look both at what is seen and what is not seen? Bond villains are diverting money from profitable enterprises to non-productive (and as you note usually destructive) programmes instead. That might not be such a problem from a social stability POV if they were helping out employment in regions hurt by having a common currency with a more competitive region*, but Bond villains- like so many “job boosting” programmes- tend to involve people who would otherwise be employed and from outwith the group who are supposed to be helped e.g. scientists and high-quality assassins. Then again, given the shooting skills of some of the mercenaries employed, maybe some Bond villain employees ARE getting work that’s better than what they otherwise would get…
* Even then, isn’t there a reductio ad absurdum with regional policies, since the same arguments can be applied to towns, streets and indeed individual people? It’s a very selective form of socialism and all the more unjust for being selective. Are there arguments, for regional policies, that don’t apply to these smaller groups?
Of course like everything else, the Simpsons did this first with Sercipo, who likes German beer. Season ~5 he hires Homer to start his world conquest and Homer becomes a supervisor with overpriced Tom Landry hats. Homer’s family is bored with the perfect life so Homer quits during the Bond raid.
Dating the episdoe Homer gets the Denver Broncos instead of the Cowboys.
Great Episode
“One of the major roadblocks to resolving the European debt crisis is the lack of economic growth.”
The only “roadblock” to reducing debt is a banker’s insistence that government deficits must be funded with debt. It has nothing to do with economic growth or lack thereof. If a government wants to reduce it’s debt, it should sell equity instead.
To me, “Bond Villains” are the people who decided the government should market CSBs to unsophisticated investors at 0.5%.
Hmm… Look at how the narco economy has changed the financial landscape in Columbia if you want to test the theory. Added bonus: The narcos never wanted to destroy their local populations.
Reminded me of that scene in Austin Powers: the spy who shagged me. Dr Evil’s son Scott explains to his father they could make bigger profits by staying legal. Dr Evil replies that…. he has a reputation to keep up(?).
I forget who, but didn’t an economist suggest (many years ago) that what Canada (the world?) needed was a good war with an ally who would be careful not to destroy anything too valuable (like lives).
Drifting perilously close to political topics, isn’t the War on Terrorism a close proxy for a regional Bond Villain? Lots of capital, labour and high-knowledge resources deployed to keep us safe from vague threats. North Ontario, to bring it back to the proposed region, could suggest that it “thinks” there is a major terror cell operating in the woods. As it would be a shame to turn all of Ontario into Sudbury, the resources should be deployed to monitoring highways, ground SAR troops, spies in Thunder Bay, etc. Once this expansion stabilized, someone could say “aha – they are getting in and out via Hudson Bay!” (Which Bond Villain didn’t have a submarine?)
How is a Bond Villain different theoretically from a government program? Is it that the Villain expects a positive return and the government doesn’t?
Essntially, the race to the moon was a war against the Bond villain wothout a loss of lives. There were even tacit understanding that spacecraft were outside the boundaries of milltary action and that both side would cooperate if space crew was endangered. The International Space Station continue this role. Totally useless as far as science goes, absorbing a tremendous amount of brainpower that couls go to mischief. Would be better used in developping vaccines but national pride has to be visibly assuaged.
Pyramids and cathedral also served the same purposes.
“To me, “Bond Villains” are the people who decided the government should market CSBs to unsophisticated investors at 0.5%”
Funny, I though of the people who marketed triple-A rated(“just as good as government”) ABCP paying 7.5% to unsophisticated investors.
I think it was Ed Yardeni who called them Bond vigilantes instead of villains.