One of the reasons for migration is often the search better conditions labor and employment, which for most people are inseparable from access to social security. In support of national and international efforts to protect the social security rights of all workers and their dependents, ISSA has published a Handbook on Extending Social Security Coverage for Migrant Workers, which explains why social protection for growing numbers of migrants is becoming an increasingly pressing issue. (1)
Of the more than a billion internal and international migrants, international migration accounts for over one-fourth. However, the patterns of international migration have recently undergone certain changes associated with the megatrend of the evolution of labor markets (). If earlier this movement had a global South-North direction, now migrant flows are increasingly forming in the South-South direction. However, North-North and South-North migration flows are still significant.
More than 10% of the world's population are internal migrants moving within their own countries. A significant share of them—40%—accounts for residents of Asian countries. Many countries are also experiencing significant migration flows from rural to urban areas. This trend is most clearly expressed in India and China. About half of China's urban workers come from rural areas. In 2013, in China alone, the number of migrant workers from among former peasants reached 269 million people.
On a national scale, the coverage of migrant workers with social security is extremely important for solving the strategic task of expanding the coverage of national systems social security. Given the number of migrants and their often marginal position in labor markets, such expansion of social security coverage is also necessary to promote international community towards the goal of providing at least a basic level of social security for everyone - after all, more than 70% of the world's population today lacks sufficient access to social security.
It is equally important to ensure that social security rights acquired by a contributor under one social security system are transferred to another system in the same country or abroad. “Transferability” of Social Security entitlements thus refers to the ability of participants to retain, maintain, and transfer entitlements to benefits from one Social Security program to another. In relation to external migration, this possibility is usually enshrined in the relevant bilateral or multilateral agreements.
Bilateral and multilateral agreements
The number of such agreements reportedly varies significantly by region: in 2009 in the EU and Western Europe There were 1,628 bilateral or multilateral agreements in force (including 1,034 agreements between EU countries), while there were 181 in East Asia and Pacific Ocean, three in South Asia and 102 agreements in Africa (not counting Reunion).
Examples of multilateral initiatives include the General Convention on Social Security of West African States (ECOWAS), the Central and West African Inter-African Conference on Social Security (CIPRES), the Multilateral Ibero-American Social Security Convention, the Caribbean Community Social Security Agreement (CARICOM) , Agreement MERCOSUR SIACI (Latin American countries common market); A unified law to extend insurance to citizens of Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) member states working in other GCC member states, as well as, in the Eurasian region, the Baku Declaration and Framework Document.
The absence of such agreements between migrant-sending and receiving countries discourages workers from participating in social security funds and complying fully with social security contributions. In turn, this provokes informal relations in the sphere of labor and employment. Overall, the inability to transfer social security entitlements increases the potential vulnerability of most migrant workers, both while working abroad and upon their return to their home country, due to the inability to retain earned entitlements.
Issues in public policy regarding migration
Migration creates a variety of problems for labor supplying and receiving countries. Thus, the economy of countries supplying migrants can be significantly influenced by the income of citizens received abroad: their Money transfers home countries exceed 10% of gross domestic product (GDP) in a number of countries, including Nepal and the Philippines.
Countries receiving migrants are experiencing many economic, demographic and social consequences, a number of which have a beneficial effect:
- Bringing certain professional skills and competencies that are missing or underdeveloped in the host country.
- Migrant workers are often enterprising and hardworking.
- Typically, migrant workers are age group from 20 to 39 years old; on average, they are younger than the bulk of the local population, which can contribute to its “rejuvenation”.
The challenge for policymakers in receiving countries is that influxes of migrants have been shown to reduce general level wages; in addition, they need to deal with cultural issues and social integration migrants, especially when they are concentrated in one area.
For countries of origin of migrants, especially developing countries, the exodus of a large proportion of the population with higher education creates problems for society, which is deprived of many of its best educated professionals.
The Handbook for Expanding Social Security Coverage for Migrant Workers contains data showing that over 20% of university-educated professionals aged 25 years and over from Afghanistan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Cambodia, the Republic of the Congo, and Guatemala leave for OECD countries. , New Zealand, Portugal and Vietnam, and over 40% from Barbados, Ghana, Lebanon and Liberia. More than 50% of the adult population with higher education emigrates from the Caribbean.
Social security and migrants
There are many reasons why national systems social security provisions should cover migrant workers and their dependents. In addition to the need to meet basic needs and provide social protection, the participation of these population groups in social security systems is beneficial for the systems themselves and for society as a whole:
- Social security systems provide benefits and services that help reduce the risks faced by these often vulnerable groups in the working population. The absolute reason for the coverage of such workers by social security systems is the protection of human rights.
- Increasing social security coverage promotes social cohesion, accelerates economic growth and strengthens government support for social security systems.
- Social security for migrant workers may be perceived as a fair solution by the non-migrant population (for example, workers sent to work abroad).
- Migrant workers can help improve demographic situation in the country and are often “net contributors” to the Social Security system throughout their lives.
- Coverage of migrant workers increases the effectiveness of other measures to formalize the informal sector, stimulates and supports the mobility of the employed population, and prevents the exploitation of migrant workers.
Administration of migrant welfare programs
However, the inclusion of migrant workers in social security programs can create problems for social security authorities due to characteristics of migrants such as limited work history in the host country, frequent job changes, in many cases migrants' employment in the informal sector, distance from dependents etc., which distinguishes them from most workers. Migrants are also less likely to participate in the typical employer-employee relationship that underlies most social security systems.
Box 1. Challenges in expanding coverage to migrant workers
- The number and characteristics of labor migrants are difficult to predict. Research shows that migrants tend to be the first to suffer from economic downturns, and the instability of migration flows poses management and planning challenges for social welfare authorities.
- Migrant workers are a heterogeneous group, ranging from poor and vulnerable workers in the informal sector (very often women) to highly paid, mobile professionals.
- Very often, the task of including migrants in social security programs is complicated by the high degree of their cultural and linguistic diversity.
- The distance of such workers from dependent family members prevents sufficient coverage of the migrant and his family members with social security.
- Lack of information about the personal situation of each migrant worker; this information is not always included in national databases, and migrants may not be able to turn to the same sources for help as host country nationals.
- Migrant workers often work in the informal sector and tend to accumulate less work experience. This affects their entitlement to benefits (particularly in systems with relatively high minimum length of service, i.e. length of residence or contribution requirements), their ability to transfer entitlements to benefits to their country of origin, and employer functions such as collecting and paying social security contributions.
- The administrative tasks associated with the coverage of migrant workers by social security programs are usually quite complex: they involve interaction with other services, often abroad, on the basis of bilateral and multilateral agreements, maintaining often very cumbersome systems for recording personal data and contributions of migrant workers, as well as the need to communicate in different languages.
- Due to fragmentation length of service Migrants often receive significantly smaller pension benefits than local workers. This may be due to periods of work without accrual of length of service, progressive accrual rates pension rights or failure to meet minimum length of service requirements. While some issues may be addressed in multilateral agreements, the adequacy of pension benefits remains a major concern.
- Parties to bilateral agreements are most often states with streamlined programs labor migration, potentially leading to the marginalization or exclusion of migrant workers from countries that do not have a formalized relationship with the host country. Some agreements, such as the Multilateral Ibero-American Social Security Convention signed by Spain, Portugal and 12 Latin American countries, may provide for the possibility of “exporting” benefit payments, but not the full transfer of rights.(2)
As a heterogeneous group, migrants are characterized by different possibilities for the transfer3 of social and labor rights. These include:
- persons protected by bilateral or multilateral agreements between their countries of origin and employment;
- persons who are entitled to social benefits even in the absence of bilateral agreements;
- persons who are not entitled to old-age pensions and other long-term benefits, but are entitled to non-transferable short-term benefits, such as health benefits;
- persons employed in the informal economy and with very limited access to social security in the host country.
Research shows that two thirds of registered and undocumented migrants from Africa, Asia and Latin America work in other countries without any bilateral agreements and are nevertheless entitled to a number of benefits. social benefits. Among people who came to work in countries in Europe, North America and Oceania that have concluded bilateral agreements with the countries of origin of migrants, between 48% and 65% of migrants have access to social security. Even in the absence of bilateral and multilateral agreements, approximately 35% of migrants in Europe, North America and Oceania have access to at least some social security services. Among migrants with limited rights to social security because they are undocumented or because they work in the informal economy, this figure reaches, at best, 16% in Europe and zero in North America and Oceania. (2.3)
Measures to extend social security programs to migrants
To expand the coverage of social security to domestic and international labor migrants, taking into account the above problems, it is necessary to take a number of measures related to regulation, administration, management, information exchange and organization of the return of migrants to their homeland.
Regulatory measures include:
- Extend social security programs to migrant workers by including them in the definition of “worker” in social security legislation, or by adapting benefit and contribution mechanisms accordingly. In the latter case, such measures may include lowering the eligibility criteria, relaxing length of service requirements, and simplifying the methodology for calculating contributions.
- Establishment of voluntary social security schemes for persons working abroad (as in Albania, El Salvador, India, Mexico, Sri Lanka), with benefits established on a case-by-case basis (such as pension savings, medical or travel allowances, and family allowances).
- Ensuring the protection of the rights of migrant workers, guaranteeing the rights to transfer benefits from one country to another.
- Improving the ability to transfer benefits from one social security system to another in the same country or in other countries by harmonizing the rules governing the allocation of benefits and strengthening procedures for the recognition, transfer and payment of accrued benefits, as well as ensuring the necessary coordination between the different social security organizations in for the purposes of effective resolution and administration of specific cases.
- Ensuring the adequacy of benefits for migrant workers under compulsory and voluntary social insurance systems through effective financing mechanisms and creating incentives/removing barriers for migrant workers to participate in such programs.
- The role of bilateral and multilateral agreements is especially important. They should reflect a number of key principles, including equal rights for migrant workers; the rule that social security benefits (such as old-age pensions made up of employee and/or employer contributions) must be paid from social security funds in only one country; guarantees that the rights acquired by the employee are reliably protected, and that the mechanisms and financing of benefit payments from various sources are not only spelled out in detail, but also function effectively. The success of such agreements depends on the administrative and managerial capacity of the relevant social security authorities.
Necessary administrative and management measures include:
- Working closely with stakeholders and migrant worker organizations to encourage them to participate in the social security system.
- Establishing mobile offices and simplifying procedures and entry requirements for social security programs to encourage participation.
- Impact analysis and practical implementation of bilateral and multilateral agreements, including record keeping, provision of information, establishment of settlement mechanisms and coordination with relevant agencies at home and abroad.
- Effective Application ICT for accounting, control and quantification of rights to different kinds benefits, and to facilitate interaction with other social security systems and all stakeholders.
- Measures to support the families of migrant workers, including the provision of specialized benefits and administrative assistance (for example, by issuing two certificates to migrant workers, which will allow them and their dependent spouses to receive benefits even if they are in different countries).
Information measures aimed at increasing public awareness of social security programs and migrants and public approval of these programs and labor migration in general:
- Educational activities among both migrant workers and the local population on social security issues in different languages, using the most suitable channels of information dissemination and taking into account the individual needs of the audience at different stages of working life.
Measures to organize the return of migrants to their homeland, based on the understanding that labor migration is usually a temporary phenomenon:
- Providing support to migrant workers returning home (paying for travel and facilitating the reintegration of migrant workers into social security systems and labor markets in their home country).
Social security must develop taking into account the growing economic role of labor migration
Extending the coverage of social security systems to all migrant workers poses significant challenges. However, the increasing role of migrants in the economies of countries and the vulnerability of their position in the market, especially when it comes to the informal sector, are quite convincing arguments in favor of continuing work in this direction. Globalization and the worsening environmental consequences of climate change indicate that the number of migrants will only increase.
One thing is certainly clear today: when policy initiatives begin to be supported by effective administration, significant progress will occur that will bring real benefits to migrant workers and their non-working family members, as well as to the social security systems themselves and society as a whole.
Sources
1.ISSA. 2014. Handbook on the extension of social security to migrant workers. Geneva, International Social Security Association.
2. Taha, N.; Siegmann, K. A.; Messkoub, M. 2015. "How portable is social security for migrant workers? A review of the literature", in International Social Security Review, Vol. 68, No. 1.
3.Holzmann, R.; Koettl, J.; Chernetsky, T.. 2005.Portability regimes of pension and healthcare benefits for international migrants: An analysis of issues and good practices(Social Protection Discussion Paper Series No. 0519). Washington, DC, World Bank.
11.1. Supply of economic resources
In the factor market (resource market), the roles of firms and households change in principle: households offer the resources at their disposal (labor, land, capital), and firms place demand for factors of production.
Resource market research is important for a number of reasons. Firstly, it is in this market that the monetary income of the country’s population is formed: by offering firms the resources at their disposal, households receive rewards in the form of wages, profits, interest and rent. Consequently, prices in the market for factors of production will subsequently determine the income of the population and, ultimately, the state of the market for goods and services. Secondly, prices for factors of production show how limited resources are distributed in a country, which allows them to be used in the most efficient way. Thirdly, for the firm, the purchase of resources is a production cost. By maximizing profits, a firm will always strive to reduce costs per unit of output. Accordingly, resource prices will determine in what combination factors will be used in the production of a given type of goods and services. Finally, fourthly, resource market prices, primarily wages, and issues of income distribution are the object of political struggle and are always at the center of public opinion.
At any moment in time in any country, the total supply of any factor of production - labor, land, capital - has a very specific value. Indeed, the number of hired workers, the area of cultivated land, the volume of capital resources in Russia, let’s say, in the first half of 1999 can be expressed in exact numbers. However, over time, these volumes may change significantly, due to both economic and non-economic factors. For example, economic recovery (economic factor) causes an increase in investment and an increase in the supply of capital, and drought (non-economic factor) leads to a reduction in the supply of grain, etc. Our goal is to find out how economic factors influence the supply of resources for a particular industry and firm.
Mobility of resources. A great influence on the supply of resources is exerted by their mobility, which is understood as the ability of a production factor to change the scope of its application. A resource that, under the influence of any motivating reasons, easily moves from one area of application to another is considered mobile. If a resource does not move even in the presence of serious motives, then it is considered to be immobile. The movement of resources can have a significant impact on their supply for the firm and the industry: factors of production that are highly mobile have elastic supply, i.e. their QS changes significantly with a small change in the price of the resource; accordingly, the supply of immobile factors is inelastic.
The mobility of resources is influenced by the time factor: the longer the interval under consideration, the greater the mobility of economic resources. For example, capital is usually immobile in short periods: machines, equipment, and buildings are used, as a rule, to produce a specific type of goods and services, and in a short period of time it is difficult to reconfigure them for the production of other products. During long periods time, the mobility of capital, on the contrary, is very high, and economic reasons can cause significant movements of capital from one area to another.
As for land, it has high economic mobility: the same piece of land can be used to grow potatoes, and the next year - cabbage, etc. It can be sold for development. However, a built-up plot of land is already less mobile: if a workshop is built on it, and someone wants to build a hotel on this site, then the price of this plot of land will be so significant that it will cover the costs of demolishing the workshop (otherwise, it is easier to build a hotel in another place) . Such costs for purchasing land naturally reduce its mobility.
The peculiarity of labor is that its supply is virtually always associated with the need for the physical presence of the owner of this resource - the worker - at the place of application of his production functions. For land and capital, this is not necessary: the owner of land or capital can be thousands of kilometers from the factor of production itself, but receive income for its use by other people. The mobility of labor resources is largely influenced by non-economic factors: type of work, prestige of the profession, team of colleagues, distance from place of residence, housing problems, etc. Undoubtedly, wages (resource price) are also of great importance for the movement of personnel. Other reasons also serve as a limiting factor to expanding the supply of specialists in a particular profession: the lack of ability for a given profession in some people, the need for training, etc. For example, it is difficult for a qualified 45-year-old engineer to retrain as an accountant and it is completely impossible to become a professional athlete. However, young people can do both. In a year, 3-4% of the country’s total labor force usually changes: a certain number retire, young workers come. In a short period of time, 10-15 years, society is able to almost completely repurpose the composition of its labor resources. Accordingly, the total labor resources are more mobile than an individual.
Differences in resource prices. Since the mobility of factors of production is influenced by resource prices, the question arises: what influences these prices and causes them to differ? If all units of any resource were identical, and their mobility was determined only by economic reasons, then the prices of such units of the resource would not differ from each other in any field of application. Indeed, when workers have the same qualifications and in any production there is more high salary, this will cause an expansion of the labor supply of workers in this production and will lower the level of wages (resource price) to the average level established throughout the economy. The flow of identical resources from one sector of the economy to another will continue as long as there are incentives for such movement - differences in resource prices - and will stop when prices equalize.
However, in real life there are differences in resource prices. Conventionally, they can be divided into two groups: dynamic (or nonequilibrium) and equilibrium. Dynamic differences in resource prices are observed in cases where certain industries begin to expand sharply, while others begin to contract. For example, a reduction in military orders leads to a fall in the demand of military industries both for a number of strategic resources (copper, nickel, etc.) and for specialists in relevant professions, which causes a decrease in their relative prices and wages. On the other hand, there is an intensive growth in the output of household appliances, which increases the demand of these industries for economic resources and encourages a relative increase in their prices. Dynamic differences in resource prices do not last as long and disappear when industries reach equilibrium again. How long the process of price equalization will take depends on the mobility of factors, i.e. because of how quickly economic resources can move from one industry to another.
Equilibrium differences in resource prices, as the name suggests, are observed even in cases where industries are in equilibrium. Three types of such differences can be identified, due to certain reasons:
a) internal differences inherent in the resource units themselves;
b) differences in costs associated with the acquisition of more productive units of the resource;
c) differences caused by non-monetary advantages in the use of resources.
Each of us constantly encounters equilibrium differences, since people have different inclinations towards professions, and the more talented, more skillful worker always receives more than others (the first reason). It is quite natural that if certain funds are spent on preparing a productive resource (for example, reclaimed land), then the price of a unit of such a resource will exceed the price of a less productive factor (second reason). As for non-monetary advantages, we also quite often encounter similar facts: sometimes people take a lower-paid job that suits them for other, non-monetary reasons: proximity to home, the presence of a kindergarten, the opportunity to relax at a convenient time, etc. Equilibrium differences in factor payments are not eliminated by resource transfers and may persist over the long term.
The principle of maximizing overall benefit. The fact that dynamic differences in resource prices are removable, and equilibrium ones can exist for a long time, allows us to formulate the so-called principle of maximizing total benefit. According to this principle, owners of factors of production choose a method of using their resources that ensures they receive the maximum total benefit. Total benefit refers to both monetary and non-monetary rewards and benefits. The principle of maximizing total benefit is more often interpreted as the principle of equal total benefit, which can be formulated as follows: due to the mobility of economic factors, the elimination of dynamic differences in resource prices leads to equalization of the total benefit obtained from the use of these factors in various spheres of production. In other words, all units of any resource will be distributed among their users in such a way that the owners of the factors of production receive equal total benefit, regardless of the scope of the resource. The principle of maximizing total benefit is universal and plays the same role in the theory of income distribution that the principle of profit maximization has in the theory of production of goods and services.
Although non-monetary goods have a noticeable impact on the prices of resources, primarily labor, they are not subject to significant changes over time. In this regard, the share of non-monetary benefits in the total benefit can be considered stable. Then the main reason for the change in total benefit is the monetary reward received by the owners of economic resources; this remuneration is influenced by the state of the market for factors of production. The owner of any economic resource will strive to expand the supply of his services in those industries where the payment per unit of resource is higher, since there he will receive higher profits.
So, the quantity of a resource that its owner will offer on the market for factors of production (QS resource) is determined by the total benefit received by the owner of the resource as a result of using resources in the production process. The total benefit, in turn, depends on the price of the resource, therefore, we can find the dependence of the QS of the resource on its price, i.e. determine the supply of a resource and construct its supply curve. Since an increase in the price of a production factor leads to an increase in QS, the resource supply curve has the familiar “ascending” shape. Note that changes in other factors influencing the QS of a resource (qualification, non-monetary benefits, costs of improving the quality of a resource) generally affect the supply of the resource and lead to shifts in its supply curve.
(Materials are based on: V.F. Maksimova, L.V. Goryainova. Microeconomics. Educational and methodological complex. - M.: Publishing center of the EAOI, 2008. ISBN 978-5-374-00064-1)
So far, the features of the formation of demand for economic resources have been considered. However, the market for production factors, like any other market, is characterized not only by the demand side, but also by the supply side. It is about the supply of economic resources, about its general features and we'll talk below.
Supply of factors of production- this is the quantity of them that can be represented on the resource market at each given price value. In factor markets, the demand for economic resources generates their supply, just as the demand for goods and services generates their supply. commodity markets. However, factor markets have significant differences from markets for goods and services, which is largely due to the specifics of the supply of each specific factor of production.
Analyzing the situation in factor markets, it can be stated that general features the supply of economic resources stems from the postulate about the rarity and limitation of factors of production involved in human economic activity - both primary (land, capital, labor, entrepreneurial ability) and factors of production derived from them.
The supply schedule of an economic resource will have a positive slope. The main factor determining the volume of supply of a resource is its price, which for the owner of an economic resource will reflect the amount of income on the factors of production belonging to him. Consequently, an increase in prices for an economic resource (with rare exceptions) will cause an expansion in the volume of its supply. However, the market supply curve for any rare and limited resource, S R , is likely to rise smoothly at first, and subsequently increase in steepness.
Let me explain. Let's say the use of some rare natural resource will require, in connection with the growing volumes of production of finished products, the attraction of more and more of this resource. As production volumes grow, production costs usually increase, because from some point in time, expansion of output volumes will lead to the need to use less and less productive units of a given resource, up to its complete use in the country (now the possibility of expanding the supply of resources due to their import from abroad);
The steepness of the slope of the graph of the market supply of a limited resource to the x-axis will increase as we move towards the border of full use of the factor. And this is largely due to the law of scarcity and limited resources.
Mobility of factors of production– this is their ability to change the scope of their application. The mobility of economic resources largely determines the characteristics of the distribution of production factors between industries and firms. A factor of production will be mobile if it easily moves from one area of use to another under the influence of any incentive reasons. A production factor will be classified as immobile if, under the influence of very significant incentives (and the main one is the opportunity to obtain higher income for a given economic resource), it cannot be moved and redistributed between industries and firms. The supply of highly mobile factors of production is more elastic than the supply of services of immobile factors.
The mobility of production factors is related to the time factor. In the long term, a factor that does not have the ability to move over short time intervals can acquire mobility. Let us assume that in the short term the mobility of such a factor of production as capital (machines, equipment, buildings, usually oriented towards the production of specific products),
completely insignificant. But in the long term, when there is at least the possibility of reconfiguring production to produce other products, the mobility of capital is very high, which can cause significant flows from one area to another and increase the degree of elasticity of its supply.
No less important and certainly a much more fundamental part of the influence of modern information technologies to international competition, the change in the most important resources of social development caused by their spread should be recognized.Fundamentally significant is the self-evident fact, but not sufficiently comprehended by modern researchers, that in the new, informational, post-industrial world, the most important resources of social development cease to be tied to a specific territory and become mobile.
The main resource for development, which until recently was a space with people and production relatively firmly fixed on it, is becoming relatively mobile, thanks to the dominance of information technology and democratic standards, finance and intelligence, easily flowing from territory to territory. It is for this reason that the development of information technologies and the globalization they cause mean the death of the “teaching of living space” - geopolitics.
Due to these changes, traditional for Russian history the call to the “new Varangians” from developed countries to “come and rule” in the 90s of the twentieth century no longer had the generally positive meaning that it may have contained at the dawn of Russian history.
Since new key development resources no longer have an unambiguous territorial “reference,” today the effective development of almost any territory by the most advanced, informatized society no longer consists in the improvement and development of the society located on it. On the contrary: a change in development resources dictates a radical change in the nature of development. Today, it increasingly consists of isolation within the society being developed, with the subsequent removal from it of the main part of healthy and progressive elements, that is, people who are bearers of finance and intelligence.
With such development, the progress of a more developed, “mastering” society largely occurs due to the increasing degradation of the “developed” one, and the scale of degradation of the destroyed society and the loss of its culture, as is usually the case with “development through destruction”, significantly exceeds the gain in culture and progress of a more developed society.
This development of the era of globalization is fundamentally different from the “good old” colonialism - both traditional, based on direct political domination (most widespread before the Second World War), and neo-colonialism, based on economic domination while granting formal political independence (developed after the Second World War in as a result of the weakening of traditional colonial powers and the qualitative strengthening of the USA and the USSR).
A colonial power, even interested only in the development of subsoil, is inevitably drawn into the comprehensive development of the territory, and then into ensuring its social progress. After all, the simplest production requires local workers, who must be provided with minimal education and healthcare. Native specialists are also cheaper than those sent from the metropolis, not to mention the additional motivation they have; the training of these specialists (whose needs for education, health care and leisure are qualitatively higher than those of workers) already means the creation of a local intelligentsia and objectively requires the formation and development of society.
Of course, such complex development of the territory tends to uncontrollably go beyond the initial motivation (development of mineral resources) and leads to excessive costs. It is cost and the need to reduce costs that seems to be the fundamental reason for the collapse of traditional colonial powers and the transition to neo- or economic colonialism, initiated under the auspices primarily of the United States.
Neocolonialism reduces the costs of developing a particular territory by shifting the costs of organizing it political life And social development to this territory itself.
Due to the immaturity of local societies, they turn out to be unadapted to independent development and shift part of the costs of this, although less than under traditional colonialism, back to the developing societies. The most convincing manifestation of this immaturity, which does not allow us to develop independently, is given to us by modern Africa, which ceased with the end of the Cold War into a dying continent, as well as the development of states on the territory of the former USSR.
Thus, the reduction in costs under neocolonialism is accompanied by a decrease in the efficiency of organizing public life in the territories being developed. In the context of global confrontation between the two blocs, subsidizing social progress was a necessary necessity associated with containing the enemy.
Victory in " cold war“and the destruction of the socialist camp freed developed countries from this need and, combined with the spread of modern information technologies, made it possible to further reduce costs, opening the door to the third stage of colonialism - colonialism of the era of globalization.
This colonialism abandons the very idea of territorial development and turns development as such into the exclusive privilege of today's developed, and tomorrow, perhaps, only the most developed countries. Its inherent development at the expense of someone else’s degradation is always a “negative sum game” in its purest form. This is its fundamental difference from the relatively harmonious processes of traditional colonial development, accompanied by a fairly deep civilization of the colonies.
Thus, the spread of information technology has qualitatively changed the relative value of resources, bringing to the fore the most mobile intelligence and finance. This, in turn, has radically changed the nature of the prevailing model of strategic cooperation between developed and developing countries: the creative development of the latter by the former through direct investment is increasingly giving way to destructive, destructive development through the withdrawal of financial and intellectual resources.
For a more complete understanding of the realities of such development, it should be clarified that the objective (and practically the only) prerequisite for both the rapid concentration of capital and the most rapid and final separation of it (along with intelligence) from the national soil is a deep and, if possible, most hopeless systemic social crisis - both socio-economic and political.
After all, in order to gain the mobility necessary for use in modern information technologies, both capital and intelligence for the most part must first of all despair of the possibility of acceptable use in their homeland. Otherwise, getting rid of their own national image will take an unacceptably long time for processes of global competition and, most likely, will not be final enough.
It should be especially noted that in practice, provocative (including spontaneous, not fully recognized by those who use them) methods of isolation and seizures.
They consist in the active encouragement of all features that not only highlight elements of a “developed” or simply backward and therefore subject to development society from its main part that are attractive to a developed country, but are also fundamentally unacceptable for it. The rejection of elements of the “developed” society that are attractive to developed countries in this way, caused (or rather, strengthened), radically facilitates the removal of its most progressive part from this society. An example is the insightful words attributed to Eisenhower that the Soviet Union’s merciless suppression of the Hungarian revolution of 1956 handed over to the “free world” the best part of Hungarian youth, forced to leave their homeland ().
Understanding the realities and consequences of the described change in the form of cooperation between developed and developing societies gave rise to the shocking, but indisputable concept of “finished countries” used in practical forecasting. These include countries that have been subjected to the destructive effects of the new, “information” imperialism. The result is their loss - in all likelihood irrevocable - not only of the most important intellectual and financial development resources, but also of the very ability to produce them. It is clear that such a development of events, if not completely, then, in any case, is very long terms deprives them of any historical perspective.
Let us add that the resulting loss or at least decline of national culture further weakens the resistance of these countries to the information influence of their global competitors.
The described degradation of international cooperation and its real goals was most convincingly and fully analyzed using the example of the “development of the legacy” of the newly collapsed USSR by developed countries. In this light, it seems very interesting and significant that the immediate cause of the rapid development and spread of information technology, which caused this degradation, was precisely the global defeat of the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
The connection between these events has nothing to do with conspiracy theories: the defeat and subsequent collapse of the USSR quite naturally gave developed countries such concentrated and high-quality financial and especially intellectual support that they were able to dramatically accelerate their development “on its bones.” The difference in strategic orientations and, accordingly, opportunities and prospects of the developed countries of Europe, on the one hand, and the United States, on the other, best shows that the former have absorbed primarily finance, while the latter have primarily absorbed intellect.
Having won the Cold War, developed countries did not limit themselves to simply destroying their global enemy, as is still commonly thought. The winners did much more: they captured and developed its most important resources in the new conditions - however, they used them very poorly. (The key internal contradiction of socialism, from the point of view of the organization of management, was that, while preparing the best human resources in the world, it used them in the obviously worst way. This was the direct reason for the inherent hostility of the Soviet elite and the middle class - primarily the intelligentsia - towards one’s own state, one’s own ideology and, ultimately, one’s own country).
Having mastered the resources of the USSR, developed countries not only gave impetus to their own technological and political progress, but also - what is much more important - radically increased their separation from the rest of the world. At the same time, they created and firmly consolidated, including institutionally, the destructive model of international economic interaction described above - the most successful for themselves and the most destructive for most other countries of the world.
