of the physical sciences ignores the fact that economies are not machines, but autopoietic
(self-producing) social organisms. A consistent macroeconomic approach would
therefore have to shun any reference to action valuation, like prices and money. To
quote Mises (1962) again: “The market economy is a social system in which individuals
are acting. The valuations of individuals as manifested in the market prices
determine the course of all production activities. If one wants to oppose to the reality
of the market economy image of a holistic system, one must abstain from any use of
prices.”
It is therefore quite natural to see that the best defense against economic crisis is
resilience at the level of actions, decisions, interactions and valuations, not at the central
administration level of the “intervention tsar”. Businesses must protect themselves
through creating their own, natural, flexible and internally built company management
systems—unless the crisis was a result of governmental intervention rather than free
market forces. Then the affected businesses have only two choices: (i) actively insulate
and protect themselves from governmental intervention, or (ii) passively wait for
governmental protection and its administrative steersmanship of the economy. Tomas
and Jan Bata have clearly chose the first option and created the remarkable Bata Management
System (BMS) while keeping the company private and thus insulated from public
and governmental takeovers. They achieved the necessary level of self-confidence,
team-spirit and employee loyalty to thrive and grow under two decades of devastating
crises.
It is inspiring to quote Jan A. Bata on the aftermath of the Great Depression: “Have
you seen any crisis at Bata’s? The whole world was in crisis but we grew. Why? Does
a banker dictate our action? No. He waits at our doors, the hat in his hands, moaning:
‘At your service, always willing, yours Julius B. Skilling’—isn’t it so? Would we ever
allow him to order us around? Hell no. He would run away on the very first day. But
banks are more like vampires than hotbeds of entrepreneurship. The people who do
not see inside, like the journalists and such, then call it the ‘dusk of capitalism’.” Bata
(2008). At least in Europe it is mostly so.
Why was there no crisis at Bata’s? Why could they keep their head when all about
them were losing theirs—and blaming it on them?