Businessmen plan in a Mickey Mouse World

Press, 23 October 1978, Page 10

Businessmen plan in a Mickey Mouse World

From the “Economist.” London

Some 2500 businessmen from 75 countries (half of them with their ladies) assembled this month in Walt Disney’s marvellously scatty Florida fairground to hear Messrs Kurt Waldheim Secretary-General of the United Nations, and President Jimmy Carter, speaking from a floodlit Cinderella’s Castle, open the once-in-three years congress of the International Chamber of Commerce. The two leaders did this with speeches of monumental wetness, to which nature added her share. Shortly before Mr Carter began to drone through his non-per-oration. the first huge single raindrops of a tropical rainstorm spattered upon the crowd.

Escape was blocked by the Secret Service and the halberds of the mtended procession. The skies opened as the buglers in medieval garbbo drew breath for the farewell “hail to the chief.” The first family, including Amy, skipped into Cinderella's Castle; and 2100 tycoons were saved from pneumonia by the incredible instant efficiency of the young people who do the work in Disney’s fantasyland. They produced 2000 umbrellas' from somewhere, and for the next two hours scurried drenched, carrying glasses of champagne and rainwater to the surprisingly dry businessmen perched in the shops and amid the crazy artefacts of the fair. The mood for the following week of congress was se. from that moment; down with governments, vote for Mickey Mouse. Right through the congress, any speeches against any governments were greeted’ with almost frightening applause by white, brown and black businessmen, with especially delighted noises from the Third-Worlders who had not realised that politicians were people against whom one could publicly say such things. Mr Klaus Sahlgren, head of the United Nations Centre on Transnational Corporations, comically misunderstood the message shining back from the brown and black faces and launched into a stock attack on these transnational corporations — which is what most of them want to become. The International Air Travel Association’s Mr Knut Hammarskjoid was the only anti-Carter speaker not to be applauded, when he attacked the Carter Administration for trying to loosen the grip of his international air fares cartel. Business is living in the aftermath of the environmentalist and consumerist splurges, which are receding fast, but the abolition of fussy regulators vies with the downgrading of politicians as businessmen’s favourite current reform. The International Chamber of Commerce has put some of its foremost international lawyers on to a panel which (having taken out large insurance against libel) will name names when businessmen have bribed officials and politicians. They hope the countries concerned will then be shamed into prosecuting. As business is fed up with paying money to governments in any guise, this hunt for bribers may be less risible than diplomats like to hope. The quality of discussion

on management problems was not high — as it usually is not when everything, that anybody says is videotaped and on the record. But there was a refreshing impatience with management consultants. The real winners at Orlando were the South-East Asians and Mickey Mouse. The only politicians to win plaudits were a jovial Mr Henry Kissinger and Singapore’s Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan-Yew. the leader at Orlando of what heavyweight prophet Herman Kahn calls the new “superstar” countrir These countries (such as South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore) have, says Mr Kahn, "a rule: if we find we’re doing anything silly, let’s stop doing it. In every other country that I know ot, people agree that the government is domg silly things, but they say ‘that’s politics’.” Loud applause. The Disney group seized the opportunitv of the congress to announce that it is to invest $5OO million of its own and other people’s money in a sort of standing world fair within an Epcot (“experimental prototype community of tomorrow”) where world industry will show models of its future products. Logic suggests this dreamy project cannot be

profitable, but logic once suggested that also of Disney World, where the Disney group is now minting money from its 43 square miles of former Florida swamp. Within this now highlypopulated swamp (14 million visitors a year), Disney provides most of the local government function, and provides it much more efficiently than from any public town hall. This is true not only of its computerised monitoring of all its automated public services, but also of services like litter collection, modern transport systems and crime prevention. In the 43 square miles of Disney World, where last week sat some of the world’s most kidnapworthy businessmen, there is usually only one policeman: a deputy-sheriff with a liaison job. But crime in the resort is virtually nil. How? The unmed Disney “security hosts”, sometimes disguised as Goofy, congregate quickly whenever trouble is tlreatened. A large number of the other staff keep in walkie-talkie contact with them, and with the limited roads out of the resort. .If Mickey Mouse were everywhere elected mayor, the efficiency of local government round the world could rise by several hundred per cent.