En una campaña electoral como la que se avecina no puede reclamarse –o no estamos acostumbrados- que se debata de una manera sosegada sobre cuestiones como los fundamentos políticos de nuestro modelo económico y su correspondiente regulación. Lo que sí parece es que en un escenario de recortes presupuestarios generalizados y de limitación de la capacidad de intervención de las Administraciones públicas, el “Estado del bienestar” va a protagonizar muchas discusiones. Entre otras razones, por la pluralidad de interpretaciones que admite el término.
A ese respecto, me pareció interesante la noticia –por el debate de fondo que refleja a partir de la conferencia que celebró el Partido Laborista- publicada por The Guardian, sobre los efectos positivos que el modelo de ayudas públicas suponía para la continuidad de la actividad de los empresarios:
“The UK needs to shed the stigma attached to entrepreneurs who rely on benefits after a venture goes wrong, business groups and experts have said. Their comments came after criticism of a property developer's 16-year-old son who spoke out against coalition welfare cuts at the Labour conference.
Rory Weal's speech on Monday – in which he said his "entire wellbeing" had been preserved by the welfare state after his family's home was repossessed – wowed delegates in Liverpool. However, the inevitable media scrutiny of his background – his father was a wealthy property developer before he went bankrupt – brought accusations of hypocrisy and even, in one instance, "champagne socialism".
But according to experts, far from being a hindrance to entrepreneurship and economic growth, in many cases the welfare state actively promotes them, both through cushioning business people following failures and via schemes such as the coalition's fledgling New Enterprise Allowance (NEA), which provides a modest state wage to jobseekers trying to start their own business”.
El artículo contiene distintas opiniones sobre la relevancia que pueden alcanzar determinadas ayudas públicas para la reanudación de la actividad de pequeños o medianos empresarios. Sin perjuicio de ello, llama la atención la relevancia que cobra la valoración social del fracaso empresarial: frente al “estigma” que se observa en muchas sociedades europeas, se contrapone el modelo estadounidense, en el que la insolvencia o liquidación se ven como un resultado inherente al “riesgo y ventura” de toda actividad económica y como parte de la educación del empresario. Lo realmente decisivo en términos jurídicos es cómo ese distinto criterio sociológico se traslada a la regulación, por ejemplo, en materia de insolvencia:
“UK business people enjoy other, less direct, windfalls from welfare provisions, Francis Greene, associate professor of enterprise at Warwick Business School, said – not least freedom from the responsibilities of their US counterparts to think about health insurance schemes for themselves and their employees.
"Lots of business owners don't realise the hidden costs of what they would otherwise have to provide for their workers. What they tend to see is just regulation. The thing about regulation is that it's a two-edged sword. Yes, it can be inhibitive to business but it can also be beneficial”, he said. "There is a huge crossover between business and welfare."What US entrepreneurs do enjoy, according to popular business belief, is a culture in which some measure of failure, or even a bankruptcy or two, is seen as a valuable part of the learning process.
The truth is subtly different, according to Marc Ventresca, a lecturer in strategy and innovation at Oxford University's Saïd Business School, and an expert in what he calls the "fail early, fail often" world of Silicon Valley tech start-ups.
The principal differences across national boundaries, he argues, are more institutional – for example if bankruptcy laws allow you to start again easily, and whether access to venture capital means you have lost outsiders' money rather than that borrowed from friends and family.
Silicon Valley is particularly forgiving of failure, he added, given the fast-moving and interconnected nature of that business community. "In the US, particularly in the hi-tech area, people do fail, and that's not a stigma in the same way [as in the UK]. But it's a piece of insight for everybody: you tried something and it didn't work and then you regroup and do something else".
Es notorio que cualquiera de las opiniones transcritas admiten matizaciones. Pero no deja de alertar sobre el riesgo que para la actividad empresarial y los intereses generales comporta que triunfe entre nosotros una cultura concursal (empresarial, económica y jurídica), que contempla la insolvencia como una suerte de fracaso irresoluble y presumiblemente culpable, ignorando que no faltan en las normas argumentos para que a un concurso siga una reactivación de la actividad del deudor.
Madrid, 6 de octubre 2011