Crocs, the company and product name for those brightly colored rubber clogs that Mario Batali and others wear, recently made a decision to close their manufacturing facility in Quebec, Canada. The factory there employed 669

people, and the company cited high labor costs and a slowdown in sales for their plant closure.

While I am sure the fashion world is rejoicing in the slowdown in sales of the mostly hideous footwear, what caught our eye was the quote from Raymond Bachand, the Quebecois minister of economic development, innovations and

exports: “This is a pure case of savage capitalism. They decided to flush away Quebec.”

Now I have no idea what savage capitalism is, but if our dear French-Canadian friend defines it as moving production to a lower labor cost venue, then I am all for it. The key to capitalism is three-fold:

• Easy entry and exit from a market
• Free flow of information
• Asset holders make independent economic decisions

Quebec may not be happy about losing the 669 jobs, but it should be more unhappy about creating a business environment where quality work can be done cheaper elsewhere.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 21st, 2008 at 2:44 pm and is filed under Economics, General Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.