Like it or not, governments play a role in our competitiveness

If you’ve ever invested and lost money, as I have, you understand something about risk. None of us invests expecting to lose, but that’s what often happens. Sometimes we make money, lots of it, and that’s what we hope for.

So we practice due diligence to minimize the risk. Let’s say you have a good business, and it’s doing quite well. It’s well-managed and growing nicely. You don’t see any problems on the horizon.

Enter Covid-19. Suddenly, you’re dealing with circumstances beyond your control. Governments are telling you how to run your business and placing limitations that constrain your best efforts. They don’t understand your business; they’re just trying to keep people from getting infected.

Your profit picture has gone from rosy to abysmal and you wonder how long this will last. Stimulus money will help, if available, but you can’t keep things together forever. You look for ways to operate under the restrictions and, hopefully, squeeze out a meager profit, but your best efforts may only help you lose less money.

Even so, somehow, you’re surviving, but then another disaster. There’s a police shooting with racial overtones or an election with an unpopular result. Protests get out of hand. Cars overturned or set on fire. Businesses vandalized, some even set on fire.

You’re not worried about Covid anymore. So what would you do? Assuming you have the money, would you invest it in repairing/rebuilding your facility if it is damaged or even destroyed?

Would you look for another location? This could mean a considerable distance away. Would you be willing to relocate 199Cyour employees to keep them? Some businesses are difficult to restart without many of the already trained and experienced employees. 199C Let’s say you don’t have the money.

Would your investors, owners and/or venture capitalists be willing to fund it? How much would this cost? How much more ownership would you have to give up?

If these answers are no, then you have to go to a bank, and they’re terribly riskaversive. There won’t be any bargains on the interest rates, but it’s unlikely a loan would be forthcoming. Again, does it make sense to reinvest with no guarantees the catastrophe won’t happen again?

No doubt, you don’t want to take a terrible loss and just walk away, but applied reasoning may be very convincing that you can’t afford to do anything else. Yes, it’s heartbreaking — years of hard work gone up in smoke.

Unfortunately, you’re probably not the only business in the area to come to this conclusion. In fact, it’s hard to imagine businesses not coming to this conclusion. Why would anyone invest with the ever-present threat of such protests resuming?

We live in New Hampshire, but we’re not immune.

Last summer there was a protest across the border in Massachusetts. It was supposed to head north to Salem. There was no discernible effort to protect businesses or homes. Thankfully, the protesters never came, but the potential was certainly there.

The damages from these protests are not just the injuries, sometimes fatal, and resulting property damages. Once businesses lose confidence in the ability of their governments to maintain law and order, they hesitate to invest, jobs and services disappear. We can visit any number of once great cities to see the legacy.

Countries all over the world are competing to get jobs for their people. Many of our states and cities compete against each other to attract investments and jobs. These usually go to the places most conducive to the needs of the businesses, a major one of which is security.

It’s the sort of thing we used to take for granted, but that may no longer be warranted.

Like it or not, our governments play a huge role in enabling or disabling our competitiveness. We have to pay attention. Ronald J. Bourque, a consultant and speaker from Salem, has had engagements throughout the United States, Europe and Asia. He can be reached at 603-898-1871 or RonBourque3@gmail.com.