Narconomics

Jack Welch, a former head of General Electric, has mused that it would be handy for a firm to have its factories on giant barges, so that they could be floated around the world, docking in whichever country offered the best economic conditions at the time. Carl Gerstacker, a former chair of Dow Chemical, had a similar idea: “I have long dreamed of buying an island owned by no nation and of establishing the world headquarters of the Dow company on the truly neutral ground of such an island, beholden to no nation or society,” he once said. For the big-thinking executive, national borders belong in the twentieth century.