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Balikpapan is run- down and dirty, likewise anywhere else where the government sponsored robber industries operate - Irian Jaya, Billiton, Central Sulawesi. One often gets the impression that Indonesia isn't a nation, it's a private enterprise run by generals, or ex-generals turned businessmen. There are hundreds of foreign-based companies. These US, Japanese, Filippino and Australian industrial centers have become enclaves of foreign activity, not at all dependent upon the domestic economy. What is called a 'dual economy' is created, their own and the society's outside. The labor-saving technology of foreign companies doesn't create employment opportunities and they increase inequality by overpaying their employees. These companies have also become ideal springboards for US and other foreign multinational ventures.

The absence of strikes gladdens them. Indonesia presents a potentially huge market for the manufacturing industries: transportation equipment, steel, telecommunications hardware, agricultural machinery, foodstuffs such as wheat and dairy products ('Peter's Ice Cream: The Health Food of Two Nations'). Surplus or outdated commodities are dumped on the Indonesian market so that foreign companies can earn large profits. Many of their products like hair rinse, ice cream, white flour, are completely alien to village Indonesia, displacing local handicrafts, skills and products. Coca Cola (rots your teeth) factories are built in a society where delicious natural fruit drinks are available, potato chips are produced when Indonesians have nutritious krupuk, boot polish is sold on islands whose people have gone barefoot for eons.