Category: Strategy

St Patrick’s Day 2021 – Does It Really Matter? – ENCORE

Posted on March 17, 2021 in Ethos, Locations, Social, Strategy

Does St. Patrick’s Day matter to us here in the Caribbean?

Yes, it does!
Or … Yes it should!

You see, despite the fact this is a cultural and religious celebration – held every 17th day of March – commemorating the foremost patron saint of Ireland, Saint Patrick’s Day recognition is really a recognition of Irish people.

This is a BIG Deal …

… not just to acknowledge the 6.5 million people on that island, but rather to acknowledge the 80 million people worldwide that herald some form of Irish heritage.

So to Ireland and Irish people the world over, we hereby declare:

We see you!

This was the declaration of a previous blog-commentary from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean. (We even have our own “Ireland of the Antilles”, a moniker for the Eastern Caribbean island of Montserrat). It is only apropos to Encore that previous submission from March 17, 2015 here-now:

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Go Lean Commentary – The ‘Luck of the Irish’ – Past, Present and Future

Today (March 17) is Saint Patrick’s Day. Why do people wear green?

It’s a move of solidarity for Irish people and culture.

This is a big deal considering the real history.

This subject also has relevance for the Caribbean as Saint Patrick’s Day is a public holiday in the British Caribbean Territory of Montserrat, in addition to the Republic of Ireland,[10] Northern Ireland,[11] and the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador. While not a holiday elsewhere, this day is venerated by the Irish Diaspora around the world, especially in Great Britain, Canada, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. See a tribute here from an American job site:

Title: Happy St. Patrick’s Day!
Southfield, Michigan – We hope you are showing your Irish spirit by wearing green!

Here are 5 fun facts about St. Patrick’s Day:

CU Blog - The Luck of the Irish - Past, Present and Future - Photo 2

1. Of course with St. Patrick’s Day comes the massive appearance of shamrocks. Shamrocks have definitely become a central symbol for this day. In the olden days in Ireland, the shamrock was seen as sacred. The four leaves of the clover represent faith, love, hope, and of course, luck.

2. Good luck finding a four-leaf clover. The odds of finding a four-leafer on your first try are 1 in 10,000.

3. St. Patrick’s Day was traditionally a dry holiday. Irish law between 1903 and 1970 made St. Patrick’s Day a religious holiday for the entire country, which meant pubs were closed for the day. Today, St. Patrick’s Day is arguably one of the largest drinking holidays with an estimated $245 million spent on beer for March 17.

4. Green or Blue? Though green is a very popular color on St. Patrick’s Day, the original color that was very popular and often related back to St. Patrick was not green, but blue. In Irish folklore, green is known as being worn by immortals, and often signified new life and crop growth.

5. The Irish flag. The flag representing Ireland is green, white and orange. The green symbolizes the people of the south, and orange, the people of the north. White represents the peace that brings them together as a nation.

CU Blog - The Luck of the Irish - Past, Present and Future - Photo 5

Source: Credit Acceptance Internal Staff Intranet site; retrieved March 17, 2015.

This subject also provides a case study for the Caribbean, as the Irish Diaspora is one of the most pronounced in the world. This is the model of what we, in the Caribbean, do not want to become.

According to information retrieved from Wikipedia, since 1700 between 9 and 10 million people born in Ireland have emigrated, including those that went to Great Britain. This is more than the population of Ireland at its historical peak in the 1830s of 8.5 million. From 1830 to 1914, almost 5 million went to the United States alone.

After 1840, emigration from Ireland became a massive, relentless, and efficiently managed national enterprise.[1] In 1890 40% of Irish-born people were living abroad. By the 21st century, an estimated 80 million people worldwide claimed some Irish descent; which includes more than 36 million Americans who claim Irish as their primary ethnicity. [2]

CU Blog - The Luck of the Irish - Past, Present and Future - Photo 1

The city of Chicago, Illinois dyes the river green in tribute for St. Patrick’s Day

CU Blog - The Luck of the Irish - Past, Present and Future - Photo 4

The White House in full St. Patrick Day tribute mode

CU Blog - The Luck of the Irish - Past, Present and Future - Photo 3

London; on the Thames River

The Diaspora, broadly interpreted, contains all those known to have Irish ancestors, i.e., over 100 million people, which is more than fifteen times the population of the island of Ireland, which was about 6.4 million in 2011.

In July 2014, the Irish Government appointed Jimmy Deenihan as Minister of State for the Diaspora.[3]

Why this history?

In 1801 Ireland acceded to the United Kingdom (UK).

The Irish Parliament, charged with the heavy burden of directing Ireland’s destiny, was abolished in 1801 in the wake of the Republican United Irishmen Rebellion and Ireland became an integral part of a new United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland under the Act of Union. Without the power to direct their own affairs, the island found itself victimized by fate and bad fortune.

The Great Famine of Ireland during the 1840s saw a significant number of people flee from the island to all over the world. Between 1841 and 1851 as a result of death and mass emigration (mainly to Great Britain and North America) Ireland’s population fell by over 2 million. In the western province of Connacht alone, the population fell by almost 30%.

The Go Lean … Caribbean book relates that this is also the current disposition of so many of the Caribbean Diaspora; (10 million abroad compared to 42 million in the region). These ones love their country and culture, but live abroad; they want conditions to be different (better) in their homelands to consider any repatriation. The book details where in Puerto Rico, their on-island population in 2010 was 3,725,789, but Puerto Ricans living abroad in the US mainland was 4,623,716; (Page 303).

In a previous blog/commentary, a review of a book highlighted some strong lessons from Ireland’s past that are illustrative for the Caribbean’s future. The book is by Professor Richard S. Grossman entitled: Wrong: Nine Economic Policy Disasters and What We Can Learn from Them. The following excerpt is extracted from the book review by the London School of Economics:

As an example, we can take a closer look at the chapter on the Irish Famine, (1 of the 9 lessons), which took place from 1845-1852. Grossman not only describes what happened, but puts it into the perspective of  other famines, starting from the BCE period. In terms of absolute numbers, the Great Hunger in Ireland was not the worst famine recorded but it did tragically lead to the death of twelve per cent of Irish population, forcing many others to emigrate. The author details how the potato – which originated in the Americas – arrived to a fertile Ireland, and that the poorest third of the Irish population consumed up to twelve pounds of potatoes per day (per capita). Only after this introduction the economic policy is mentioned. Grossman compares the responses of two Prime Ministers of the United Kingdom to the famine: Sir Robert Peel and Lord John Russell. Russell was so committed to the limited government intervention that he refused to buy food for the starving masses in order not to disturb the free formation of prices in the market. Similarly, he refused to increase the scale of public works that would give jobs to Irish workers so as not to disturb the free labour market. The paradox is that when the Great Famine occurred, Ireland was not a poor country. The Famine would not have been so ‘great’ if it were not for the free market ideology followed by the policymakers at that time. As it turns out, leaving things to the invisible hand of market is not always an optimal solution.

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), a technocratic federal government to administer and optimize the economic/security/governing engines of the 30 member Caribbean states. The quest is to provide a better direct stewardship, applying lessons-learned from case studies like Ireland in the 1800’s.

Ireland has fared better since those dire days of the potato famine, but still its people, the Diaspora, endured a lot of misery, resistance and discrimination in their foreign homes. As reported in this previous commentary, the usual path for new immigrants is one of eventual celebration, but only after a “long train of abuses”: rejection, anger, protest, bargaining, toleration and eventual acceptance. Wearing green today – or any other March 17th’s – is a statement of acceptance and celebration of the Irish; as a proud heritage for what they have endured and accomplished.

The island of Ireland today is comprised of 2 countries: the independent Republic of Ireland and the territory of Northern Ireland, a member-state in the United Kingdom, with England, Wales and Scotland; (last year Scotland conducted a referendum in consideration of seceding from the UK; the referendum failed).

The Republic of Ireland ranks among the wealthiest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita.[11] After joining the European Union, Ireland enacted a series of liberal economic policies that resulted in rapid economic growth. The country achieved considerable prosperity from 1995 to 2007, during which it became known as the Celtic Tiger. This was halted by an unprecedented financial crisis that began in 2008, in conjunction with the concurrent global economic crash.[12][13] Today, the primary source of tourism to Ireland – a primary economic driver – is from their Diaspora; see VIDEO in the Appendix below.

There are a lot of lessons in this issue for the Caribbean. Ireland did need better societal engines, economic-security-governance; this was accomplished with their assimilation into the EU. If only that option was available in the past.

This is the exact option being proposed now by the Go Lean roadmap, to emulate and model the successes of the European Union with the establishment of the Caribbean Union. It was not independence that brought success to Ireland, but rather interdependence with their neighboring countries “in the same boat”. This is the underlying theme behind the Go Lean movement, to “appoint new guards” to make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. This Declaration of Interdependence is pronounced at the outset of the Go Lean book (Pages 11 & 13):

xi.  Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xix. Whereas our legacy in recent times is one of societal abandonment, it is imperative that incentives and encouragement be put in place to first dissuade the human flight, and then entice and welcome the return of our Diaspora back to our shores. This repatriation should be effected with the appropriate guards so as not to imperil the lives and securities of the repatriated citizens or the communities they inhabit. The right of repatriation is to be extended to any natural born citizens despite any previous naturalization to foreign sovereignties.

xx. Whereas the results of our decades of migration created a vibrant Diaspora in foreign lands, the Federation must organize interactions with this population into structured markets. Thus allowing foreign consumption of domestic products, services and media, which is a positive trade impact. These economic activities must not be exploited by others’ profiteering but rather harnessed by Federation resources for efficient repatriations.

xxv. Whereas the legacy of international democracies had been imperiled due to a global financial crisis, the structure of the Federation must allow for financial stability and assurance of the Federation’s institutions. To mandate the economic vibrancy of the region, monetary and fiscal controls and policies must be incorporated as proactive and reactive measures. These measures must address threats against the financial integrity of the Federation and of the member-states.

The Go Lean movement declares solidarity with the culture and the people of Ireland.

We too have endured a lot of misery in our foreign abodes. We would rather prosper where we were planted at home in our homeland, but due to economic, security and governing dysfunctions have had to emigrate.

The Go Lean book details a roadmap with turn-by-turn directions for transforming our homeland. The following is a sample of the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the Caribbean region for this turnaround:

Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederating a Non-Sovereign Union Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Keep the next generation at home Page 46
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Tactics to Forge an $800 Billion Economy Page 67
Tactical – Separation of Powers Page 71
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate to the Caribbean Page 118
Implementation – Ways to Promote Independence – Interdependence Page 120
Planning – 10 Big Ideas – A Single Market in the G-20 Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better Page 131
Planning – Ways to Better Manage Image – Not as Unwanted Aliens Page 133
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Enhance Tourism Page 190
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the British Territories Page 245

The Go Lean book posits (Page 3) that the Caribbean islands are among the greatest addresses in the world. But instead of the world “beating a path” to these doors, the people of the Caribbean have “beat down their doors” to get out; despite the absence of any famine, or war for that matter. This abandonment must stop … now!

May we learned from the history of Ireland in our quest to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. And may we have the luck of the Irish, as conveyed in this Classic Irish Blessing:

May you always have…
Walls for the winds
A roof for the rain
Tea beside the fire
Laughter to cheer you
Those you love near you
And all your heart might desire.

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Appendix- VIDEO: Happy St Patrick’s Day from Discover Ireland – https://youtu.be/J680_aKF5zc

Uploaded on Mar 8, 2011 – This short film is an ode to Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day (which means we used a little bit of poetic licence!). Hope you all enjoy it. Happy St Patrick’s day!
http://www.discoverireland.com/

 

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Women’s Day – Today and Everyday – Helping Them Change the World – Encore

Posted on March 8, 2021 in Ethos, Social, Strategy


Today – March 8 – is International Women’s Day.

Today, the International community – i.e. the United Nations – and societal stewards have set aside this day to recognize the fine contributions that women make to society.

This is completely unnecessary! When is International Men’s Day?!

Women have been contributing to society from the beginning, ancient times and modern ones. Yet, the formal Orthodoxy in the world – religion and politics – many times ignore the role of women.

The problem there is with the Orthodoxy, not the women. Women has been forging change, fighting against Bad Orthodoxy for a good while now. To that we say:

Go Girl Go!

We need the women in our society – the current ones and more – to keep on fighting against the many facets of Bad Orthodoxy; they have succeeded in the past … and we need them to succeed again.

This assertion seems so familiar!

We had previously discussed the actuality of Women fighting for change in a previous blog-commentary from April 14, 2018. It is only apropos to Encore that commentary again here-now:

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Go Lean Commentary – Nature or Nurture: Women Have Nurtured Change

Here is valuable advice to young people … hoping to partner with a soul-mate:

Take time to know him/her … give it a full cycle of seasons: Summer and Winter.

There is the person’s Nature and also their Nurture-ing that must be taken to account:

Nature – Genetics determine behavior; personality traits and abilities are in “nature”

Nurture – Environment, upbringing and life experiences determine behavior. Humans are “nurtured” to behave in certain ways.

So prospective marriage mates need to ascertain the Nature and Nurture of a potential partner.

If the potential mate does not measure up, my advice: do not bond, take your leave. Just do so BEFORE the wedding rehearsal – i.e. Runaway Brides – do not abandon all the stakeholders high-and-dry (“at the altar”), after they may have invested in catering, banquet halls, clothes, travel, etc.. Such a failure would just be pathetic!

This advice applies to individuals, yes, but not so much for communities, or societies. For the group dynamic, we simply have no choice; we must work to transform the attitudes, traits and practices in a community. The book Go Lean…Caribbean identified this subject as “community ethos”, with this definition:

… the fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; dominant assumptions of a people or period. – Page 20

If/When the community ethos is unbecoming for a society, citizens do not bond; they abandon! This is so pathetic, as the community too may have invested hugely in the individuals – think education, scholarships and student loans. The community is “left at the altar“.

But change is possible! Communities have forged change and been transformed .. in the past, in the present and I guarantee future communities will also forge change.

How is this possible? How to Nurture change despite “bad” Nature? Let’s consider a sample-example from the history of the UK; this is actually the history of the Caribbean as well, as it features the Abolition of Slavery in the British Empire in the year 1833 – the date that the measure passed the British Parliament.

There were a lot of advocates and activists that led the fight against … first the Slave Trade and then eventually the institution of Slavery itself; think William Wilberforce and Charles Spurgeon who argued for the abolition of slavery and advocated for women to have rights equal to that of men. Slavery and Women’s Rights became locked-in-step – see Appendix VIDEO. So a lot of the Nurturing for the abolition advocacy came from women of the British Empire. See this portrayed in the article here:

Title: Ending Slavery

For much of the 18th century few European or American people questioned slavery. Gradually on both sides of the Atlantic a few enlightened individuals, some of them Quakers, began to oppose it.

From the 1760s activists in London challenged the morality and legality of the slave trade. They included former slaves, like Olaudah Equiano and the abolitionist campaigners Granville Sharp and William Wilberforce.

Women who opposed slavery took the lead in boycotts of slave-grown produce, particularly sugar. Slavery abolitionists used badges and iconic images to publicise their views, like the sugar bowl above made by Wedgewood. Enormous petitions opposing the slave trade were delivered to the House of Commons.

Women Against Slavery

It is only relatively recently that historians have explored the activities of women abolitionists. When looking at local provincial sources, autobiographies, historical objects and sites it becomes clear that women played a significant and, at times, pivotal role in the campaign to abolish slavery.

These women came from a range of backgrounds. The tactics they used – boycotting slave-produced sugar and other goods, organising mass petitions and addressing public meetings – proved highly effective.

Hannah Moore

Hannah Moore (from 1745 to 1833) was an educator, writer and social reformer. Born in Bristol, she was strongly opposed to slavery throughout her life. She encouraged women to join the anti-slavery movement.

In 1787 she met John Newton and members of the Clapham Sect, including William Wilberforce with whom she formed a strong and lasting friendship. Moore was an active member of the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the African Slave Trade. Her writings reflected her opposition to slavery and “Slavery, a Poem” which she published in 1788 is regarded as one of the most important slavery poems of the period.

Ill health prevented Moore from taking an active role in the 1807 campaign to end the slave trade but she continued to write to Wilberforce and other campaigners.

She lived just long enough to see the act abolishing slavery passed. She died in September 1833 and is buried with her sisters in the south-east corner of All Saints’ Churchyard, Station Road, Wrington, Bristol, BS40.

Mary Prince

Mary Prince (from 1788 to around 1833) was the first black woman to publish her account of being an enslaved woman. She was born in Bermuda in 1788 and endured a life of violence and abuse through a succession of slave-owners.

Her owners, the Woods, brought Mary to England. To escape their cruelty she ran away to the Moravian Church in London’s Hatton Gardens. Members of the Anti-Slavery Society took up her case and they encouraged her to write her life story.

Published in 1831 as “The History of Mary Prince”, this extraordinary story describing ill treatment and survival was a rallying cry for emancipation. The book provoked two libel actions and had three editions in its year of publication.

In 2007 Camden Council and the Nubian Jak Community Trust placed a plaque near to the site where she lived at Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

The poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning (from 1806 to 1861) is commemorated with two plaques in Marylebone, London. A brown Society of Arts plaque is at the site of her former home at 50 Wimpole Street, London W1G 8SQ. There is a bronze plaque at 99, Gloucester Road, London W1U 6JG.

Barrett Browning’s father, Edward Barrett Moulton Barrett (from 1785 to 1857), inherited 10,000 acres of sugar plantations in Jamaica, with an annual income of £50,000. Her maternal grandfather John Graham-Clarke (from 1736 to 1818) was a Newcastle merchant who owned sugar plantations, trading ships and many more businesses associated with slavery. At his death his assets were equivalent to around £20 million today.

Barrett Browning was aware of the source of her family’s wealth:

  • I belong to a family of West Indian slave-owners and if I believe in curses, I should be afraid. – Letter from Elizabeth Barrett Browning to John Ruskin in 1855.

In 1849 she published an anti-slavery poem “The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point”. It portrayed a slave woman cursing her oppressor after she had been whipped, raped and impregnated.

Elizabeth Jesser Reid

A social reformer and philanthropist, Elizabeth Jesser Reid (from 1789 to 1866) is best known for founding Bedford College for Women in London in 1849. The College is now part of Royal Holloway, University of London.

Jesser Reid was also an anti-slavery activist and she attended the Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840 and was a member of the Garrisonian London Emancipation Committee. A green plaque has been placed at her former home, 48 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DR to commemorate Reid and the first site of the college.

While living at 48 Bedford Square, Reid entertained Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1853. She also shared her house with the African American abolitionist Sarah Parker Remond whilst she studied at the College between 1859 and 1861.

Sarah Parker Remond

Born in Salem, Massachusetts, Sarah Parker Remond (from 1826 to 1894) came from a family that was deeply involved in the abolitionist campaign in the United States. Her brother Charles Lenox Remond was the first black lecturer in the American Anti-Slavery Society.

Parker Remond was such an impressive speaker and fund-raiser for the abolitionist movement that she was invited to take the anti-slavery message to Britain. Soon after arriving here in 1859 she embarked upon a nationwide lecture tour. In 1866 she left London to study medicine in Italy. She practised as a doctor in Florence, where she settled.

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Related Posts

Listen to our podcasts about women’s involvement in the abolition movement:

Source: Retrieved April 13, 2018 from: https://historicengland.org.uk/research/inclusive-heritage/the-slave-trade-and-abolition/sites-of-memory/ending-slavery/

Women applied pressure to all aspects of society – the engines of economics, security and governance – for the end of the Slave Trade; then they continued the pressure for the Abolition of Slavery itself. The Nurturing worked! It was not immediate, but eventual and evolutionary:

  • They impacted the economic cycles – boycotts & embargos. See the notes on the Anti-Saccharrittes in Appendix A.
  • They compelled the Security engines – The Royal Navy was engaged to enforce the ban on the Slave Trade after 1807. (Between 1808 and 1860, the West Africa Squadron captured 1,600 slave ships and freed 150,000 Africans.[5]) See Appendix B below.
  • They engaged the related governance by entreating the political supporters, every year, to introduce and re-introduce the Abolition Bill.

Though the abolition of Slavery went against the Nature of the New World, these women and their Nurturing did not stop.  They persisted! This commentary concludes the 4-part series on Nature or Nurture for community ethos. This entry is 4 of 4 in this series from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean in consideration of the Nurturing by the mothers (women) of England who finally forge change in the British Empire.. The other commentaries in the series are cataloged as follows:

  1. Nature or Nurture: Black Marchers see gun violence differently
  2. Nature or Nurture: Cop-on-Black Shootings – Embedded in America’s DNA; Whites Yawn
  3. Nature or Nurture: UK City of Bristol still paying off Slavery Debt
  4. Nature or Nurture: Nurturing came from women to impact Abolition of Slavery

In the first submission to this series, the history of the Psychological battle between Nature and Nurture was introduced, which quoted:

One of the oldest arguments in the history of psychology is the Nature vs Nurture debate. Each of these sides have good points that it’s really hard to decide whether a person’s development is predisposed in his DNA, or a majority of it is influenced by this life experiences and his environment. – https://explorable.com/nature-vs-nurture-debate

All of these commentaries relate to “how” the stewards – including empowered women – for a new Caribbean can assuage societal defects despite the default Nature. Here-in, this example from England is a great role model for the Caribbean region. We too, need our women!

How about the Caribbean today? What bad Nature can women help to Nurture out of Caribbean society?

There are many!

The Lord giveth the word: The women that publish the tidings are a great host. – Psalms 68:11 American Standard Version

Our region is riddled with societal defects. In fact, the subject of societal defects is a familiar theme for this commentary, from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book asserts that the British colonial masters for the Caribbean – 18 of the 30 member-states share this legacy – did not endow this region with the organizational dynamics (attitudes or structures) that would lead to societal success. The former slave populations became the majority in all these lands; when majority rule was compelled on the New World – post-World War II restructuring – the people were not ready. Looking at the dispositions in the region today, these are nearing Failed-State status – it is that bad!

The theme of Failing States has been detailed in previous blog-commentaries by the movement behind the Go Lean book. Consider this sample previous blogs:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13749 Failure to Launch – Governance: Assembling the Region’s Organizations
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13746 Failure to Launch – Security: Caribbean Basin Security Dreams
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13744 Failure to Launch – Economics: The Quest for a ‘Single Currency’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13391 After Maria, Puerto Rico Failed-State: Destruction and Defection
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12996 After Irma, Many Caribbean Failed-States: Destruction and Defection
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12098 Inaction: A Recipe for ‘Failed-State’ Status
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10657 Outreach to the Diaspora – Doubling-down on Failure
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2547 Miami’s Success versus Caribbean Failure

There is the need for the Caribbean member-states to reform and transform. We have some bad community ethos; we need “all hands on deck” to mitigate and remediate them. The book Go Lean…Caribbean – available to download for free – serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all 30 member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives for effecting change in our society:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The same as the British Empire needed a “large host” of women to Nurture societal values, priorities, practices and laws to supplant the bad Nature of the British Slave economy, a “large host” of women will be needed to forge change in the British Caribbean and the full Caribbean – American, Dutch, French and Spanish legacies. This subject too, has been a consistent theme from the movement behind the Go Lean book. Consider this sample from these previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14541 One Woman Made a Difference – Role Model: Viola Desmond
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14482 International Women’s Day – Protecting Rural Women
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13063 Getting Gender Equity without a ‘Battle of the Sexes’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12035 Lean-in for ‘Wonder Woman Day’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10124 The ‘Hidden Figures’ of Women Building-up Society – Art Imitating Life
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8306 Women Get Ready for New “Lean-In” Campaign
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6937 Women in Politics – Yes, They Can!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6836 Role Model – #FatGirlsCan
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5648 One Woman – Taylor Swift – Changing Streaming Music Industry
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3490 One Woman Entrepreneur Rallied and Change Her Whole Community

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to Nurture a better Caribbean society. It details the new community ethos that needs to be adopted so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society – economics, security and governance. We want the women to help empower Caribbean society and so we want to empower women. In fact, the book (Page 226) details the bad community ethos that permeated the “Imperial” world during the times of Caribbean colonization. The advocacy entitled 10 Ways to Empower Women presented this encyclopedic reference on the Natural Law philosophy as follows:

The Bottom Line on Natural Law and Women’s Rights

17th century natural law philosophers in Britain and America, such as Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke, developed the theory of natural rights in reference to ancient philosophers such as Aristotle and the Christian theologist Aquinas. Like the ancient philosophers, 17th century natural law philosophers defended slavery and an inferior status of women in law.

Relying on ancient Greek philosophers, natural law philosophers argued that natural rights where not derived from god, but were “universal, self-evident, and intuitive”, a law that could be found in nature. They believed that natural rights were self-evident to “civilized man” who lives “in the highest form of society”. Natural rights derived from human nature, a concept first established by the ancient Greek philosopher Zeno of Citium in Concerning Human Nature.

Zenon argued that each rational and civilized male Greek citizen had a “divine spark” or “soul” within him that existed independent of the body. Zeno founded the Stoic philosophy and the idea of a human nature was adopted by other Greek philosophers, and later natural law philosophers and western humanists. Aristotle developed the widely adopted idea of rationality, arguing that man was a “rational animal” and as such a natural power of reason.

Concepts of human nature in ancient Greece depended on gender, ethnic, and other qualifications and 17th century natural law philosophers came to regard women along with children, slaves and non-whites, as neither “rational” nor “civilized”. Natural law philosophers claimed the inferior status of women was “common sense” and a matter of “nature”. They believed that women could not be treated as equal due to their “inner nature”. The views of 17th century natural law philosophers were opposed in the 18th and 19th century by Evangelical natural theology philosophers such as William Wilberforce and Charles Spurgeon, who argued for the abolition of slavery and advocated for women to have rights equal to that of men. Modern natural law theorists, and advocates of natural rights, claimed that all people have a human nature, regardless of gender, ethnicity or other qualifications; therefore all people have natural rights.

These thoughts on Natural Law and Women’s Rights persist to this day, despite how archaic they may seem.

This flawed Natural Law philosophy accounts for the Nature of the Caribbean – this was inherited from the Imperial Europe (1600’s) – and never fully uprooted. This was the heavy-lifting that the foregoing women helped to Nurture out of Europe, and what we need continued help for today’s women to uproot.

In addition to the ethos discussion, the book presents the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute change in the Caribbean region. This is how to Nurture a bad community (ethos) into a good community (ethos).

Yes, we can elevate our societal engines. We can do more than just study impactful women from the past, we can foster our own brand of impactful women. We need them!

We need all hands on deck to make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

————

Appendix A – Anti-Saccharrittes … in England

…
In 1791, … the abolitionist William Fox published his anti-sugar pamphlet, which called for a boycott of sugar grown by slaves working in inhuman conditions in the British-governed West Indies. “In every pound of sugar used, we may be considered as consuming two ounces of human flesh,” wrote Fox. So powerful was his appeal that close to 400,000 Britons gave up sugar.

The sugar boycott squarely affected that most beloved of English rituals: afternoon tea. As The Salt [Magazine] has reported, sugar was an integral reason why tea became an engrained habit of the British in the 1700s. But with the sugar boycott, offering or not offering sugar with tea became a highly political act.

Soon, grocers stopped selling West Indies sugar and began to sell “East Indies sugar” from India. Those who bought this sugar were careful to broadcast their virtue by serving it in bowls imprinted with the words “not made by slave labor,” in much the same way that coffee today is advertised as fair-trade, or eggs as free-range.

…

Source: Posted August 4, 2015; retrieved April 14, 2018 from: https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/08/04/429363868/how-percy-shelley-stirred-his-politics-into-his-tea-cup

————

Appendix B – Rare ‘slave freeing’ photos on show

A set of rare photographs showing African slaves being freed by the Royal Navy have gone on show for the first time. They are part of an exhibition marking the bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade.

A set of rare photographs showing African slaves being freed by the Royal Navy have gone on show for the first time.
Published April 28, 2007.
The photographs, on display at the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth, Hants, show a sailor removing the manacle from a newly-freed slave as well as the ship’s marines escorting captured slavers.

———-

East African slaves aboard the HMS Daphne, a British Royal Navy vessel involved in anti-slave trade activities in the Indian Ocean,

Samuel Chidwick, 74, has donated the photographs taken by his father Able Seaman Joseph Chidwick, born in 1881, on board HMS Sphinx off the East African coast in about 1907.

The photographs, on display at the Royal Naval Museum, Portsmouth, Hants, show a sailor removing the manacle from a newly-freed slave as well as the ship’s marines escorting captured slavers.

Mr Chidwick, of Dover, Kent, said: “The pictures were taken by my father who was serving aboard HMS Sphinx while on armed patrol off the Zanzibar and Mozambique coast.

“They caught quite a few slavers and those particular slaves that are in the pictures happened while he was on watch. “That night a dhow sailed by and the slaves were all chained together. He raised the alarm and they got them on to the ship and got the chains knocked off them.

“They then questioned them and sent a party of marines ashore to try to track the slave traders down.

“They caught two of them and I believe they were of Arabic origin.

“My father thought the slave trade was a despicable thing that was going on, the slaves were treated very badly so when they got the slavers they didn’t give them a very nice time.”

Jacquie Shaw, spokeswoman for the Royal Naval Museum, said: “The museum and the Royal Navy are delighted to announce the donation of a nationally important collection of unique photographs taken by Able Seaman Joseph John Chidwick during his service on the Persian Gulf Station where the crew of HMS Sphinx were engaged in subduing the slave trade.

“The collection comprises a fascinating and important snapshot of life on anti-slavery duties off the coast of Africa.”

The exhibition, ‘Chasing Freedom -The Royal Navy and the suppression of the Transatlantic Slave Trade’, is being held until January next year to mark the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade.

The House of Commons passed a bill in 1805 making it unlawful for any British subject to capture and transport slaves but the measure was blocked by the House of Lords and did not come into force until March 25, 1807.

Mrs Shaw said that since the exhibition opened, members of the public had brought forward several historically-important items. She said: “As well as these amazing images, members of the public have brought many other unheard stories of the Royal Navy and the trade in enslaved Africans to the museum’s attention including the original ship’s log of the famed HMS Black Joke of the West Coast of Africa Station.”

Source: Posted 29 Apr 2007; retrieved April 14, 2018 from: http://metro.co.uk/2007/04/29/rare-slave-freeing-photos-on-show-331626/

————

Appendix C VIDEO – Abolition to Suffrage – https://youtu.be/WbLVp27cqZ8

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Zero Sum: Fixing Inequality with Offense and Defense

Posted on February 26, 2021 in Economics, Ethos, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Enquiring minds want to know:

How do “we” fix Inequality?

After a long period of study – observing-and-reporting on the American societal defects – we find that we have to use Offense and Defense.

Yes, this is strenuous heavy-lifting …

… if “Inequality” was a candle that we needed to consume, then we would have to burn it at both ends. Our discussion on “Inequality” obviously refers to Income Inequality, yes but also other inequalities like:

  • Racial
  • Gender
  • Trade
  • Geographic Locations – Urban / Rural – and others

While observing-and-reporting on the America eco-system, we notice that racism was not the only societal defect  that the Caribbean needs to be concerned about. That country is equally infested with Crony-Capitalism, an exploitation of the Public Trust for private gain; (there are so many examples, i.e. Big Pharma, Big Oil, Big Defense, Big Tobacco, Big Banks, etc.). This problem in America results in more Income Inequality; more “Us vs Them”; “Us” as in a rich minority (Oligarchy) versus “Them”, as in the Middle Class (or poor) masses. This is another reflection of a defective Community Ethos – the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of society.

Crony-Capitalism is manifested when the rich in society is permitted (cuddled and protected) to get more-and-more while pushing back against the Middle Class, forcing them to end up with less-and-less.

This is the continuation (and conclusion) of the February 2021 Teaching Series on Zero Sum Thinking; this is a fallacy that for one person to gain wealth, another person must lose. We find the opposite is the truth, that our New World Order is one of Non-Zero Sum, where Win-Win is actually possible; no need to re-distribute the pie’s slices, but rather grow a bigger pie for all to share … and/or introduce new pies that were not possible before.

This is all about the bad Community Ethos that persists in America … and here in Caribbean. We have a problem with Income Inequality too. To remediate and mitigate this problem, we must start with reforming and transforming our Community Ethos and then execute new strategies, tactics and implementation in our economic, security or  governing engines.

This February 2021 Teaching Series, from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean, is lamenting how the structures have crumbled that support the Middle Class; rather, the rich (Oligarchy) is getting richer while the poor is getting poorer.

This is not just an American problem. Think of Caribbean tourism:

There used to be a time, when tourists arriving by airplane at the airport would need to contract with an independent Service Provider – Taxi Driver – to get from Point A to Point B. But now, most of those tourists are arriving via cruise ships, right into the Downtown Ports, so there is no need for individual transportation. The economic activity therefore has shrunk, replaced with corporate-own Tour Bus Drivers, who is only earning the minimum wage or close to it.

This is not Win-Win. Instead, imagine the same economic activity but …

… with a Cooperative of Independently-owned, but collective-bargained Tour Bus Operators.

This is how Non-Zero Sum cooperation, collaboration, collusion, collective-bargaining and community-building is manifested. This is the advocacy of this Teaching Series. This is the final entry, 6-of-6. See here, how this consideration supplements the full catalog of discussions this month:

  1. Zero Sum: Lesson 101 – No more “Gold Standard”
  2. Zero Sum: Realities of Globalism  – “Non-Zero Sum” for the whole world
  3. Zero Sum: ICT as a tool, the “Great Equalizer”
  4. Zero Sum: Regional Tourism should not be a competition – Encore
  5. Zero Sum: Book Review – Racism is a factor; “Us vs Them”
  6. Zero Sum: How to fix “Inequality” – Raise the tide, all boats are elevated

We started this series on Zero Sum by looking at economic principles – the “Gold Standard” – now we conclude with a return to the economic perspective. We want to fix Income Inequality by “raising the tide for all boats in the harbor’; this way everyone gets to enjoy economic growth, a bigger pie, or even a 2nd pie, as in the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).

How do we accomplish Non-Zero Sum for societal wealth, and ensure an equitable distribution – a strong Middle Class?

Before answering, we must acknowledge that there is a difference between wealth and power. See the Robert Reich commentary in the  Appendix VIDEO below, where he posits that:

Power is a Zero Sum game; for one person to get it, they have to take it from others.

To prevent all the wealth (and power) from consolidating in the hands of just a small minority – Oligarchy – there is the need to employ Offense and Defense strategies. These strategies allow us to proactively engage Best Practices to grow the economy while strenuously protecting the economic engines from abuse. We get to guard against the “Barbarians at the Gate“.

Yes, this subject is a grave issue for stakeholders in society to consider. This should be the quest for all societal stewards: to actively grow the Caribbean economy, while being “On Guard” for the negative influences that undermines universal opportunity or causes Income Inequality.

There is an Art & Science to fostering a healthy Middle Class. There is no need to research this topic anew. We have already addressed this in the pages of this Go Lean commentary. It is only apropos to Encore and Excerpt samples and examples of these previous postings – see 4 Offenses and 4 Defenses here:

>>> Offense #1 <<<

Two Pies: Economic Plan for a new Caribbean – February 23, 2017 –

There are a lot of money issues to contend with – but no one person’s hands are in another person’s pockets. So all the money issues for CU are exclusive to the CU. This is true of money-economics and other facets of Caribbean life: security and governance. …

In order to reboot the societal engines there must be these Two Pies. The CU Trade Federation is designed to lead, fund and facilitate regional empowerment plans. But the plan is NOT for the individual member-states to write checks to the CU so as to share one state’s treasuries with another state. Rather, the CU Trade Federation creates its own funding – from regionalized services – and then encumbers the funds for each member-state to deliver the economic, security and governing  mandates. This is analogized as Two Pies:

  • One ‘pie‘ to represent the existing budgets of the member-states and how they distribute their government funding between government services (education, healthcare, etc.), security measures (Police, Coast Guards)
  • One ‘pie‘ to represent the CU funding from exclusive activities (Spectrum Auctions, Lottery, Exploration Rights, Licenses, Foreign-Aid, etc.).

>> Defense #1 <<<

‘Mitigating Income Inequality’ – a Book Review’ – Sep 17, 2015 

Income Inequality = the rich becoming richer while the middle classes shrink. …

The desire to eliminate or reduce Income Inequality is a practical argument for social cohesion and to reduce social unrest; as such eruptions can weaken society. Income Inequality has a slippery slope that can lead to down to Failed-State status. Now after waging global conflicts of World War I, World War II plus countless regional conflicts and sectarian violence, it is important for societies to be “on guard” for encroachments in this regard. …

[Some politicians] opined … that an “upper-crust of extremely wealthy families are hell-bent on destroying the democratic vision of a strong middle-class which has made the United States the envy of the world. In its place they are determined to create an oligarchy in which a small number of families control the economic and political life of our country. …

Economic researchers John Schmitt and Ben Zipperer (2006) of the CEPR (Center for Economic and Policy Research) point to economic liberalism and the reduction of business regulation along with the decline of union membership as one of the causes of economic inequality. In an analysis of the effects of intensive Anglo-American liberal policies in comparison to continental European liberalism, where unions have remained strong, they concluded “The U.S. economic and social model is associated with substantial levels of social exclusion, including high levels of Income Inequality, high relative and absolute poverty rates, poor and unequal educational outcomes, poor health outcomes, and high rates of crime and incarceration. At the same time, the available evidence provides little support for the view that U.S.-style labor-market flexibility dramatically improves labor-market outcomes. Despite popular prejudices to the contrary, the U.S. economy consistently affords a lower level of economic mobility than all the continental European countries for which data is available.”[68] …

Ha-Joon Chang, Reader in the Political Economy of Development at Cambridge University, has written a fascinating book on capitalism’s failings. … Chang takes on the free-marketers’ dogmas and proposes ideas like – there is no such thing as a free market; the washing machine has changed the world more than the internet has; we do not live in a post-industrial age; globalisation isn’t making the world richer; governments can pick winners; some rules are good for business; US (and British) CEOs are overpaid; more education does not make a country richer; and equality of opportunity, on its own, is unfair.

>> Offense #2 <<<

Mineral Extraction 101 – Commerce of the [Caribbean] Seas – January 25, 2021 –

Opportunity is awaiting the Caribbean … for mineral extraction and oil exploration. …

Beaches are gravely important for the American East Coast. (They are important to Caribbean communities as well). So many communities depend on beach vacation and traffic during the spring/summer months (think Spring Break and the commercial summer season of Memorial Day to Labor Day). So when oil spills or predictable storms endanger beach sand, it becomes an urgent imperative for communities to assuage the crisis, even replace the sand …

Everyone has a price! So if the price goes up high enough, there may be interested parties among Caribbean member-states to take the money for allowing mineral/oil extraction in their offshore vicinity. There is a need to be alarmed at such proposals, as dredging sand or drilling for oil may endanger protected reefs or other underwater marine features.

With greater demand – imagine post hurricanes – the Laws of Supply-and-Demand will mandate that the prices for extracted minerals will only increase.

It will get more and more tempting!

The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean wants to add other types of economic activities to the Caribbean landscape; we urgently want to use the sea as an industrial zone. This is because the Caribbean region is badly in need of jobs. The book urges communities to empower the economic engines of the Caribbean Sea, as in mineral & oil extraction.

The region’s economic driver is tourism. Tourism and “mineral extraction or oil exploration” are incompatible activities. Thus there is the need for the cautions in this commentary. The challenge is to embrace the commerce of mineral extraction for the positives, while avoiding the negatives.

Challenge accepted!

>>> Defense #2 <<<

Unequal Justice: Envy and the Seven Deadly Sins –  September 29, 2019 –

All the talk of economic inequality – the rich getting richer; the poor getting poorer; the middle-class shrinking – is really a discussion on justice & injustice.

After thousands of years of human history, we have come to an indisputable conclusion:

Inequality is never tolerated for long. Eventually the “Have-Nots” demand what the “Have’s” have!…

The Cardinal Sin of Envy forces the hand of the stakeholders in society to conform with programs that abate and mitigate Income Inequality.

The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean have addressed Income Inequality on many occasions; the book introduced the roadmap for the implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This CU strives to reboot the economic engines in the region so as to create more opportunities (job-and-entrepreneurial) for everybody in the Caribbean region – men, woman, Black-Brown-and-White in all 30 member-states. This quest is designed to grow the Middle Class.

>>> Offense #3 <<<

BHAG – Infrastructure Spending … finally funding Toll Roads – March 16, 2020 –

Is it so “pie in the sky” to think that our Caribbean communities can organize, plan and execute infrastructure projects so that people can safely travel by road, mitigating traffic congestion, and get to their destinations to live, work and play?

“Pie in the sky” or just “sky” is the key reference here. This commentary asserts that some of the congested streets in the Caribbean member-states can find relief by building “skyways” and overpasses; and they can be Toll Roads.

This vision was always part of the roadmap, as described in the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. This roadmap introduces the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) as a super-national entity with Port Authority functionalities, to build highways, bridges, tunnels, docks and other Public Works (infrastructure) to facilitate the societal engines (economics, security and governance) of the Caribbean region. The book describes that transportation solutions must be embedded into any plan to elevate Caribbean society. …

The subject of Infrastructure is a Big Deal for the consideration of reforming or transforming the Caribbean region. The premise of the Go Lean roadmap is that the leverage of the 30 member-states and 42 million people will allow for Public Works initiatives that are bigger and better than any single (one) member-state alone. “Toll Roads” is one such example, though only a subset of the planned Union Atlantic Turnpike. The plan is for the Turnpike Authority to design and facilitate one North-South and one East-West highway as applicable in each island or coastal-state.

Yes, the highways will be Toll Roads; that charges fees for each ride. The “small pennies add up to millions” over time. This funding mechanism of the Turnpike Authority allows present infrastructure investments based on those future revenues; think bonds and loans.

>>> Defense #3 <<<

Taking from the Poor to Give to the Rich – December 20, 2017  –

The US Congress and White House have done it, they have successfully passed their Tax Reform bill that effectively “takes from the poor and gives to the rich”…

The Tax Reform strategy here double-downs on the concept of Supply-side economics. The hope is that corporate entities and wealthy people will receive tax breaks and then use the “wind fall” to re-invest in the community, thereafter creating jobs and economic growth. The Republicans in Washington (Congress and the White House) are betting on the success of this strategy even though there has been utter failures with this approach; for example just recently in the US State of Kansas.

Whether that re-investment occurs or not is the unknown. What is known is that the Rich will undoubtedly get the tax breaks. The Rich will win, at the expense of the Poor.

>>> Offense #4 <<<

Welcoming the Dreaded ‘Plutocracy’ – September 14, 2014 –

It is not nice to be called a plutocracy, it’s almost considered a derogatory term. It simply refers to the undue influence that a super-rich minority group can have on a nation.

The dread of plutocracies is not new, societies have contended with them since the dawn of civilization (Ancient Greece and Rome). Many countries in the Caribbean had de facto plutocracies during their colonial years (Montserrat, Belize and the Bahamas’s Bay Street Boys come to mind), just as a natural off-shoot from a mono-industrial economy (sugar, coffee, tobacco planters). Considering existing plutocracies today, like the City of London and Wall Street, we see that an appropriate strategy can allow a society to “bottle the plutocratic concept” and use it for good. …

The idea of “bottling” plutocratic institutions for the Greater Good is a “big idea” in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. How exactly is this envisioned? The answer provided in the book is that of Self-Governing Entities (SGE).

The Go Lean book delves into this approach of inviting the super-rich to establish industrial parks, corporate campuses and research parks in bordered territories in the Caribbean. These entities would be governed solely by the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the CU and SGE’s.

The approach of the Go Lean roadmap is not to punish the super-rich for their success nor cower to any special interests group at the expense of the greater population.

>>> Defense #4 <<<

Forging Change – Opposition Research: Special Interest – January 30, 2020 –

The best offense is a good defense.

This is a winning strategy in football, yes (think NFL), but in nation-building as well. The actuality of the 30 Caribbean member-states is that we are losing … to the competition and opposition:

Who exactly are our competition or opposition? What do we know of their motives or designs? How can we overcome their hindrance?

These are important questions to consider – and answer – if we want to succeed in reforming and transforming the societal engines in our region. This activity is referred to as Opposition Research, where we study and gather intelligence on any adversarial opponent that may challenge us from reaching our goals. …

There is a name for our pain; there are named opponents that hinders us; one of them is the United States of America. This is NOT a Declaration of War; rather this is just an acknowledgement that many of the policies and practices of America works counter-productive to Caribbean hopes and dreams. We are frenemies. …

Who is the opposition? Needless to say, we are not talking about the common people on the street, rather we are referring to Crony-Capitalistic stakeholders in the country: Special Interest, Big Business, Corrupt Politicians. This is the Opposition.

How can we overcome the hindrance of the Opposition?

Answer: We overcome their hindrance by Forging Change in our society; we reform and transform the economic, security and governing engines despite the local opposition. We get the public to want the manifestation of this vision. We get the political leaders to lean-in this roadmap. This way we have Bottoms-Up and Top-Down pressure to make this roadmap succeed. Lastly, this dissuades our citizens from leaving the homeland as well; thereby sparing them from the American “nightmare” as the only available Dream – Caribbean people have dreams too!

The book Go Lean … Caribbean posits that America’s history (and present) has been plagued with Crony-Capitalism (and the other defect of Institutional Racism). This should not the role model the Caribbean would want to emulate, where the rich gets richer and the poor gets poorer. Rather, the book advocates for a Non-Zero Sum climate, to where we would NOT punish rich people, but still empower the Middle Class for more success.

In their homeland, the American Dream is now in jeopardy. How about in the Caribbean; is there a Caribbean Dream?

Yes, indeed. It is the quest to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

The Go Lean book stressed that there must be opportunities to fulfill the Caribbean Dream. To get an education, and a job, and a home, and good healthcare options and the preservation of our culture. This can be summarized as “prosper where planted” for our citizens … and our children and grandchildren too.

Yes, we can …

In addition to the above references, this commentary has submitted other posts related to Income Inequality, monitoring it, mitigating it and managing it. Consider this sample of other blog/commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19813 Good Leadership: Caring builds trust; trust builds caring
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19572 MasterClass: Economics and Society
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18371 Student Loans Could Dictate Justice
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11598 Plea to Philanthropic Rich: Give us your Time, Talent and Treasuries
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10043 Integration Plan for Greater Caribbean Prosperity
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8669 Lesson from Detroit’s Action Plan: Make Community College Tuition-free
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8370 A Lesson in Economic Fallacies – Austerity: Dangerous Idea?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7789 An Ode to Detroit – Lessons on Trade
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5559 Economic Principle: Profit – When ‘Greed is Good’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5597 Economic Principle: Wages – Market Forces -vs- Collective Bargaining
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5542 Economic Principle: Rent – Bad Ethos of Rent-Seeking

Zero Sum versus Non-Zero Sum …

… this is an important consideration. Let’s go Non-Zero Sum. We need our people and institutions in the Caribbean region to cooperate, not compete; working together. There is opportunity for all of us, every citizen and resident in the 30 member-states of the region – “our pie will just grow, not splice”. This urging even corresponds with the Bible’s exhortation against competition – considering the actuality of the professed Christianity in the region:

“Let us not become egotistical, stirring up competition with one another, envying one another.”​— Galatians 5:26 NWT .

All persons in the Caribbean are hereby urged to lean-in for this Go Lean roadmap to cooperate, confederate, collaborate, collude, collective-bargain and community-build.

Now’s the time for these empowerments in our Caribbean homeland. Let’s build a better society. We now know how, by employing the strategies, tactics and implementations presented in the book Go Lean…Caribbean. These are conceivable, believable and achievable.

Yes, we can … 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation. 

Appendix VIDEO – The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It | Robert Reich – https://youtu.be/Y_sjfchNsiM

Robert Reich
Published March 24, 2020 – Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich presents the reader’s digest of his latest book, The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It. He explores the system of power in America that bails out corporations instead of people, even in times of crisis, and breaks down how we have socialism for corporations and the rich, and harsh capitalism for everybody else.

As power has concentrated in the hands of corporations and the wealthy few, those few have grabbed nearly all the economic gains — and political power — for themselves.

Meanwhile, workers have been shafted.

This isn’t a democracy, where all power is shared. It’s an oligarchy, where those at the top have the power to grab everything for themselves.

But history shows that oligarchies cannot hold on to power forever. They are inherently unstable. When a vast majority of people come to view an oligarchy as illegitimate and an obstacle to their wellbeing — which is happening before our very eyes as this crisis exacerbates — oligarchies become vulnerable.

Order Reich’s new book today: https://bit.ly/thesystemrbreich

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Zero Sum: Regional Tourism should not be a competition – Encore

Posted on February 24, 2021 in Economics, Ethos, Industries, Strategy

Just recently in the Caribbean, we have had to contend with some superlative challenges to our regional tourism product. Consider:

The Clear and Present Dangers of doing business in the Caribbean have been “clear” and “present”.

There is the need for Non-Zero-Sum Thinking. For far too long, Caribbean member-states have been thinking Zero Sum – for one to gain, another one must lose – just trying to outshine each other, with no consideration as to how well or badly the other places fare:

I got mine; I don’t care if you get yours!

Your loss is my gain!

This reflects competition, when really what we need is cooperation, collaboration, convention, collective-bargaining, collusion, consensus-building, confederation …

The requested change is for a new cooperative Community Ethos – the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of society – that we should adopt to coordinate our economic engine on a regional basis.

This is the continuation of the February 2021 Teaching Series for the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. (Every month, we present a series relevant to Caribbean life, culture and economics). For this month, we are looking at the subject of Zero Sum Thinking and lamenting how cooperation would be so much more preferred to competition. This fourth entry, 4-of-6, encores a previous blog-commentary that addressed this subject thoroughly; this aligned with the full treatment of this subject. Consider the full catalog of this series, as it is being presented:

  1. Zero Sum: Lesson 101 – No more “Gold Standard”
  2. Zero Sum: Realities of Globalism – “Non-Zero Sum” for the whole world
  3. Zero Sum: ICT as a tool, the “Great Equalizer”
  4. Zero Sum: Regional Tourism should not be a competition – Encore
  5. Zero Sum: Book Review – Racism is a factor; “Us vs Them”
  6. Zero Sum: How to fix “Inequality” – Raise the tide, all boats are elevated

We started this series on Zero Sum by looking at the economic principle that since we are no longer on a “Gold Standard”, any view of “haves versus have-nots” is no longer an issue. We, the full 30 Caribbean member-states, can now all win, gain and grow. Since we have been here and said this before, it is only apropos that we reconsider that previous blog-commentary from June 16 2018, as it relates this assertion.

———————-

Go Lean Commentary – Regional Tourism Coordination – No Longer Optional

No one can hide anymore!

There are 30 different member-states, with 5 different colonial legacies and 4 different languages, and yet people around the world only considers our region as One Caribbean:

Event Consequence to Perception
Devastating hurricane Oops, the Caribbean is unable to function commercially
Devastating earthquake Oops, the Caribbean is unable to function commercially
Emergence of a pandemic Oops, the Caribbean is unable to function commercially

All of the Caribbean member-states are in this “same boat”, so this is a matter of image and geographic misconceptions, more so than it is about disasters.

So, good or bad, the fate of one Caribbean member-state is tied to the other member-states, when it comes to tourism. See this point conveyed in this news article here:

Title: Geographic misconceptions hurting Caribbean economies
By Sarah Peter

Nassau, Bahamas – The mistaken perception among many travelers of the complete devastation of the Caribbean in the wake of the 2017 hurricane season caused further economic destruction to the region’s economy.

That’s according to the Chair of the Caribbean Tourism Organization (CTO), Joy Jibrilu. She raised the concern amid staggering losses among countries which were not impacted by the 2017 Hurricane season.

Jibrilu says following the devastation caused by hurricanes Irma and Maria to some islands in the region, many travelers called and canceled for countries who were not impacted by the storm.

This resulted in a significant drop in hotel room demand across the entire Caribbean. In light of that another disaster, an economic storm, was created which resulted in great losses in tourism revenue and a challenge for tourism officials.

“All our travel partners, all of them without exception called and said that we have heard the Caribbean  is closed.”

She further added that  Caribbean islands irrespective of if they were not actually impacted by the storm were economically  affected.

“We all lost when people were not sure if or when to book if they canceled. You saw a dip in bookings because people thought that the islands which were not impacted were. We must quantify the figures of lost business so we can share the story with the world to tell them how serious it is. “

The chair of the CTO says that over one billion US dollars in tourism revenue was lost in the wake of last year’s hurricane season, the costliest hurricane season on record.

Jibrilu, who is also the Director of Tourism for the island of Barbados says the region’s reconstruction and recovery effort has been estimated at close to  6 billion dollars.

“Tourism is the region’s greatest driver of foreign exchange tax revenue and reliable vehicle of poverty reduction and human capital development for the region’s small island developing states. The tragedy is that the dampening of demand occurred even among islands that were not in the path of the storm.  This contributes to  an economic disaster as tourism visitation dropped of resulting in significant losses in revenue.”

Jilbrilu blamed the international media for the problem. She says their reports describes the region as if it was one country as opposed to several different islands. The chairman of the CTO says this inaccurate reporting is costing a region millions and negatively impacting lives in the region.

“First of all if we look at international news reporters when they talk about a hurricane they say the “Caribbean” has been impacted. They generalize and say the entire Caribbean. As a result, people look at the Caribbean as a whole unit as oppose to all these different countries, thousands of miles away from each other. To put it in context the Bahamas alone from north to south covers one hundred thousand square miles that is further than the distance of  Toronto to New York.  So if a storm happens in New York no one would say I am not going to Toronto. They just would not, it just does not make sense but when people lump the Caribbean  together as just one region ( as if it was just one country ) it  is negative.”

Jilbrilu says the region’s economy and people lives depend on accurate reporting and think making the international media more aware of this matter is a matter of economic prosperity or suffering for the region’s people.

“What we have done is to educate people of the geography of the Caribbean, that the same time it takes to travel from the Bahamas to Barbados is the same as traveling from London in the UK to Rome, Italy. So what happens to the Bahamas does not impact Barbados and vice versa.  We really  want to get that message out.”

Jilbrilu made the disclosure at the 2018 annual Caribbean Aviation Meetup in the Bahamas. Dubbed as the Caribbean region’s largest aviation conference the annual event brings together major players from the aviation and tourism industries aimed at tackling problems faced by the  World and the Caribbean’s Tourism and Aviation industries.
Source: Posted and retrieved June 15, 2018 from: https://stluciatimes.com/2018/06/15/geographic-misconceptions-hurting-caribbean-economies/

As related in the foregoing, the whole world knew of the 2017 devastation from Hurricanes Irma and Maria. But the affected (wiped-out) islands were only Barbuda, Grenada and Puerto Rico. And yet:

… following the devastation caused by hurricanes Irma and Maria to some islands in the region, many travelers called and canceled for countries who were not impacted.

Again, this is a matter of image and geographic misconceptions, more so than it is about disasters or even tourism. The world is telling the Caribbean: Better band together to assuage your challenges. We are united in affliction, we might as well be united in solutions. Yes, it is no longer optional for our region to confederate as a Single Market. This, we must do!

Confederation is not a bad thing! In a previous blog-commentary, it was asserted that our Caribbean member-states all suffer from the same inadequate image, and thusly we can all benefit from a regional elevation. Yes, the effect of regional integration could be an Increased Caribbean Tourism Market Share. That commentary quoted:

It’s time to take inventory of Caribbean tourism:

It has been weighed in the balance; it has been measured …
It has been found wanting!
…
Tourism is the current dominant industry; the goal is to “stand on the shoulders” of previous accomplishments, add infrastructure not possible by just one member-state alone and then reap the benefits. Imagine this manifestation in just this one new strategy: inter-island ferries that connect all islands for people, cars and goods.

The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean seeks to reboot the economic engines of the Caribbean member-states. So while tourism is the region’s primary economic driver, it is inadequate for providing the needs of the people in the region, and inadequate for dealing with the crisis of natural disasters. We must do better!

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU is designed to be a technocratic intergovernmental entity that shepherds economic growth for the Caribbean region and mitigate against all security-disaster challenges. The goal is to reboot and optimize the region’s economic, security and governing engines with a regional focus.

The Go Lean/CU roadmap will employ strategies, tactics and implementations to impact its prime directives; identified with the following 3 statements:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines. This includes a professional disaster planning and response organization.
  • Improvement of Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies, as in Self-Governing Entities.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to elevate Caribbean image in good times and bad. One advocacy seeks to optimize the Caribbean tourism brand throughout the world; consider some specific plans, excerpts and headlines from the book on Page 133 entitled:

10 Ways to Better Manage Image

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market
This will allow for the unification of the region into one market of 42 million people across 30 member-states, with a GDP of $800 Billion (according to 2010 figures). In addition, the treaty calls for collective bargaining with foreign countries and industry representatives for causes of significance to the Caribbean community. There are many times when the media portray a “negative” depiction of Caribbean life, culture and people. The CU will have the scale to effectuate negotiations to better manage the region’s image, and the means by which to enforce the tenets.
2 Media Industrial Complex
The Caribbean Central Bank will settle electronic payments transactions; this will allow electronic commerce to flourish in the region. With the payment mechanisms in place, music, movies, TV shows and other media (domestic and foreign) can be paid for and downloaded legally. For a population base of 42 million, this brings a huge economic clout.
3 Respect for Intellectual Property
4 Sentinel in Hollywood
5 Anti-Defamation League
This Pro-Jewish organization provides a great model for marshalling against negative stereotypes that can belittle a race. The CU will study, copy, and model a lot of the successes of the Anti-Defamation League. This organization can also be consulted with to coach the CU’s efforts. (Consider the example of Uptown Yardies Rasta Gang in the game Grand Theft Auto [206]).
6 Power of the Boycott
The CU is an economic negotiating bloc. The power to ban, boycott and censure trade in intellectual property is a powerful deterrent for producers to be balanced in their media portrayals. A CU federal agency will assume the role to rate pending moves, as performed by MPAA in the US. While the content may not be banned outright, placing a Rated R, NC-17 or X label to a film will affect the economic results from the box office. This is the “power of the purse”.
7 Freedom of the Press
8 Libel and Slander Litigation and Enforcement
9 Public Relations and Press Releases
To facilitate effective communications, the CU’s agencies will embrace the role of “Press Secretaries” to disseminateaccurate records, news and portrayals of Caribbean life. This role is Offensive rather than the above Defensive tactics.
10 Image Award Medals and Recognition
Following the model of the NAACP Image Awards, the CU will recognize and give accolades for individual and institutions that portray a positive “image” of Caribbean life and CU initiatives. This would be similar to the Presidential Medal of … / Congressional Medal of …

The likelihood of more hurricanes in the Caribbean is undeniable. This is further exacerbated with the reality of Climate Change. Our Caribbean region must be prepared to Rinse & Repeat. It is no longer an option to maybe manage our image on a regional level. The world must know that we are bigger than just whatever island has been recently impacted by a natural disaster. This challenge is heavy-lifting because, as a region, we rarely muster an adequate response to our natural disasters.

The Go Lean book explains further that the Caribbean region must install a security apparatus with the directive to prepare and respond to natural disasters. The efficiency and effectiveness of a Caribbean Emergency Management Agency must be streamlined to ensure the world of the business continuity of our systems of commerce. This quotation is derived from the book at Page 184:

Modeled after FEMA in the US, this agency will be charged with the preparation, response and reconstruction for the regions for the eventual manifestations of hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, flooding and other declared disasters, natural and man-made like medical epidemic, drought, pollution, oil spills, terrorism, etc.

This is what it means to be a technocracy, to promote the best delivery arts and sciences, in this case for Professional Emergency Management; as explained further at Page 64:

The CU treaty calls for a collective security agreement for the Caribbean member-states to prepare-respond to natural disasters, emergency incidents and assuage against systemic threats against the homeland. The CU employs the professional arts and sciences of Emergency Management to spread the costs and risks across the entire region. Outside of hurricanes or earthquakes, the emergency scope includes medical trauma, pandemic incidents and industrial accidents (i.e. oil or chemical spills) – any scenario that can impact the continuity of the economic engines and/or community.

This above scenario describes the dynamics of regional tourism promotion and protection. Yes, managing regional tourism means optimizing the planning and response for natural disasters. This is no longer optional for this homeland. We are compelled to invest in this integration and collaboration. We must have the leverage to spread the costs, risks and premium base across the entire region. Only then will the rest of the world know that any hurricane in the Caribbean does not mean a shutdown of the entire Caribbean region. Our image will then be:

Be our guests … in rain and shine.

Consider this Hawaiian example; yes this problem of promoting tourism while contending with natural disasters is not just an issue for the Caribbean. Rather, the US State of Hawaii is contending with the same thing right now, with the active Kīlauea volcano. See related news VIDEO in the Appendix below.

There is the need for better stewardship of the economic engines on touristic islands, be it Hawaii or the Caribbean. It is what it is! And our situations will worsen; things will get worse before they get worst. This is due to the reality and eventuality of Climate Change. This need to assuage against the threats and realities of Climate Change was an original intent of the Go Lean roadmap. The opening Declaration of Interdependence stresses this (Page 11) in the first of many pronouncements:

i. Whereas the earth’s climate has undeniably changed resulting in more severe tropical weather storms, it is necessary to prepare to insure the safety and security of life, property and systems of commerce in our geographical region. As nature recognizes no borders in the target of its destruction, we also must set aside border considerations in the preparation and response to these weather challenges.

The Go Lean movement has previously detailed many related issues and advocacies for disaster awareness and abatement. Consider this sample of previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15012 In Life or Death: No Love for Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14925 ‘Climate Change’ Reality!? Numbers Don’t Lie
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14832 Example of Manifesting Environmental Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13391 After Maria, Failed-State Indicators: Destruction and Defection for Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12996 After Irma, Failed State Indicators: Destruction and Defection
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12977 After Irma, Barbuda Becomes a ‘Ghost Town’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12900 The Logistics of Disaster Relief
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12879 Disaster Preparation: ‘Rinse and Repeat’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11858 Looking and Learning from the Cautionary Tale of Kiribati
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9455 Fix ‘Climate Change’ – Yes, We Can
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7103 COP21 – ‘Climate Change’ Acknowledged
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6893 A Meteorologist’s View On Climate Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4673 ‘Climate Change‘ Merchants of Doubt … to Preserve Profits!!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2465 Book: ‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2276 Climate Change May Affect Food Supply Within a Decade
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1883 Climate Change May Bring More Kidney Stones
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1817 Caribbean grapples with intense cycles of flooding & drought

In summary, the issues in this commentary relate more to image and geographic misconceptions than they do tourism and natural disasters. Do we have the global reputation to “take a punch and stand back up”.

Unfortunately, no!

So we must reform and transform the Caribbean’s societal engines so as to assuage the dangers of Climate Change and natural disasters; pandemics too. This is the quest of the Go Lean roadmap, and this is not just a pipe dream; it is conceivable, believable and achievable for our regional stakeholders to do better and be better.

All Caribbean stakeholders – residents and tourists alike – are urged to lean-in to this roadmap for change … and empowerment. Yes, we can make the region a better place to live work and play. 🙂

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

—————-

Appendix VIDEO – Hawaii tourism hit hard by Kilauea volcano eruption – https://youtu.be/89ppKLS5ufI

CBS Evening News
Published on Jun 2, 2018 – As molten lava destroys more homes in Hawaii, police have been ordered to arrest people who refuse to evacuate. Thousands have already been forced to flee to safety. Now, dramatic images broadcast around the world are having another impact — on tourism. CBS News correspondent Carter Evans reports.

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Zero Sum: Realities of Globalism

Posted on February 21, 2021 in Economics, Ethos, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

This is the goal of business decision-making … everywhere:

Choose the options that provide the most benefits with the least cost.

To accomplish this goal there is the need to employ the Comparative Analysis tactic; this was thoroughly defined in the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean; see here from Page 119:

Compare and Analyze Opportunity Costs
The comparative analysis conundrum is straight forward: an absolute trade advantage exists when countries can produce a commodity with less cost per unit than could its trading partner. By the same reasoning, it should import commodities in which it has an absolute disadvantage. For businesses, this is essential to remaining competitive.

When we combine the Theory of Comparative Analysis and Cross-Border Trade, we many times get to a situation of  Zero Sum Thinking, that is, there will be winners and losers.

But …

… when we approach the same scenario with Non-Zero-Sum Thinking , then we realize that we could have “win-win” … in the long-run. The Theory of Comparative Analysis allows for an international trade practice where producers can specialize in different roles in production and the supply vertical – the end result being “net gains in total output”.

So the country providing cheap labor can elevate their economy with more specialized labor and an elevation to the Middle Classes, thus becoming consumers, themselves, of the end-products of the production web. This is what happened in China … and “Asian Tiger” countries, lifting their Middle Classes from poverty in a short time. This was related in a previous Go Lean blog-commentary from June 20, 2019; see this excerpt:

‘Free Market’ Versus … China – Two Systems at Play
China elevated itself from poverty to prosperity for 1.3 Billion people in just 40 years. Well done. See VIDEO here:
VIDEO – How China became the world’s second largest economy – https://youtu.be/_sV5P_F3frY

CNN Business
Published on Oct 6, 2015 – More than 500 million people have been lifted out of poverty since China’s economic reforms began in 1978.

Just think of all the Chinese made products that you have enjoyed; i.e. Apple’s iPhones, Nike’s Sneakers, etc..

This “Non-Zero-Sum Win-Win” happens … eventually, but usually only after Long Train of Abuses. This is why this discussion is so important. Many times Global Trade is pursued only for the short-term gain of maximum benefit at minimum cost; we have observed-and-reported on this in Detroit, Michigan. But we have found, that if the motives are for everyone to benefit – the elusive win-win – then the misery could be avoided in the first place.

Some times that misery spurs hate, disgust, terrorism and even war.

This is the continuation of the February 2021 Teaching Series for the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. For this month, we are looking at the psychology and sociology of Zero Sum Thinking and trying to identify, qualify and correct the defects that it brings to Caribbean society. This second entry, 2-of-6, asserts that the problem for the Caribbean is bigger than just the Caribbean. The problem with Globalism is it affects the whole globe. Consider the full catalog of this series, has it is being presented:

  1. Zero Sum: Lesson 101 – No more “Gold Standard”
  2. Zero Sum: Realities of Globalism – “Non-Zero Sum” for the whole world
  3. Zero Sum: ICT as a tool, the “Great Equalizer”
  4. Zero Sum: Regional Tourism should not be a competition – Encore
  5. Zero Sum: Book Review – Racism is a factor; “Us vs Them”
  6. Zero Sum: How to fix “Inequality” – Raise the tide, all boats are elevated

We started this series on Zero Sum by looking at the economic principle drawn from the “Gold Standard”. Now, we expand the scope further to consider the needs of the whole planet – the actuality of Globalism.

There is a lot of literature conscientizing the benefits of Non-Zero-Sum Global Trade; see this sample essay:

Title: Trade is not zero-sum game

Introduction – “Trade is not a zero-sum game, in which those who win do so at the costs of others; it is, or least it can be, a positive-sum game, in which everyone can be a winner.”

We no longer live in a zero-sum world

By: Joseph E. Stiglitz
In general, free trade is an instrument with the help of which countries can increase productivity of their resources, develop their specialization in a certain product, and therefore increase volume of production. Sovereign states and its separate regions can benefit enormously by producing goods in which they have an advantage, while exchanging them on the goods that they are not able to produce as effectively as the other countries do.

Indeed, trade is an engine of growth, but still we have to answer a lot of questions to understand whether trade liberalization is good for economic performance, and whether it will lead the developing countries to further economic development. We should look back to the history of trade, draw lessons from it, and answer the central questions. What is the basis for international division of labor? What are the factors that determine competitiveness of the country on international trade arena? Is trade liberalization harmful for the developing countries or not, and what is the best way for them to achieve an economic development?

Participation in international trade brings a lot of advantages to the developing world. It helps to join other countries in the development of science and technology, effectively use the resources, to provide the country with a wide range of products from the other countries, and to implement the structural changes in the economy in a short period of time. Can the developing countries do so in such short periods of time? It took decades and generations for the developed countries to build what they have now. Is their experience suitable for the rest of the world? Are they pushing the “good policies” in order to help the developing world, or they are simply “kicking away the ladder” in order to save their own wealth? Let us see the two main points of view on these questions…

Is trade liberalization good for economic performance?

We can differentiate two mainstreams in international economic relations – liberalism and protectionism. The first who developed theoretical and practical approaches of protectionism were mercantilists. Politics of high tariffs, restrictions of imports, and financial support of infant industries took place in XVI -XVIII in many now developed countries. During the politics of protectionism industries of many developed countries expanded, and Great Britain, France, Germany, USA and other developed countries took their leading positions in the market. In the XVIII century mercantilism was strongly criticized by Adam Smith, and later by David Ricardo. They believed that other countries achieved their highest level of development and prospered only when they took away all the barriers and applied politics of free trade. Before the WWI trade was already developing with a high speed. It was quite easy at that time due to stable currencies, relatively free move of capital and labor, and macroeconomic stability. Between WWI and WWII attempts to liberalize trade were not that successful, but after the World War II all the questions concerning trade liberalization appeared in the center of agenda, many international trade organizations emerged, and a lot of agreements were signed.

In our days countries are more and more involved into the free trade: developed countries obviously see the benefits from free trade for themselves and they are trying to implement different politics (“good policies”, “good institutions”, free markets) for developing countries in order to foster economic development. Economic literature has a variety of works written by different economists concerning positive and negative effects of international trade on economic growth. For example, Ha-Joon Chang in his book “Kicking away the ladder” reviews the history of different now developed countries and argues that there are a lot of myths concerning the policies which were used by the governments of these countries on their way to economic growth. Especially, he mentions the economic policies of both Britain and the USA, which now seem to be really concerned about world free trade and opening markets. During different historical periods different instruments of protectionism were used by these countries: infant industry protection, export subsidies, export quality control by the state, tariff and nontariff barriers, etc. Looking back to different historical periods we can see that today’s developing countries are using protectionism much more less that developed countries did in the earlier times. For example, the World Bank argues that the average tariff on manufactures for developing countries is high enough, compared to the one industrialized countries used before, but the productivity gap increased which means that developing countries need to use much higher tariffs in order to promote economic growth for their industries.

As soon as the developed countries reached the necessary level of development they started using so called “pulling-away exercises”. “As soon as NDC’s reached the top, they used all kind of tactics to “pull-away” from the follower countries. Policies deployed were, of course, different according to the political status of the latter-colonies, semi-independent countries bound by unequal treaties, and independent competitor countries. Britain was particularly aggressive in preventing development in the colonies.”(Ha-Joon Chang “Kicking the ladder away”) One more important point arises from the history of institutional development. It took quite a long period of time for the developed countries to build their institutions, however now they are pushing developing countries to the “global standards”, demanding reforms in 5-10 year period, which is not that real and actually maybe even harmful. Chang in his work also states that developing countries were growing economically much faster when they were using “bad policies”, rather when they are using “good policies” right now. Drawing lessons from history then we can assume that developed countries are simply trying to prevent further development of other countries and save their own prosperity.

There are a lot of arguments among the economists concerning the question of harm that free trade can bring for domestic industries. No doubt, it is good for consumers, because they are getting goods for lower prices, but domestic industries will lose their profits due to lower prices of imported goods. This can slow down further development of domestic industries, lead to deindustrialization and specialization mainly on raw materials in a long run; though in a short run it can increase currency earnings from exports, help pay debts and decrease deficits. The strategy of exporting and liberalization of trade is not always suitable for the countries with transition economy, because it may lead to further gap in life level (poverty) and technological progress. Indeed, it can be really harmful for the developing world to open up their markets without finding a right policy, suitable for their specific situation inside the country, but countries can benefit as well.

An example of USSR shows us that politics of active government intervention and dirigiste politics doesn’t have a positive influence on economy as well; on the other hand we have an export oriented policy, policy of integration with the world economy of Japan and East Asia, which brought them to fast economic growth.

A lot of arguments in favor of free trade can also convince us that free trade can be an engine of economic growth and countries can benefit enormously. Joseph E. Stiglitz in his book “Making Globalization Work” brings us a lot of arguments of positive effects of free trade, especially for the developing world. It seems like right now we still haven’t got all the benefits out of it, because different instruments of unfair trade are still being used by the developed countries.

Free trade maximizes competition, which leads to the increase of output, as a result prices fall down and this has a positive effect for consumers. Openness may lead to economical growth, reduce of poverty, increase of health and education level, liberalization of labor markets can bring huge remittances to developing countries; development of institutions in a short period of time and it can help close the gap in knowledge and resources between developed and developing world, by providing developing countries with more opportunities. In today’s globalizing world countries with a closed economy are under the risk to stay far behind the developed world, stay undeveloped.

Conclusion
To trade or not to trade is not a question any more – it is obvious that countries need to trade in order to promote their economic performance. The problem that we should be concerned about is how we can make trade fairer for everybody and whether these specific policies are suitable for every country. Of course, those countries whose industries are more developed are voting in favor of free markets, trade liberalization and lower tariff barriers in order to get rid of extra production and open new markets for themselves. We can actually make this work without harming infant industries of developing countries. Trade liberalization can have a positive effect as well as negative, especially for developing world and we should be concerned to maximize positive effect, and take the most out of it.

“Allowing developing countries to adopt the policies and institutions that are more suitable to their stages of development and to other conditions they face will enable them to grow faster. This will benefit not only the developing countries, but also the developed countries in the long run, as it will increase the trade and investment opportunities available to the developed countries in the developing countries.” (Ha-Joon Chang “Kicking away the ladder”)

Literature:

  • Ha-Joon Chang “Kicking Away the Ladder”
  • L.Alan Winters “Trade Liberalization and Poverty. The Evidence So Far”
  • Ajit Singh “Special and Differential Treatment. The Multilateral Trading System and Economic Development in the Twenty-first Century”
  • Joseph E. Stiglitz “Making Globalization Work”
  • Moon “The theoretical and Historical Origins of Trade Issues”

Source: Retrieved February 21, 2021: https://www.ukessays.com/essays/economics/trade-is-not-ero-sum-game.php

Expanding trade in the Caribbean has always been a focus for the movement behind the Go Lean book. In fact, the book serves as an introduction to the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU); the emphasis is on Trade.

To participate in the game of Global Trade, we must be competent in some contributory role; we cannot only consume, we must add some value. This has been the consistent theme of the Go Lean book.

The book explained that the proper management of trade can increase wealth. This is related among the introductory Economic Principles, as follows (Page 21):

Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth: People specialize in the production of certain goods and services because they expect to gain from it. People trade what they produce with other people when they think they can gain something from the exchange. Some benefits of voluntary trade include higher standards of living and broader choices of goods and services.

If we want Non-Zero-Sum, a win-win, we must do our part to deliver some value-add to the trade dynamic. How do we go about in improving our trade prospects? The Go Lean book presents a detailed roadmap. It asserts that there are a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to better “Foster Trade” in the Caribbean region, among ourselves and the rest of the world. Consider this advocacy (headlines, summaries and excerpts) from the book’s Page 119, entitled:

10 Ways to Benefit from Globalization

1 Lean-in for the Single Market treaty for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU)

The CU will allow for the unification of the region into one market, thereby creating a single economy of 30 member-states, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion. The CU will deploy and then empower the economic engines within the borders of the member-states and also petition the United Nations for a declaration of an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) for the Caribbean Seas. The intra-island engines will include Free Trade Zones, Industrial Parks, Urban Enterprise Zones and other Self Governing Entities. The goal of these installations is to increase economic activity, more jobs from GDP growth and direct foreign investments.
2 Declare Interdependence

The region, as a whole, can compete with and exploit the benefits of globalization, but the CU member-states need to openly acknowledge that they are interdependent in providing offense and defense in this war for “global trade”. Many of the regions’ challenges are too big for just one nation-state alone, but rather leveraging the population of 42 million in 30 member-states provides more economies-of-scale and more shock absorption for the CU investments.
3 Join The Club – World Trade Organization (WTO)
4 Compare and Analyze Opportunity Costs
5 Act Locally, Think Globally

The region has the same needs as elsewhere for basic supplies like food. As such, the CU needs to produce more of its own foods, even if the opportunity cost is higher – the EU and US accomplish the same goal by granting subsidies to their domestic agricultural sector. The CU will do the same but also include aqua-culture for fisheries stock control.
6 Level the Playing Field with Technology

The CU will level the playing field of global trade by fully deploying Internet & Communications Technology (ICT). The embrace of e-Delivery, e-Commerce and e-Payments systems allow firms and institutions in the Caribbean region an able-bodied chance of competing head-to-head with anyone in North America, Europe and Asia.
7 Foster Developments in Culture and Sports
8 Control the Message and Media
9 Help Regional Businesses Find Foreign Markets – Export

Since labor is cheaper in the CU region, compared to many foreign trading partners, this can present advantages (using the Theory of Comparative Advantage) for providing certain services and products like tele-services and light manufacturing. These prospects are further enhanced with the infrastructure the CU will facilitate for communications, energy systems, and transportation – where the Atlantic Turnpike can nullify transit issues.
10 Reform Tax and Revenue Systems

The world is flat; this means that global trade proliferates. Some communities have already executed their roadmap for Non-Zero Sum Thinking. It is time we catch up in the Caribbean. See more here:

Title: The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century
This is an international best-selling book by[Economist] Thomas L. Friedman that analyzes globalization, primarily in the early 21st century. The title is a metaphor for viewing the world as a level playing field in terms of commerce, wherein all competitors, except for labor, have an equal opportunity. As the first edition cover illustration indicates, the title also alludes to the perceptual shift required for countries, companies, and individuals to remain competitive in a global market in which historical and geographic divisions are becoming increasingly irrelevant.

Friedman is a strong advocate of those changes, calling himself a “free-trader” and a “compassionate flatist”, and he criticizes societies that resist the changes. He emphasizes the inevitability of a rapid pace of change and the extent to which the emerging abilities of individuals and developing countries are creating many pressures on businesses and individuals in the United States; he has special advice for Americans and for the developing world. Friedman’s is a popular work based on much personal research, travel, conversation, and reflection. In his characteristic style, through personal anecdotes and opinions, he combines in The World Is Flat a conceptual analysis accessible to a broad public. The book was first released in 2005, was later released as an “updated and expanded” edition in 2006, and was yet again released with additional updates in 2007 as “further updated and expanded: Release 3.0”. The title was derived from a statement by Nandan Nilekani, former CEO of Infosys.[1] The World Is Flat won the inaugural Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award in 2005.[2]

Source: Retrieved February 21, 2021 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_Is_Flat

Non-Zero Sum Thinking reflects the new Community Ethos that we in the Caribbean need to adopt. This means we have to look at the rest of the world as potential trading partners and new friends, not strangers or rivals. Can we pull this off?

Yes, we can …

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt the new Community Ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to accomplish this goal.  In addition, we have published many previous blog-commentaries on the effort to foster more Global and Free Trade. See a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=21138 Brexit Manifestation: Bad Model for Trade
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18834 A Lesson in History: Free Trade Agreement of the Americas
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16192 In Defense of Trade: China Realities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16206 In Defense of Trade – India’s Business Process Outsourcing
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16208 In Defense of Trade – Bilateral Tariffs: No one wins
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12146 Commerce of the Seas – Good Shipbuilding Model for Trade
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12144 Commerce of the Seas – ‘Sea Power’ Countries Have Advantages
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8799 Trade with China – Too Big to Ignore
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7789 Lessons from Detroit on Trade
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6867 How to address high consumer prices? Better Trade Deals
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5597 Economic Principle: Market Forces overrides Collective Bargaining
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4767 Welcoming World Trade Organization & Say Goodbye to Nationalism
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4700 Rare Earths: The new ‘Rush’ for Valuable Trade Assets
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2887 Caribbean States urged to work together to address rum subsidies
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2435 Latin America and Caribbean’s “Korea-like” dreams
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=994 Bahamas rejects US demand for fairer Trade for American Imports

“No man is an island; no island is an island”.

The “world is flat”; we have to complete with the rest of the world, yes. But we can also cooperate, collaborate and combine efforts with other parties sprawl throughout the wide world.

Let’s get busy …

… let’s get serious on this quest.

This is how we will make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders – producers and consumers alike – to lean-in to this comprehensive Go Lean roadmap to elevate Caribbean society. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 12 – 13):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

xxiv. Whereas a free market economy can be induced and spurred for continuous progress, the Federation must install the controls to better manage aspects of the economy: jobs, inflation, savings rate, investments and other economic principles. Thereby attracting direct foreign investment because of the stability and vibrancy of our economy.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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One Person Can Make a Difference – ENCORE

Posted on February 11, 2021 in Ethos, Social, Strategy

SuperBowl LV … on February 7, 2021 … Wow!!!

It was a fun watch. Check out these encyclopedic details:

  • The Game – The championship for the 2020 NFL season. The National Football Conference (NFC) champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers defeated the American Football Conference (AFC) champion Kansas City Chiefs, 31–9. The game took place at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Florida, the home stadium of the Buccaneers, marking the first time that a team played a Super Bowl in its home stadium.[7][8] Due to COVID-19 protocols limiting the stadium’s seating capacity to 25,000 fans, it was the least-attended Super Bowl.[9]
  • The Halftime Show – This was headlined by The Weeknd.[5][116][117] The show featured a number of the Weeknd’s hit songs, including “Can’t Feel My Face“, “Earned It“, and “Blinding Lights“, among others.[120]It was reported that the Weeknd spent US$7 million of his own money on the show, which featured men dressed in all black with red jackets and bandages on their face as backup dancers.[120]
  • The Commercials – The estimated cost of a 30-second commercial at Super Bowl LV remained steady with 2020, with [American TV Network] CBS reportedly charging around $5.5 million. The economic impact of COVID-19 prompted some brands to skip the game, including Avocados from Mexico, Budweiser (who donated the airtime it purchased to the Ad Council for public service announcements regarding COVID-19 vaccination; Budweiser parent company Anheuser-Busch would still air ads for its other brands during the game, with a total purchase in line with that of Super Bowl LIV),[92] Coca-Cola, Hyundai, and Pepsi (focusing more on its halftime show sponsorship).[93][94]
    This is a familiar topic for the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean in that we have exhausted the consideration of lessons-learned for the Caribbean ecosystem from SuperBowl commercials.

There is one more take-away:

The lesson-learned of the impact of One Person.

The SuperBowl winning team, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, had a losing record of 7 – 9 last year. But now, they were able to go from Zero to Hero. How?

One person made a difference: Quarterback Tom Brady.

[This is] his first season away from the New England Patriots; [bringing the winning culture with him]; he was the oldest player in this Super Bowl at 43. He extended his player records for Super Bowl appearances at 10 and wins at seven. He was named Super Bowl MVP for a record fifth time and was the first to receive the award with multiple franchises.[15][16][17] He became the oldest player to receive the honor and win a Super Bowl as the starting quarterback, breaking additional personal records.

It was all because of Tom Brady that this team went from Zero to Hero. This one player made a difference to this game, his team-franchise and the home-town-region. What he brought to the team was more than just a good strategy, more importantly, a good culture (discipline, attitude, respect, commitment to hard-work and a refusal to lose). We truly believe that culture eats strategy for breakfast.

This is familiar. We had published a previous blog-commentary on the same topic on February 6, 2017. It is only apropos that we Encore that commentary again now, as it was a profile in courage for the same player Tom Brady and his previous team. We need more of this culture in the Caribbean; we need to recognize that One Person Can Make a Difference and be prepared to allow that person or those persons to “ply their trade” in the region. We need to invite them here, retain the ones – differences makers – we have and petition to return those ones that have emigrated. We need their impact here in the homeland.

See that previous Encore here/now:

————————-

Go Lean Commentary – ‘Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast’

Congratulations to the New England Patriots of the National Football League. They won SuperBowl LI on Sunday February 5, 2017 – beating the Atlanta Falcons 34 to 28 in a dramatic comeback – in which they overcame a 28 to 3 deficit.

[Congratulations to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the National Football League. They won SuperBowl LV on Sunday February 7, 2021 – beating the Kansas City Chiefs 31 to 9 in a dramatic fashion.]

Their victory proved the validity of the business axiom:

Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

CU Blog - 'Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast' - Photo 2This phrase was articulated by distinguished management consultant Peter Drucker and made famous by Mark Fields, a former President of Ford Motor Corporation. This corporate best-practice – good for nation-building as well – is that this axiom is more than just theory, it is an absolute reality! Any company, or community for that matter, disconnecting the two (culture and strategy) are putting their success at risk.

This expression made a leapfrog to NFL football in 2014 when the Head Coach of another team, Philadelphia Eagles, referred to the concept in a passing comment. See the full origin story in this link:

How ‘Culture Beats Scheme’ Became Eagles’ Motto

The New England Patriots SuperBowl win is proof-positive of the culture-first ethos. Talent abounds in the league; all 32 teams have the same opportunities and yet, none can boast the Patriots’ history of success. Why? This team has focused heavy on its culture … and has the success to show for it:

The Patriots have appeared in the Super Bowl nine times in franchise history, the most of any team, seven of them since the arrival of head coach Bill Belichick and quarterback Tom Brady in 2000. The Patriots have since become one of the most successful teams in NFL history, winning 14 AFC East titles in 16 seasons since 2001, without a losing season in that period. The franchise has since set numerous notable records, including most wins in a ten-year period (126, in 2003–2012), an undefeated 16-game regular season in 2007, the longest winning streak consisting of regular season and playoff games in NFL history (a 21-game streak from October 2003 to October 2004), and the most consecutive division titles won by a team in NFL history (won eight straight division titles from 2009 to 2016). The team owns the record for most Super Bowls reached (seven) and won (five) by a head coach-quarterback tandem, as well as being the first tandem to win the Super Bowl 13 years after the first. – Source: Wikipedia.
CU Blog - Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast - Photo 1

The purpose of this commentary is the focus on culture. This definition of culture refers to community ethos; this is defined in the book Go Lean … Caribbean as …

… the fundamental character or spirit of a culture [group or community], the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society; the dominant assumptions of a people or period.

Culture allows “you” to overcome obstacles; endure the heavy-lifting of a turn-around; invest in future success based on promising talents; stay the course of a roadmap, rather than “giving up” and fleeing for the appearance of greener pastures elsewhere. Culture dictates devoting “blood, sweat and tears” to a community cause, to give a full measure of devotion. We can learn so much by examining organizations and communities of great accomplishments. The New England Patriots is one such model. See VIDEO here describing the culture of the New England Patriots:

VIDEO – Chris Long of New England Patriots on Team, Winning, Unselfish Culture – https://youtu.be/ne-YkmXMN4M

Published on Jan 3, 2017 – Chris Long discusses the New England Patriot’s TEAM Culture, Winning Attitude, & Unselfishness on the NFL Network’s Game Day Prime with former NFL Head Coach Steve Mariucci on 1/1/17.

The Go Lean book relates that there are good ethos and bad ethos – the good ethos can be considered “culture” while the bad ethos may be deemed “defects”. The Caribbean member-states are not known as great societies, despite having the greatest “address on the planet” in terms of terrain, fauna/flora, hospitality, festivities, food, rum and cigars; this is due to our deficient community ethos, our organizational culture. There are role models for us to consider:

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” is a famous quotation attributed to the late business management guru Peter Drucker, and I can’t think of a better example that proves this than Enterprise Rent-A-Car’s acquisition of National Car Rental and Alamo.
…
They have been recognized numerous times for their customer service by J.D. Power. Business Week recognized them as one of the top 25 customer service brands in the world. In addition to running a wildly successful business, they obviously know how to take care of their customers, which means their customers want to come back.

All that is impressive, but not nearly as impressive as how they proved these top customer service awards weren’t a fluke. All of the awards and accolades they continue to receive don’t happen by accident. They aren’t just lucky. Everything Enterprise does is very purposeful. It is their culture. – Forbes Magazine Columnist Shep Hyken’s Profile Story.

One mission of the Go Lean book is to foster good community ethos – good culture – for the Caribbean region. We have great talent in our region and yet still we do not win; our people “take their talents to South Beach / South New York / South Toronto / South London, etc.”. What is missing here? Culture.

The Caribbean has a lot of people who have excelled on the world stage in their chosen professions, only because they fled their Caribbean homes seeking better opportunities abroad. Consider:

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate Caribbean society and culture. The CU has 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion and create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

From the outset of the book, in the opening Declaration of Interdependence, the Go Lean roadmap posits that a target for the CU’s empowerments should be the Caribbean youth. This is the best way to foster a new culture, focus on the next generation. Then the remainder of society will assimilate … the new values within a short time. See the focus on youth in the opening pages of the book (Page 3), with this sample quotation:

Our youth, the next generation, may not be inspired to participate in the future workings of their country; they may measure success only by their exodus from their Caribbean homeland.

Thusly, the Go Lean/CU roadmap dictates how to reach, engage, and solicit the youth market to foster the new required attitudes. These other pronouncements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence, bear a direct reference to this quest for changing culture; consider these on Pages 11 & 13:

xix. Whereas our legacy in recent times is one of societal abandonment, it is imperative that incentives and encouragement be put in place to first dissuade the human flight, and then entice and welcome the return of our Diaspora back to our shores…

xxi.  Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group. The Federation must recognize and facilitate excellence in many different fields of endeavor, including sciences, languages, arts, music and sports. This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

The book provides some turn-by-turn instructions for soliciting the different generation groups (Baby Boomers, Generation X and the current Millennials) who are at the frontline of the current Caribbean battles, that of societal abandonment, of which the region is sorely losing; (see this portrayed in a previous blog-commentary). The Go Lean book asserts new community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementation and advocacies. The following list from the book applies:

Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principle – Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Turn-Around Page 33
Community Ethos – Ways to Manage Reconciliations Page 34
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Happiness Page 36
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Community Ethos – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Cooperatives Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future Page 26
Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good Page 37
Strategy – Strategy – Keep Young People At Home in the Region Page 51
Strategy – Agents of Change – Technology Page 57
Strategy – Agents of Change – Globalization Page 57
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy Page 64
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Postal Union Page 78
Anecdote – Turning Around the CARICOM governance Page 92
Anecdote – “Lean” in Government Page 93
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media Page 111
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate Page 118
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Governance Page 168
Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage the Social Contract Page 170
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Events Page 191
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Fairgrounds Page 192
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce Page 198
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora Page 217
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Youth Page 227
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Sports Page 229
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Urban Living – Sports Leagues Page 234

The Go Lean book is a great guidebook for developing agile institutions – a recipe for the CU technocracy.

The Caribbean can succeed in our efforts to improve our community ethos. Consider this sample of previous blog-commentaries that delve into aspects of forging a better “culture” in Caribbean communities:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10220 Waging a Successful War on the BAD ethos of Rent-seeking
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10218 Waging a Successful War on the BAD ethos of Stupidity
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10216 Waging a Successful War on the BAD ethos of Orthodoxy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9595 Vision and Values for a ‘New’ Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9428 Forging Change: Herd Mentality
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8186 Respect for Minorities: ‘All for One’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7646 Going from ‘Good to Great’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7628 ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5695 Repenting, Forgiving and Reconciling the Past
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3915 ‘Change the way you see the world; you change the world you see’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3780 Forging an Ethos of ‘Blood, Sweat and Tears’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=623 ‘Only at the precipice, do they change’

The vision for a new Caribbean is one that has a culture that could “eat strategy – scheme or talent – for breakfast”.

While the focus of this commentary is on culture, a lot can be said for the Sports eco-system as well. The Go Lean/CU roadmap is NOT a sports promotion plan but it does present the important role for sports in the vision to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. As an expression of this vision, the Go Lean book states (Page 81):

“… a mission of the CU is to forge industries and economic drivers around the individual and group activities of sports and culture”.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The benefits are too alluring: dawn of a new economy and new opportunities to preserve Caribbean culture for future generations. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Mineral Extraction 101 – Sovereign Wealth Fund – Not the Panacea

Posted on January 29, 2021 in Government, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Let’s first establish the ground rules:

“Common Sense” is not common.

Got it? Good!

There are people in our Caribbean communities that believe that their member-state government need to setup a Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF), double down on Natural Resources exports and pocket the proceeds into their Sovereign Wealth Fund.

This thinking has become more and more common, while not making any sense.

For starters, SWF assumes that the national government have “budgetary surpluses and have little or no international debt” …

… while in actuality, the Caribbean member-states have no surpluses at all. In fact, many of them are using credit facilities just to “make ends meet”.

Examine the full dimensions of SWF’s with the review of this encyclopedic information and VIDEO here:

Title: Sovereign wealth fund

A sovereign wealth fund (SWF), sovereign investment fund, or social wealth fund is a state-owned investment fund that invests in real and financial assets such as stocks, bonds, real estate, precious metals, or in alternative investments such as private equity fund or hedge funds. Sovereign wealth funds invest globally. Most SWFs are funded by revenues from commodity exports or from foreign-exchange reserves held by the central bank. By historic convention, the United States’ Social Security Trust Fund, with US$2.8 trillion of assets in 2014, and similar vehicles like Japan Post Bank‘s JP¥200 trillion of holdings, are not considered sovereign wealth funds.

Some sovereign wealth funds may be held by a central bank, which accumulates the funds in the course of its management of a nation’s banking system; this type of fund is usually of major economic and fiscal importance. Other sovereign wealth funds are simply the state savings that are invested by various entities for the purposes of investment return, and that may not have a significant role in fiscal management.

The accumulated funds may have their origin in, or may represent, foreign currency deposits, gold, special drawing rights (SDRs) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) reserve positions held by central banks and monetary authorities, along with other national assets such as pension investments, oil funds, or other industrial and financial holdings. These are assets of the sovereign nations that are typically held in domestic and different reserve currencies (such as the dollar, euro, pound, and yen). Such investment management entities may be set up as official investment companies, state pension funds, or sovereign funds, among others.

There have been attempts to distinguish funds held by sovereign entities from foreign-exchange reserves held by central banks. Sovereign wealth funds can be characterized as maximizing long-term return, with foreign exchange reserves serving short-term “currency stabilization”, and liquidity management. Many central banks in recent years possess reserves massively in excess of needs for liquidity or foreign exchange management. Moreover, it is widely believed most have diversified hugely into assets other than short-term, highly liquid monetary ones, though almost no data is publicly available to back up this assertion.

Early SWFs
Sovereign wealth funds have existed for more than a century, but since 2000, the number of sovereign wealth funds has increased dramatically. The first SWFs were non-federal U.S. state funds established in the mid-19th century to fund specific public services.[4]  …

Nature and purpose
SWFs are typically created when governments have budgetary surpluses and have little or no international debt. It is not always possible or desirable to hold this excess liquidity as money or to channel it into immediate consumption. This is especially the case when a nation depends on raw material exports like oil, copper or diamonds. In such countries, the main reason for creating a SWF is because of the properties of resource revenue: high volatility of resource prices, unpredictability of extraction, and exhaustibility of resources. …

Concerns about SWFs
The growth of sovereign wealth funds is attracting close attention because:

  • As this asset pool continues to expand in size and importance, so does its potential impact on various asset markets.
  • Some countries, like the United States, which passed the Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007, worry that foreign investment by SWFs raises national security concerns because the purpose of the investment might be to secure control of strategically important industries for political rather than financial gain.
  • Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers has argued that the U.S. could potentially lose control of assets to wealthier foreign funds whose emergence “shake[s] [the] capitalist logic”[4] These concerns have led the European Union (EU) to reconsider whether to allow its members to use “golden shares” to block certain foreign acquisitions.[8] This strategy has largely been excluded as a viable option by the EU, for fear it would give rise to a resurgence in international protectionism. In the United States, these concerns are addressed by the Exon–Florio Amendment to the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, Pub. L. No. 100-418, § 5021, 102 Stat. 1107, 1426 (codified as amended at 50 U.S.C. app. § 2170 (2000)), as administered by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).
  • Their inadequate transparency is a concern for investors and regulators: for example, size and source of funds, investment goals, internal checks and balances, disclosure of relationships, and holdings in private equity funds.
  • SWFs are not nearly as homogeneous as central banks or public pension funds.
  • A lack of transparency and hence an increase in risk to the financial system, perhaps becoming the “new hedge funds”.[9]

The governments of SWF’s commit to follow certain rules:

  • Accumulation rule (what portion of revenue can be spent/saved)
  • Withdraw rule (when the Government can withdraw from the fund)
  • Investment (where revenue can be invested in foreign or domestic assets)[10]

Source: Wikipedia Online Encyclopedia – Retrieved January 27, 2021 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_wealth_fund

—————

VIDEO – Sovereign Wealth Funds I A Level and IB Economics – https://youtu.be/K-AKY_WsNv4

tutor2u
Sovereign Wealth Funds control over $7 trillion worth of assets and have become a significant feature of the global economic landscape. In this short revision video we identify countries with sovereign wealth funds and some of the investments they have been making.

#aqaeconomics​
#ibeconomics
#edexceleconomics

Here is where the “common sense” matters. Have you ever loan someone money? (Of course you have, this is a rite of passage into adulthood). Now imagine someone owes you money and then gets a surplus (from which ever source); but instead of paying down the debt to you, they go out and acquire some luxury items instead – think cars, boats or RV’s.

You don’t need a PhD in Economics, to see the logical fallacies – mistaken belief based on unsound arguments – in that scenario. Yet, this is what many Caribbean people are asking from the stewards of their national governance. As citizens of their homeland, Caribbean people want to take ownership of the Natural Resources and exploit their value to benefit themselves more directly – they want to be dividend-receiving shareholders in any SWF. In addition, the actuality of Natural Resources is that they are not as valuable as projected in their Raw Material form. To garner real profits, “we” would have to add value by migrating the Raw Materials into Finished Goods.

An obvious fallacy

This has been the assertion all the while … here in this January 2021 Teaching Series from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. Every month, this commentary engages in an effort to message about reforming and transforming the Caribbean economic engines. We continue to propose strategies, tactics and implementations that would make a positive impact.

This is submission 6-of-6, concluding this January series. This issue is consistent in our theme, as a SWF would have a major impact on Caribbean life and culture. We want to make sound decisions about how to use our Natural Resources, how to manage our debt obligations and how to enrich our people. All of these subjects involve heavy-lifting. See the full catalog of the January series here as follows:

  1. Mineral Extraction 101 – Raw Materials ==> Finished Goods
  2. Mineral Extraction 101 – Lesson from History: Jamaica’s Bauxite
  3. Mineral Extraction 101 – Industrial Reboot – Modern factories – Small footprints
  4. Mineral Extraction 101 – Commerce of the Seas – Encore
  5. Mineral Extraction 101 – Restoration after Extraction – Cool Sites
  6. Mineral Extraction 101 – Sovereign Wealth Fund – Not the Panacea

So if the purpose of the “promote more Mineral Extraction in the Caribbean” plan is just to generate additional revenues and have the beneficiaries of those revenues be the citizens themselves, then why does the Sovereign Wealth Fund strategy come “under fire”?

The answer is simple – it’s devoid of “common sense”.

  • Our Natural Resources in the form of Raw Materials is not so valuable so as to generate a lot of economic benefits.
  • Any new revenue stream we acquire must first be used to pay-off old debts, rather than funding dividend checks to shareholders.
  • Some Caribbean member-states have outstanding credit facilities where they are only able to make interest payments, so the principal remains high.

As related in a previous blog-commentary on economic fallacies, the situation in the Caribbean region is likened to …

… the imagery of an animal – a dog perhaps – foraging for food, but then gets distracted and “chases a squirrel up a tree”. The squirrel in the tree will never be a meal; it is just a waste of time and energy for the animal. This analogy conveys the waste of time associated with a frivolous and fallacious pursuit.

We do need help here in the Caribbean homeland for our “sovereign debt and wealth”; we need to reform and transform. This had been the motivation of the Go Lean movement from the very beginning. See this pronouncement from the opening Declaration of Interdependence at the outset of the book (Page 12):

xiv. Whereas government services cannot be delivered without the appropriate funding mechanisms, “new guards” must be incorporated to assess, accrue, calculate and collect revenues, fees and other income sources for the Federation and member-states. The Federation can spur government revenues directly through cross-border services and indirectly by fostering industries and economic activities not possible without this Union.

A Sovereign Wealth Fund, based on trading of our Natural Resources, is not the panacea for our macro-economic ailments. The cure, salve and prescription is still to do the hard-work and heavy-lifting of rebooting our societal engines – No short cuts! This was asserted in a recent Go Lean blog-commentary from October 10, 2020 that addressed the macro-economic disposition for just the Bahamas, but by extension, this assessment can apply to all the Caribbean member-states. See here:

They are in desperate need of alternative funding schemes, ones that mitigate debt. This theme, that debt is bad for Caribbean member-states, aligns with many previous commentaries from the movement behind the Go Lean book.
…
We are not limited to the Status Quo for Debt Management in the Caribbean. The challenge is money … or capital. We can be Better. We must be Better.

The Go Lean book presents a plan to reboot the region’s fiscal and monetary landscape. The starting approach is to form a cooperative among the region’s existing Central Banks, branding the cooperative as the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB). Then facilitating and regulating the Capital Markets in the region. (The Go Lean book – on Page 200 – identifies 9 different Stock Exchanges in the region).

So this is “common sense” … finally: optimizing our regional debt portfolio would be better than scarring-and-scotching the land and sea to extract Natural Resources or prospecting for precious minerals.

But we still do need additional revenues. What answers does the Go Lean roadmap offer in that regards?

The Go Lean book, serving as a roadmap for the introduction of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), presents an actual advocacy to present the strategies, tactics and implementations to optimize Government Revenue Sources. See here some of the specific plans, excerpts and headlines from Page 172, entitled:

10 Revenue Sources … for Caribbean Administration

1 Lean-in for the treaty for the  Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU)

This will allow for the unification of the region into one market, thereby expanding to an economy of 30 member-states, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion (circa 2010 figures). The Trade Federation will function as a government-owned multi-national corporation to deliver the services for an integrated Caribbean administration. The CU will generate its own revenue streams, without charging fees back to member-states, plus return profits (minus reasonable reserves) back to the member-states as shareholders. The CU will implement the eco-system to collect the revenues and remain financially solvent, without incurring any deficits.
2 E-Payments Settlement

The CU will implement card-based and electronic payments for all e-Government transactions (see Appendix ZV on Page 353) and for all transactions in the monetary union. (Caribbean dollars will be mostly cashless). All settlement (MasterCard-Visa style and also ACH/Fed-Wire style) will be facilitated by the Caribbean Central Bank and interchange fees will be assessed – 1% range). This model also applies to Cruise passenger smart cards in which merchant transactions must be settled daily.
3 In-sourcing e-Government Services

The CU will deploy e-Delivery enterprises for many government services (i.e. property tax assessment/collections, voter registration/polling, records, etc.) and provide these services to the member-states in an outsourcing model. Transaction and maintenance fees will be charged to member-states, but the cost-benefit win-win will always prevail.
4 Property Tax Surcharge
5 Income/Sales Tax Add-ons
6 Industry Licensing (Security, e-Learning, Health Care Monitoring, Postal)
7 Regional Services: GPO, Lottery, Spectrum Auctions, Underwater Cables, Mining/Drilling Rights

Many CU services cross national borders and will garner the resultant revenues. This includes group purchasing (GPO), broadcast rights (spectrum auctions) and [a regional] lottery in conjunction with local state lotteries. The CU will petition the UN for an Exclusive Economic Zone for the waters between the islands. All economic activities in these non-state areas (underwater cables, oil/gas drilling, mines, etc.) will be regulated by the CU and the accompanying revenues garnered.
8 Prison Industrial Complex
9 Natural Disaster Insurance Fund
10 Capital Markets for Treasury Bonds

The points of optimizing Government Revenues and/or fostering best-practices in Debt Management is advanced Fiscal Management; it is not a “magical formula”; it is the viable technocratic heavy-lifting activities that needed to be done. Period!

This theme, better Fiscal Management for the full Caribbean region – individually and collectively – has been detailed in many previous blog-commentaries from the Go Lean movement; consider this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=21200 How to fix the COVID economy?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19572 MasterClass: Economics and Society
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17377 Marshall Plan – Funding: How to Pay for Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16848 Two Pies: Economic Plan for a new Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15796 Lessons Learned from 2008: Righting The Wrong
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11647 Righting a Wrong: Puerto Rico’s Bankruptcy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10513 Transforming ‘Money’ Countrywide
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8351 A 6-part Series on Economic Fallacies
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7601 Beware of Vulture Capitalists
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6563 Lessons from Iceland – Model of Economic Recovery

A Sovereign Wealth Fund is not a bad thing …

… it is good, if a Sovereign country has the funds – incoming revenues – and a sensible debt-to-GDP ratio. If on the other hand, the government is over-extended on debt and a large percentage of a nation’s budget goes to debt servicing, then it is only proper, decent and sensible to pay-down the debt before any scheme to issue dividend checks to citizens.

It is a reasonable expectation that government stewards would be reasonable in managing the public purse. This is the spirit and letter of the implied Social Contract:

Citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights.

Technocratic execution of the Social Contract is Good Governance; Good Governance is managing for the kind of society we want to live in:

As a democracy – of the people, by the people, for the people – what is done by the government is done on the people’s behalf, in our name.

“This is on us”.

In summarizing and concluding this 6-part series on Mineral Extraction we see the guidance for the paths in front of us:

  • We must cautiously-and-carefully explore new opportunities for our Natural Resources to be harvested to generate revenues for our people.
  • We must understand that the colonial orthodoxy continues, despite the centuries, in that Raw Materials continue to be valued minimally; only Finished Goods return the desired profit.
  • We must recognize that we have had a tarnished track record in the past and so now we must finally glean the wisdom of this ecosystem’s past and act prudently going forward.
  • Our bad decisioning many times resulted in scarring-and-scotching our terrain; we must now restore the environment. We have models to follow that will allow us to foster “cool” visitor sites for our previous excavated locations.
  • We need to implement factories, mills and refineries (Etc.) to add the value ourselves to our Raw Materials, so that we can keep the maximum profit here at home.
  • Striking it rich with some mineral exploration on land or the sea does not negate the need for “Best Practices” or Good Governance. We must still take care of our business. Our future societal prospects depend on our good planning and execution.

This is the challenge of shepherding the societal engines in the Caribbean region.

Challenge accepted!

This is the assertions of the book Go Lean…Caribbean and the charter of the Go Lean movement, to make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play.

Yes, we can!

We hereby urge all stakeholders to lean-in to this roadmap to empower and elevate our homeland. This is the Way Forward. Despite not being an easy journey, this roadmap for a unified-integrated-confederated Caribbean region is conceivable, believable and achievable.   🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 12):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accedence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. …

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Mineral Extraction 101 – Restoration after Extraction – Cool Sites

Posted on January 26, 2021 in Government, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

We have been known to say … repeatedly:

We cannot change the past.
All we can do is learn from the past and change the present/future.

We talk the talk with this verbiage; we also walk the walk.

A lot of harm has been done to the Caribbean, environmentally, due to mining and Mineral Extraction. The earth has been scarred-and-scotched. But …

… there is now the opportunity to not just learn wisdom from those previous bad experiences but also to transform the scarred-and-scotched land into “Cool Sites”. We can and should make attractions for visitors, sightseers and adventure-seekers.

We can turn lemons into lemonade.

If we succeed at doing this, we will not be the first ones or the only ones. No, this strategy has developed into a globally-recognized Best Practice for reclaiming scarred-and-scotched terrains, damaged by previous mining or extraction activities. See this portrayed in this “Feature Article” here:

Title 1: Abandoned mines transformed into amazing tourist attractions
By: Mark Johanson

What do you do with a mine after it’s fulfilled its original purpose?

An increasing number of destinations across the globe are turning sources of extraction into places of attraction.

Here’s a look at six innovative regeneration projects that are breathing new life into former industrial wastelands, including one that opened earlier this year.

Zip Below Xtreme

This new thrill ride from Go Below Underground Adventures is located in an abandoned slate mine at depths that reach 375 meters (1,230 feet) beneath the mountains of Wales’ Snowdonia National Park.

It became the deepest zip wire in the world when it opened to the public in March 2105 and also claims to be the world’s longest subterranean attraction with three miles (five kilometers) of track, including a bloodcurdling 21-meter freefall.

Zip Below Xtreme, Conwy Falls Caf, A5 (Pentrefoelas Road), Betws-y-coed, Snowdonia, Wales, UK; +44 016 9071 0108

Salina Turda

Salina Turda was the first major experiment in turning a disused mine into a non-traditional tourist attraction when it opened to the public in 1992.

Located in the heart of Transylvania, in western Romania, visitors descend 120 meters underground along the same elevator shafts that once hauled salt to the surface.

At the bottom sits an underground theme park with a grab bag of attractions like a miniature golf course, Ferris wheel, bowling alley and underground boating lake.

Salina Turda also has a spa and wellness center capitalizing on the healing properties of the cave’s naturally occurring salts and 80% humidity.

Salina Turda, Aleea Durgaului 7, Turda, Romania; +40 3642 60940

Wieliczka Salt Mine

Wieliczka Salt Mine was included alongside the Galapagos Islands and Yellowstone National Park on UNESCO’s first set of World Heritage Sites.

It remains one of Poland’s top tourist attractions to this day, drawing more than 1.2 million annual visitors.

Built in the 13th century, it was one of the world’s oldest continuously operating mines until workers ceased production in 2007.

Now, Wieliczka is perhaps better known as “Poland’s Underground Salt Cathedral,” where visitors can tour some 22 chambers, including intricate chapels, statues and chandeliers all carved out of rock salt by miners over the centuries.

A newer addition to Wieliczka is the hotel and health resort, located 125 meters underground.

It offers treatment services in chambers that offer a constant temperature and high humidity, are free of pollution and allergens and rich in micronutrients.

The disused mine is also a hub of Polish culture, hosting a regular series of concerts, art exhibitions and special events.

Wieliczka Salt Mine, ul. Danilowicza 10, 32-020 Wieliczka, Poland; +48 1227 87302 

[See the Appendix VIDEO below.]

The Eden Project

One of the most celebrated landmarks in Cornwall, England lies within the open clay pit of a former kaolinite mine.

The Eden Project, as it’s known, is a series of interconnecting thermoplastic enclosures that emulate different global environments, from the 1.6-acre Mediterranean Biome to the 3.9-acre Tropical Biome — one of the world’s largest indoor rainforests.

This “pit to paradise” project first opened to the public in March 2001 and added an additional education facility, The Core, in 2005 to help communicate its central message about the interdependence of people and plants.

The former mine was seeping mineral waste as recently as October 1998, but now welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors each year not only for the gardens, but also for art exhibitions, ice skating and a popular concert series called The Eden Sessions.

The Eden Project, Bodelva, Cornwall, UK; +44 01726 811911

Bounce Below

What do you get when you mix 930 square meters of bouncy nets, one disused cavern and the classic childhood game of Chutes and Ladders?

That, in essence, is the recipe for Bounce Below, a multi-tiered trampoline lit in Technicolor and suspended within a Victorian-era slate mine in Gwynedd, Wales.

Bounce Below opened to the public last July as “the world’s largest underground trampoline,” offering one-hour timeslots to enjoy three separate nets spread across a distance of 180 feet (55 meters) from top to bottom.

Each level is connected by a series of vertigo-inducing slides and ramps, and surrounded by walls of mesh to keep visitors from bouncing out into the abyss.

Bounce Below, Llechwedd Slate Caverns, Blaenau Ffestiniog; +44 1248 601 444

MORE: Deep thrills: The crazy cave trampolines of Wales

Mega Cavern

Over the past few months, mountain bike pros have flocked to the most unlikely of locations to perfect their skills: an abandoned limestone quarry and former Cold War fallout shelter hidden within the bowels of Louisville, Kentucky.

The latest attraction at the Louisville Mega Cavern easily snagged the title of world’s largest indoor bike park when it opened to the public this February, 30 meters below the Louisville Zoo.

The 33,000 square meter playground has 45 trails covering more than 19 kilometers of track, including a mix of BMX-style jump courses and beginner-level alternatives.

One of the best features of the manmade cavern — which also includes zip lines, aerial ropes courses and tram rides — may be its four-season appeal.

At a constant 10 degrees Celsius (50 F), Mega Cavern maintains the same temperature in the dead of winter as it does in the dog days of summer.

Mega Cavern, 1841 Taylor Ave., Louisville, Kentucky; +1 877 614 6342

===============

Mark Johanson is a freelance travel and culture writer based in Santiago, Chile.

Source: CNN – May 19, 2015; retrieved January 25, 2021 from: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/abandoned-mines-tourist-attractions/index.html

Wow, even World Heritage Sites have emerged from previous mines around the world. They did it! We can too!

Alas, our Mineral Extraction activities in the Caribbean is less-mining and more top-of-the-land excavations. Still, the same strategy can be pursued. There have been a lot of “Cool Sites” for visitors, sightseers and adventure-seekers. Look at this actuality at a lot of the “Old Mines”in the US State of Arizona.

Title 2: Arizona’s Mining Attractions
Subtitle: History & Culture
By: Edie Jarolim

Fascinated by underground activities? You’ll hit pay dirt in Arizona, home to the most famous gold mine that might never have existed and host to the world’s largest gem and mineral show.

This quick zip through the state’s mining highlights includes everything from Old West towns that rose and fell by their mineral wealth to today’s thriving museums and exhibitions. (Museum of Northern Arizona pictured above).

Mining in Southern Arizona

The legacy of the silver vein that established one of the world’s most notorious western towns lies mainly in the town’s name: Prospector Ed Schieffelin was warned that venturing into Apache territory would earn him only his Tombstone.

Prosperous for far longer was nearby Bisbee, offering tours of the Copper Queen Mine with the miners who once worked there, vistas into the gaping Lavender mine pit and the Bisbee Mining and Historical Museum, a Smithsonian Institution affiliate. Many mine executives bedded down at the Gadsden Hotel in nearby Douglas, which smelted the ore from Bisbee’s mines.

In Tucson, the University of Arizona Mineral Museum is among the top in the country, and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum features excellent earth science exhibits.

Ajo, a trim mining company town near Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument in the southwest, has two small museums and one large open pit mine overlook.

But mining is far from being history in “The Copper State.” At Asarco’s Mission mine, just south of Tucson, visitors can learn about the industry and see modern copper strip-mining in action.

Nearly a million visitors descend on tiny Quartzsite, just east of the California border, for the QIA PowWow – Gem & Mineral Show in late January. And that’s just a prelude to events in Tucson, where the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show and dozens of smaller shows around town draw national and international throngs during the first two weeks of February, outdoing every other gathering of its kind.

Mining in Central Arizona

Northwest of Phoenix, Wickenburg once hosted the Arizona Territory’s richest gold mine. Now you can visit Robson’s Ranch & Mining Camp, which re-creates an old mining camp, or take a self-guided tour of the abandoned Vulture Mine.

Drive the winding mountain roads from Wickenburg up to Jerome, where sights include Jerome State Historic Park, a former mine owner’s mansion, the Jerome Historical Society Mine Museum and the Gold King Mining Museum & Ghost Town. In nearby Clarkdale, the Verde Canyon Railroad runs along tracks once used to haul minerals from Jerome.

Mining-related attractions along the spectacular Apache Trail east of Phoenix include the rare ore specimens at Superstition Mountain Museum, re-created Goldfield Ghost Town and the Lost Dutchman State Park, named for the world-renowned gold mine that prospectors are still trying to find.

Mining in Northern & Western Arizona

In the northwest, off old Route 66 near Oatman (an abandoned boomtown popular for its resident burros), the Gold Road Mine offers underground tours and gold panning. The Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff highlights the geology, fossils and minerals of the Colorado Plateau.

About the Author  – Edie Jarolim
… is the author of three travel guides and one dog guide. Her book, “Getting Naked for Money: An Accidental Travel Writer Reveals All,” is a memoir about her career as a guidebook editor for Frommer’s, Rough Guides, and Fodor’s and as a Tucson-based freelance travel writer.

Source: Visit Arizona Website – Retrieved January 25, 2021 from: https://www.visitarizona.com/like-a-local/arizonas-mining-attractions/

Considering the 2 foregoing embedded articles, we see that this whole subject aligns with the strategy asserted in the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean to promote World Heritage Sites in the region. As the time of publication, the Go Lean book identified the 21 World Heritage Sites in the region. But the take-away from the narrative was that more “Cool Site” could be fostered.

We have the need to pursue this strategy for reclaiming scarred-and-scotched lands in the region. This approach of “Cool Sites” can compliment our existing tourism products. This is truly a deep-dive in the Mineral Extraction ecosystem, as we had previously asserted that Mineral Extraction strategies are incompatible with tourism, but now we are confessing that “Reclaimed Mines” can have some touristic appeal; it allows us to explore more Eco-Tourism endeavors.

This is the continuation of the January 2021 Teaching Series from the movement behind the Go Lean book. Every month, as we engage in an effort to message about reforming and transforming the Caribbean economic engines, we recognize that our Caribbean disposition is tenuous. Our people had made a lot of mistakes in the past, but we are still required to forge a bright future for the Caribbean youth.

This is submission 5-of-6 for this January series. This issue is consistent for our discussion of regional life and culture. We want to make sound decisions about how to use for Natural Resources to enrich our people; and we want to learn from past mistakes. See the full series catalog here as follows:

  1. Mineral Extraction 101 – Raw Materials ==> Finished Goods
  2. Mineral Extraction 101 – Lesson from History: Jamaica’s Bauxite
  3. Mineral Extraction 101 – Industrial Reboot – Modern factories – Small footprints
  4. Mineral Extraction 101 – Commerce of the Seas – Encore
  5. Mineral Extraction 101 – Restoration after Extraction – Cool Sites
  6. Mineral Extraction 101 – Sovereign Wealth Fund – Not the Panacea

Previously Mineral Extraction – mining and drilling – have been very much destructive to the environment; think Jamaica, Guyana and Suriname Bauxite mining. This is why we have consistently urged Caribbean stakeholders to:

Just Say No … to Mining.

But since we cannot go back in time to our forefathers and change their decisioning, we can only fix the present to harness a better future. The strategy of fostering World Heritage Sites allow us to do both. In fact, this was the rationale of the United Nations in 1948 – after the destruction of World War II – to make concerted efforts to preserve, protect and promote monumental sites of historical significance. See this encyclopedic discussion from Page 248 of the Go Lean book:

The Bottom Line on UNESCO
The United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. Its purpose is to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through education, science, and culture in order to further universal respect for justice, the rule of law, and human rights along with fundamental freedom proclaimed in the UN Charter. It is the heir of the League of Nations’ International Commission on Intellectual Cooperation.

Projects sponsored by UNESCO include literacy, technical, and teacher-training programs; international science programs; the promotion of independent media and freedom of the press; translations of world literature; attempts to bridge the worldwide digital divide; the promotion of cultural diversity; and international cooperation agreements to secure the world’s culture and natural heritage (as in the World Heritage Sites).

A UNESCO World Heritage Site is a place of outstanding cultural or natural importance to the common heritage of humanity.

The designation is a forest, mountain, lake, desert, monument, building, complex, or city [district] of special cultural or physical significance. The list is maintained by the International World Heritage Programme administered by the UNESCO World Heritage Committee, composed of 21 states parties which are elected by their General Assembly. (Under certain conditions, listed sites can obtain funds from the World Heritage Fund). The programme was founded with the Convention Concerning the Protection of World Cultural and Natural Heritage, which was adopted by the General Conference of UNESCO on 16 November 1972. Since then, 189 states parties have ratified the convention.

As detailed above, that abandoned Salt Mine in Wieliczka, Poland is a classic World Heritage Site. (Poland is an Eastern European country with no commonality with our Caribbean actuality, and yet we can benefit from a consideration of their Best Practices). It is a role model for us to emulate in the Caribbean. It enjoys huge visitor traffic;  see more details here:

The [former salt] mine is currently one of Poland’s official national Historic Monuments, whose attractions include dozens of statues and four chapels carved out of the rock salt by the miners. The older sculptures have been supplemented with new carvings made by contemporary artists. About 1.2 million people visit the Wieliczka Salt Mine annually.[2] – Source: Wikipedia.

The Go Lean movement had always strategized for greater inclusion of World Heritage Sites (WHS); there are currently 21 sites with the WHS designation. 21, but why can there not be more?! In fact, there is a full advocacy in the book to double-down on all things WHS. Consider these excerpts, headlines and summaries from Page 248 of the book:

10 Ways to Promote World Heritage Sites

1 Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market & Economy initiative: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).

By embracing the Caribbean Single Market & Economy (CSME) initiative, the CU will allow for the unification of the region into one market of 42 million people, GDP over $800 Billion (based on 2010) that can instill better governance for the region’s World Heritage Sites; (see Appendix ZH on Page 330). In addition to opening a new market for intra-regional tourism, the CU effort will enhance the influx of foreign tourists; promote Art/Eco/Event tourism; enhance cultural pride and anchor the expansion of an Art/Culture eco-system (covering education, media, theater, exhibitions, and events).
2 Oversight of Natural Resources

The CU will assume jurisdiction of oversight on natural resources of the common areas between the member-states. This authority will be granted with the accedence of the CU treaty and the successful petition to the United Nations for an Exclusive Economic Zone. While many of the 21 World Heritage Sites are cultural, the remaining are of natural origins, and thus proper governance is essential – the CU will collaborate and co-partner with member-states on this effort.
3 Economic Impact: Tourism

The status quo for tourism in the region peaks during the peak winter season. Those tourists come to the region for the sun, sand, and surf. On the other hand, eco-tourism around the World Heritage Sites (WHS) tends not to be climate related. Therefore traffic is more consistent year round.
4 Economic Impact: Economic Zones

The CU will strategize the designation of economic zones (Enterprise/Empowerment zone, Industrial Parks, Self-Governing Entities, etc.) near World Heritage Sites. These zones come under CU jurisdiction and allow the regional authority to dictate the nature of industrial activities in those neighborhoods.
5 Economic & Failed-State Crimes
6 Emergency Management
7 Multi-Language Access
8 Cultural/Educational Impact – Essays, Scholarships and Student Loans
9 Foundations Alignment
10 Nominate More WHS Sites

There are many other sites in the Caribbean that can easily qualify for designation of World Heritage Sites. The CU will assume the functions of publicity agents to nominate, lobby and campaign UNESCO to grant the CU more WHS sites. In the past this effort was discouraged because of the attendant costs of maintaining these sites; this dynamic now changes.

So reclaiming a scarred-and-scotched terrain to foster World Heritage Sites is consistent with the Go Lean roadmap. It’s part of the overall Turn-around strategy; to reboot, restore, recover, rebuild, revive and revitalize the OLD into something NEW. In fact, we have presented strategies, tactics and implementations in many previous Go Lean blog-commentaries. See this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=20052 Rise from the Ashes – Natural/Man-Made Disasters: Protect Paradise
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=20013 Rise from the Ashes – Phoenix Mythology – This is Good Governance
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18475 Refuse to Lose – Direct Foreign Investors ‘Wind-Downs’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17358 Marshall Plan – A Lesson in History – Model for Rebooting
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14445 Repairing the Breach: Image can impact Economics and Opportunities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10140 Detroit revitalizing City by demolishing thousands of structures
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7449 ‘Crap Happens’ – So What Now? Recovering and Revitalizing
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2857 There are Jobs and growth in the Recycling Industry – Yes, we can!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=970 The Turn-around of Detroit is a business, not charity

Accordingly, we are responsible for cleaning up any mess that we make. It is also true that we have to clean up the messes that our forefathers made. This is the actuality of shortsighted Mineral Extraction. Previous generations may have gotten some benefit, while we got none, and yet we now have to clean-up the resultant mess. Challenge accepted!

There is the familiar mantra in eco-tourism: “Leave nothing but footprints and take nothing but memories”. This was not the default ethos in the past, resulting in today’s scarred-and-scotched terrain. That was the “lemons” that we were given. Creating tourist attractions and “cool” sites is the “lemonade” that we can now make and enjoy.

This strategy of fostering new World Heritage Sites on reclaimed mines or a re-configured mineral pits is transforming. Yes, we can! This strategy has succeeded elsewhere – think Poland – and it could happen in our regional homeland as well. Instead of just having the costs of doing business, we could have the profit from eco-tourism at our WHS locations. We only needed this role model as a guide and roadmap.

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders to lean-in to this roadmap. We have looked, listened, learned, and lend-a-hand for this issue. Now we are ready to lead. Success from this roadmap is conceivable, believable and achievable. We can proceed carefully and cautiously with Mineral Extraction while we make our homeland better places to live, work and play. 🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 12):

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society …

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accidence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. …

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

—————–

Appendix VIDEO – In the footsteps of Goethe and Chopin – the Tourist route – https://youtu.be/YoQXxgfreH4



Wieliczka Salt Mine
Posted Nov 21, 2017 – Kopernik, Chopin, Goethe, Bush, Baden-Powell – and many more. Wieliczka Salt Mine is a tourist attraction for at least 600 years. Brine lakes, mejestic wooden casings, chapels, monuments carved in salt. Wieliczka dazzles, suprises, falls in memory. Visiting the Tourist route is not only the beautiful views but also a solid lesson about geology, mining techniques, and history. There are also many adittional attractions like 5D cinema, restaurant, palyground and many more.

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Mineral Extraction 101 – Industrial Reboot – Modern Factories – Small Footprints

Posted on January 24, 2021 in Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Where were you in 1979?

Do you remember the Mainframe Computers of the day? It took up a whole floor in an office building. A Large Footprint.

The same computing power today is found in your smart-phone in your pocket: CPU Speed, memory capacity, storage size, and inter-connectivity capabilities.

The more things change, the smaller the footprint gets. This is true of computers … and factories.

So in case you were not paying attention to the Industrial Landscape for the Mineral industry (including petroleum), what has happened over the years and decades is that the refining – manufacturing footprint has shrunk in size tremendously.

NEW Mini Refinery

So if a community wants to venture into the forays of Mineral Extraction, they no longer need to send the Raw Materials off to some foreign destination for processing. Nope; the processing to produce Finished Goods can be done …

    Right Here.

Yes, we can work with the cheap Raw Material and turn it into valuable Finished Goods. Now, the related high-end skilled jobs – think factory jobs – stay here. The resultant profit stays here too!

This is submission 3-of-6 for the January 2021 Teaching Series from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean. Every month, as we engage in this effort to reform and transform the Caribbean economic engines, we message to Caribbean stakeholders about issues germane to our regional life and culture. We want to make the homeland a better place to live, work and play, so there must be some focus on the Industrial Workplace.

This commentary asserts that our Natural Resources should be used to enrich our people, not someone else. See the full series here as follows:

  1. Mineral Extraction 101 – Raw Materials ==> Finished Goods
  2. Mineral Extraction 101 – Lesson from History: Jamaica’s Bauxite
  3. Mineral Extraction 101 – Industrial Reboot – Modern factories – Small footprints
  4. Mineral Extraction 101 – Commerce of the Seas – Encore
  5. Mineral Extraction 101 – Restoration after Extraction – Cool Sites
  6. Mineral Extraction 101 – Sovereign Wealth Fund – Not the Panacea

Mineral Extraction, mining and drilling is very much destructive to the environment; there will be a consequential impact. So we urge you, as related in the previous entry of this series (2-of-6):

Just Say No … to Mining … or if we do it, do it right.

So listen up people, if you want real economic benefits from Mineral Extracted here, then you need to Add Value to the extracted mineral here.

Dirt is Cheap.

Finished Goods, on the other hand, have a measure of profit embedded in the pricing.

Just how do we add the value?

Where there is a Will, there is a Way. Thanks to modern technology, that Will and the Way is conceivable, believable and achievable. Just consider these two examples:

Oil – Refined oil (Diesel and Gasoline) has been the standard in modernity for over 100 years. There are BIG refineries littered around the world and even here in our Caribbean region. Alas, the technology now allows for Mini Refineries; see here:

Title: Mini Refineries for Emerging Economies and Remote Locations
Modular mini refineries are best utilized in emerging economies and in remote locations where gasoline, diesel and fuel oil are needed.  The local crude oil is normally your lowest cost feed stock because the transportation costs are minimized.

Mini refineries with heavy crudes and low API gravity produce more fuel oil and less naphtha and diesel.  Light crudes with high API gravity produce less fuel oil and more naphtha and diesel.

Additionally, sulfur content determines refinery cost being as low sulfur crudes may not require hydrotreaters.

Crude oil is classified as light, medium, or heavy grade according to its measured API gravity.

  • Light crude oil has an API gravity higher than 31.1° (i.e., less than 870 kg/m3)
  • Medium crude oil has an API gravity between 22.3° and 31.1° (i.e., 870 to 920 kg/m3)
  • Heavy crude oil has an API gravity below 22.3° (i.e., 920 to 1000 kg/m3)
  • Extra heavy crude oil has an API gravity below 10.0° (i.e., greater than 1000 kg/m3)

Grades of crude oil are shown above in graphical form.

When someone calls asking how much a 10,000 barrel per day mini refinery would cost, my response is that it depends on:

  • API gravity
  • Sulfur content
  • Products desired
  • Sulfur specifications on finished products
  • Ability to switch between different crudes

There are no two mini refineries that are alike. The ability to switch between light and heavy crudes means that one crude may require a larger naphtha hydrotreater, a larger naphtha reformer and a larger diesel hydrotreater whereas the other may not. We typically analyze many crude scenarios for your mini refinery to determine the best configuration and process unit sizes during the feasibility study which is performed at the beginning of any new project.

Let’s look at three variations of mini-refineries:

  • A simple topping refinery
  • A hydro skimming refinery with naphtha and diesel hydrotreaters
  • A hydro skimming refinery with naphtha and diesel hydrotreaters and naphtha reformer

For the simple topping refinery, we have a gas fired heater to heat the crude before the atmospheric distillation unit, as shown below in PFD 101 [in the following link].

In PFD 102, we have all of the above from PFD 101 plus a naphtha hydrotreater, diesel hydrotreater and hydrogen plant.

In PFD 103, we have all of the above from PFD 102 minus the hydrogen plant plus a naphtha reformer. The hydrogen plant is not needed due to the naphtha reformer providing hydrogen for the naphtha and diesel hydrotreaters.

R.C. Costello & Assoc., Inc. offers turnkey design solutions for mini refineries, with procurement & installation worldwide. We provide first class Mini Refinery solutions with quality components and instrumentation & controls, safe designs and high on stream factors.

Let COSTELLO work with you to design and build the refinery that meets your quality requirements on schedule and within your budget.

Source: Posted November 10, 2017; retrieved January 24, 2021 from: https://rccostello.com/wordpress/mini-refineries/understanding-modular-mini-refineries/

Cement – The dirt – think limestone – that we can excavate in our islands and coastal states can be processed into cement, and sold as building materials here and abroad. Previous versions of Cement Factories were BIG monstrosities; today, they have small footprint, but even better quality and efficiency; see this sample here:

Title: 100-1000 tpd Mini Cement Plant For Sale
Introduction:
Mini Cement Plant is a leading world level industrial mill. Cement Production Line is designed by our engineers and technical workers, basing on many years’ industrial mill research, and adopting world leading powder processing technology. Cement Production Line adopts numbers of national patent of mill, such as trapezium working surface, flexible connection, roll linked pressure boost, etc. cement production line has completely overcome traditional mill’s defect in application, capacity, fineness, energy consumption, service life, etc. And a mini cement plant is the ideal substitute of traditional mill, such as Raymond mill, high pressure suspension mill, ball mill, etc. Nowadays, grinding mills are widely used in the Metallurgy industry, electric power industrial, chemical, building, steel industry, coal industry, etc. And cement production line has achieved large economic benefits and social benefits. 

NEW Mini Cement Plant 

The Mini Cement Plant is widely used in many industrial, such as building, chemical, chemical fertilizer, metallurgy, mining, nonmetal, abrasive, bearing materials, ceramic, steel, thermal power, bricks & tiles, coal industry, etc.. The Mini Cement Plant can grind these materials which are 9 or less on the Mohs scale, and moisture is below 6%, and are non-explosive and non-flamable mining materials. The final size can be adjusted from 30 to 400 meshes easily. There are thousands materials that our machine can grind. The typical materials are cement (raw meal and cement clinker), quartz, feldspar, calcite, gypsum, limestone, dolomite, graphite, fluorite, aedelforsite, phosphate ore, fused calciummagnesium phosphate, carbamide, electrolytic manganese metal, ferromanganese, coal, gangue, slag, zirconium, steatite, granite, orthoclase, marble, barytes, ceramic.

[See Photo here:] 

Min. Order / Reference FOB Price
1 Piece US $5,999/ Piece
Port: Shanghai, China 
Production Capacity: 80sets/Month
Payment Terms: L/C, T/T
Application: Construction, Mineral Operation
Certification: CE, ISO
Customized: Customized
Automatic Grade: Automatic
Spare Parts Supply: for Whole Year
Test & Installation: Engineer Assigned

Source: Retrieved January 24, 2021 from: https://zenithdream.en.made-in-china.com/product/eNlmEcTKvQht/China-Factory-Supply-100-1000tpd-Mini-Cement-Plant-for-Sale.html#slideVideo 

Consider too, this related VIDEO for the Cement Milling equipment, infrastructure and process:

VIDEO – About Shanghai Zenith Company – https://youtu.be/Mwx6HWWBdkU

Zenith Crusher
Posted January 5, 2015 – Shanghai Zenith Mining and Construction Machinery Co., Ltd. is a hi-tech, engineering group. We are specialized in the research, development, and production of industrial crushing, powder grinding, mineral processing equipments and other related devices.

Ready. Set. Go …

The Future is Now!

This is the Way; all we have needed was the Will.

The Go Lean movement have contemplated these types of initiatives; we have presented strategies, tactics and implementations to employ here in the Caribbean region. Consider this sample of previous blog-commentaries that we have presented related to Industrial Developments and Manifestations envisioned for the Caribbean homeland:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15331 Industrial Reboot – Auto-making 101
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15267 Industrial Reboot – Prefab Housing 101
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14245 Leading with Money Matters – Competing for New Industries
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13155 Industrial Reboot – Pipelines 101
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12146 Commerce of the Seas – Shipbuilding Model of Ingalls
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3473 Haiti to Receive Grants to Expand Caracol Industrial Park
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2750 Disney World – Role Model for Self-Governing Entities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2857 Where the Jobs Are – Entrepreneurism in Junk

Accordingly, the Go Lean/CU roadmap facilitates an eco-system for Self-Governing Entities (SGE), an ideal concept for factories, plants and other industrial expressions like mines, quarries, shipyards and even prisons. The exclusive federal regulation and promotion activities of SGE’s lie within the sole jurisdiction of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). Imagine bordered campuses – with a combination of fencing, walls and/or moats/canals – that designates the exclusivity of the commercial, security and administration to a superlative governance above the member-states.

See this excerpt from Page 80 of the Go Lean book:

The agencies of the [CU‘s] State Department will promote and administer all Self-Governing Entities throughout the region. This refers to foreign military bases, scientific labs and industrial/commercial campuses. SGE campuses are presented as economic engines for the region. They will have to contract with their neighboring communities for utilities and services. Many times, these campuses may only be work-sites, and all human needs are dependent on the neighboring communities.

These facilities will not be subject to the laws of the local states of their address, rather CU, international, foreign sovereignty, or maritime laws will apply. This structure will not usher in some anarchist movement with “wild, wild west” guidelines. Rather, at the time of incorporation, by-laws (or constitutions) must be presented to the CU State Department for acceptance. In addition, the “due process” to apply changes to by-laws must also be submitted. This ensures that the SGE administration is in an orderly manner and does not undermine the original charter. For ongoing governance, the SGE must submit reporting (including board meeting minutes) to the State Department, quarterly.

The SGE will have controlled access for their boundaries (walls, fences, canals/waterways, etc) and their focus will be limited to the scope of their charter. A medical campus, for example, can conduct experimental therapies only on their designated grounds. Yet SGE’s must engage the neighboring localities for transport, and infrastructural needs. In the event of emergencies, (though the SGE will define proactively the responsible parties that can call “911”), the CU institutions will have the right to intrude on the secured grounds to protect life, limb and/or property.

There is a Good Neighbor mandate for SGE’s to co-exist with their neighbors. So the administration of SGE’s will require careful collaboration with other CU departments, municipal authorities, national governments and foreign entities. The State Department therefore serves as 1st point of contact, a liaison office.

This technocratic vision of a superlative industrial landscape – SGE’s – was an early motivation for the Go Lean roadmap.

This is transforming! This is the vision of an industrial reboot! This is where and how more factory jobs can be created. Also, the Go Lean movement (book and blogs) details the principles of SGE’s and job multipliers, how certain industries are better than others for generating multiple indirect jobs down the line (or off-campus) for each direct job on the SGE’s payroll. Certain industries are perfectly suited for this SGE structure; this is true of Mineral Extraction.

Yes, the Go Lean/CU roadmap calls for the region to carefully and cautiously foster Mineral Extractions as an industrial alternative to tourism. We have the natural resources on land; (there is the concept of the Exclusive Economic Zone for development in the seas).

This is the technocratic Way Forward and how we can employ Best Practices for the industrial developments for any and every member-state.

This is how, why and where we can make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play.  🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accidence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accedence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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Mineral Extraction 101 – Raw Materials ==> Finished Goods

Posted on January 22, 2021 in Ethos, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Thanks to the COVID-19 Global Pandemic, the tourism product in the Caribbean “is shot”. We must now look at an alternative. Any alternative?!

What else do we have to offer?

How about minerals?

Let’s get serious and “dig deep” as we take a hard look into these prospects.

Get it?! Minerals … dig … prospects, as in Gold Prospectors.  🙂

The movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean engages in a Teaching Series every month to address issues germane to Caribbean life-culture, plus to message how to reform and transform the Caribbean economic engines. This month, due to COVID-19 lockdowns, this writer is quarantined in Nassau, Bahamas.

Here, during the peak of the Winter Tourist season. The problem though, is that there are NO Tourists this year.

The cupboards are bare!

Heaven help us… if we plan to build a future economy on this foundation.

The Go Lean movement wants to consider other types of economic activities to the Caribbean landscape; we urgently want to investigate the alternatives and there is a lot of talk about Mineral Extraction.

How viable is it?

Firstly, we need to accept, that despite the present impasse, the region’s economic driver is still tourism, or will be again after this pandemic is assuaged. Tourism and Mineral Extractions are incompatible activities.

Picture a spill from an oil well damaging the beaches at a resort.

Thus, there is the need for cautions in any considerations we make. Our challenge will be to embrace the commerce of Mineral Extraction for the positives, while avoiding the negatives.

This commentary posits that there are opportunities for the Caribbean to better explore Mineral Extractions, on land and in the seas. This commentary is the first, 1-of-6, for the January 2021 Teaching Series on Mineral Extractions 101. The full series is as follows:

  1. Mineral Extraction 101 – Raw Materials ==> Finished Goods
  2. Mineral Extraction 101 – Lessons from History: Jamaica’s Bauxite
  3. Mineral Extraction 101 – Industrial Reboot – Modern factories – Small footprints
  4. Mineral Extraction 101 – Commerce of the Seas – Encore
  5. Mineral Extraction 101 – Restoration after Extraction – Cool Sites
  6. Mineral Extraction 101 – Sovereign Wealth Fund – Not the Panacea

With the quest to investigate the ecosystems of Mineral Extraction, we have to take a “Full 360 View” and look at the past, present and the future.

Question: How far back do we need to look-view-consider? Answer: All the way to 1776.

See this quotation from a previous commentary (June 17, 2015) from the Go Lean movement:

1776 was a very good year…

… not just because the 13 original British colonies declared their independence as the United States of America, but also the publication of the landmark book on Economic Principles, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, the 18th century Scottish political economics pioneer. The publication is cited as a reference source in the book Go Lean…Caribbean – a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to elevate the economic, security and governing engines of the Caribbean region. A relevant quote from the Go Lean book follows (Page 67):

    … usually abbreviated as “The Wealth of Nations“, this book is considered the first modern work of economics, and [Smith] is thusly cited as the “father of modern economics”, even today, and among the most influential thinkers in the field of economics. Through reflection over the economics at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution the book touches upon broad topics as the division of labor, productivity and free markets.
    Smith attacked most forms of government interference in the economic process, including tariffs, arguing that these create inefficiency and high prices in the long run. It is believed that this theory, laissez-faire economic philosophy, influenced government legislation in later years.
    Smith advocated a government that was active in sectors other than the economy. He advocated public education for poor adults, a judiciary, and a standing army—institutional systems not directly profitable for private industries.
    The “Invisible Hand” is a frequently referenced theme from Smith’s book. He refers to “the support of domestic industry” and contrasts that support with the importation of goods. Neoclassical economic theory has expanded the metaphor beyond the domestic/foreign manufacture argument to encompass nearly all aspects of economics. The “invisible hand” of the market is a metaphor now to describe the self-regulating behavior of the marketplace. …

So Adam Smith’s 1776 book “The Wealth of the Nations” addresses how colonial powers were to optimize the national “Wealth”; optimizing the source extraction of minerals or raw materials and the refinement process in the host country for the Finished Goods.. A further quotation relates:

Smith notes that, curiously, interest rates in the colonies are also remarkably high ([previously], Smith described how wages in the colonies are higher than in England). Smith attributes this to the fact that, when an empire takes control of a colony, prices for a huge abundance of land and resources are extremely cheap. This allows capitalists to increase his profit, but simultaneously draws many capitalists to the colonies, increasing the wages of labour. As this is done, however, the profits of stock in the mother country rise (or at least cease to fall), as much of it has already flocked offshore. – Source: Wikipedia.

The foregoing quotations mention the principle of the Raw Materials eco-system: “importation of cheap goods from “remote” colonies … domestic manufacture”. Again, this is the overall strategy:

  • Extract the Raw Materials in the Colonies
  • Export it to the Empire’s Host Country
  • Import it and manufacture Finish Goods in the Host Country
  • Export Finish Goods to the rest of the world, including the territory for the originating raw materials.

Despite the 245 years since the publication of the landmark book by Adam Smith, the valuation remains. Raw Materials are cheap; Finished Goods are more valuable; the gap between the two is the inviting profit.

For all of you seeking to prioritize Mineral Extraction as an alternative to tourism, you need to be On Alert. This is the system that you will be challenging. Consider this actuality now of the low intrinsic value of Raw Materials -vs- the Finished Goods:

  • Sand ==> Cement
      
  • Bauxite ==> Aluminum
  • Iron Ore ==> Steel
  • Silica ==> Glass
  • Coffee Beans == Cappuccino / Macchiato
  • Wheat Grain ==> Bread
  • Barley Grain ==> Beer

This is Mineral Extraction 101, a consideration of the Basics of Raw Materials. Let’s explore this ecosystem further by reviewing these training VIDEO‘s for Kids:

VIDEO # 1 – Raw Materials Definition for Kids  – https://youtu.be/Ai0U1b2FlVw


History Illustrated
Posted Oct 5, 2014 – Free Activities and Downloads for Kids: http://historyillustrated.org/

———–

VIDEO # 2 – Manufactured Goods Definition for Kids  – https://youtu.be/BtKni7haXtQ


History Illustrated
Posted Oct 6, 2014 – Free Activities and Downloads for Kids: http://historyillustrated.org/

The reality is that prices for a huge abundance of land and resources were extremely cheap 250 years ago and is still cheap down. That orthodoxy that Adam Smith reported on in 1776 remains even today. This is NOT where the money is; the money or value proposition is associated with the manufacturing of the Raw Materials to produce the Finished Goods. If we want to reboot our economic landscape, we must position ourselves on the manufacturing side, not just the Raw Materials side. There is more profit following this strategy.

Profits ==> Jobs  ==> Entrepreneurial opportunities ==> Community Revitalization

We do indeed need to foster more Mineral Extractions. There are so many lessons that we can learn from the Economic History of other communities and their fostering of Raw Materials on the land and in the seas – think dredging operations.

According to the book Go Lean…Caribbean, ‘Luck is where opportunity meets preparation’ – Page 252.

Well, opportunity awaits the Caribbean … for Mineral Extractions, dredging operations and even oil exploration.

The Go Lean movement have consistently asserted that Mineral Extraction and Raw Materials – on land and sea – must be central to any industrial rebooting of the Caribbean region, despite all the drama associated with his subject. Consider this sample list of previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18578 Missing Out on the ‘Rush’ – Encore
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13155 Industrial Reboot – Pipelines 101
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12230 Commerce of the Seas – Extraction Realities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7384 Oil Refineries – Strategy for Advanced Economics
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5396 ‘Significant’ oil deposit found offshore Guyana
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4700 Rare Earths: The new ‘Rush’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3743 Trinidad cuts 2015 budget as oil prices tumble
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3213 The fluctuations of Oil Prices – Gas is NOT Greener with Extractions

In some tourism circles, there is the philosophy of “Leave Nothing and Take Nothing”. Where the tourists are asked to “leave nothing but footprints” and “take nothing but memories”. This is NOT true for Mineral Extractions or mining. The landscape or waterscape may be scared for all eternity, plus the actuality of water table contamination and other hazards. On land, some hills and/or mountains may be excavated and there may be extensive dredging in the seas, affecting coral reefs or surf patterns.

Recent studies of mining activities in countries around the world produced these sour assessments:

Title #1 – Kenya: Mining impact on communities’ livelihoods: A case study of Taita Taveta County, Kenya
Mining did not help some of the households, to acquire assets, even though it enhanced ability to meet their day to day needs. Mining pits, poor rehabilitation and large-scale mining have caused a loss of agricultural land resulting in reduced crop yields and poor living standards. Some established mining companies in the area did not compensate, or share their accrued revenues nor did they support development projects as was expected. Therefore, the improvement brought about by mining was not sustainable to communities’ livelihood. – Source

————-

Title #2 – Appalachia, United States: Toxic Waste and Mining
In Appalachia, mining companies literally blow the tops off mountains to reach thin seams of coal. They then dump millions of tons of rubble into the streams and valleys below the mining sites. Toxic heavy metals such as cadmium, selenium, and arsenic leach into local water supplies, poisoning drinking water.

This destructive practice, known as mountaintop-removal mining, sends carcinogenic toxins like silica into the air, affecting communities for miles around. Cancer rates are twice as high for people who live near mountaintop-removal sites, and the risk of heart defects in babies born to mothers who lived near these sites while pregnant is 181 percent higher than for babies in non-mining areas. It also destroys beautiful, biodiverse forests and wildlife habitat, increases the risk of flooding, and wipes out entire communities.

This practice has damaged or destroyed more than 2,000 miles of streams, and has wiped out more than 1.5 million acres of forests in Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. – Source

————-

So if the Caribbean stakeholders finally want to reboot their industrial landscape and diversify away from tourism-only, they must accept the heavy-lifting that comes with the challenge of Mineral Extractions; it is not a “slam dunk” easy industry, and it is rarely profitable.

The valuation of cheap raw materials lingers since pre-industrial colonial days.

Learning lessons from the past, and from other societies means that we must be prepared to employ the Best Practices in regulating this industry. The heavy-lifting tasks may be too big for any one member-state alone; there is the need to collaborate, cooperate and coordinate technocratic solutions for the entire region as a whole. This is the quest of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), to bring Good Governance to the region as a whole and the for all 30 Caribbean member-states individually.

The Go Lean roadmap calls for the confederate management of an expanded Exclusive Economic Zone for the Caribbean Sea.

This is how we can explore and exploit Mineral Extractions in the Caribbean and make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. This vision is conceivable, believable and achievable.  🙂

About the Book
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society – for all member-states. This CU/Go Lean roadmap has these 3 prime directives:

  • Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
  • Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines.
  • Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt new community ethos, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, reform and transform the societal engines of Caribbean society.

Download the free e-Book of Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 13):

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. …

xi. Whereas all men are entitled to the benefits of good governance in a free society, “new guards” must be enacted to dissuade the emergence of incompetence, corruption, nepotism and cronyism at the peril of the people’s best interest. The Federation must guarantee the executions of a social contract between government and the governed.

xii. Whereas the legacy in recent times in individual states may be that of ineffectual governance with no redress to higher authority, the accidence of this Federation will ensure accountability and escalation of human and civil rights of the people for good governance, justice assurances, due process and the rule of law. As such, any threats of a “failed state” status for any member state must enact emergency measures on behalf of the Federation to protect the human, civil and property rights of the citizens, residents, allies, trading partners, and visitors of the affected member state and the Federation as a whole.

xvi. Whereas security of our homeland is inextricably linked to prosperity of the homeland, the economic and security interest of the region needs to be aligned under the same governance. Since economic crimes … can imperil the functioning of the wheels of commerce for all the citizenry, the accidence of this Federation must equip the security apparatus with the tools and techniques for predictive and proactive interdictions.

Sign the petition to lean-in for this roadmap for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation.

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