Economics – Page 7 – Go Lean…Caribbean

Category: Economics

Changing the Culture & Currency of Commerce

Posted on May 27, 2019 in Economics, Ethos, Industries

Go Lean Commentary

Change is hard!

It does not just happen – in the positive direction – by itself. Someone (or some group) has to make it happen; they inspire it, communicate it and compel it to manifest. This is especially true of “commerce”.

commerce
noun 2. the exchange or buying and selling of commodities on a large scale involving transportation from place to place.
Usage example: a major center of commerce; interstate commerce

We want to change Caribbean commerce. We want to make it Bigger, Better and Faster.

Bigger – Yes, we want to go from local markets to a regional Single Market. Imagine all 30 Caribbean member-states with 42 million people and the potential to produce $800 Billion in GDP.
Better – Free Market would be better for Caribbean economics as opposed to the restricted controls of extreme socialism; think Cuba. Yet, many other member-states have policies and practices that are socialistic in their priorities; i.e. Antigua & Barbuda does NOT allow for private property ownership on Barbuda. (This smells like communism).
Faster – We want more and more electronic commerce options. This means a comprehensive Marketplace & Social Media (www.myCaribbean.gov) plus the delivery-logistics options of the optimized Caribbean Postal Union (CPU), a subset of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).

Forging change in Caribbean commerce will require a change in culture … and currency.

Culture
The current Caribbean culture for “commerce” is bad! A previous blog-commentary vividly described this definition of culture:

This definition of culture refers to community ethos; this is defined in the book Go Lean … Caribbean (Page 20) 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.

In another previous blog-commentary, it was detailed how one Caribbean member-state, the US Virgin Islands, suffers from higher consumer prices due to the challenging logistics of island life … plus the bad community ethos of rent-seeking. So implementing an e-Commerce eco-system should have a positive impact on reducing the cost of living for all citizens.

Currency
The Caribbean currency also needs attention. For the 30 member-states in the region, there are many different currencies: local dollars (i.e. Bahamas, Barbados, Cayman, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Trinidad), sub-regional dollars (Eastern Caribbean) and International Reserve monies (Euros and US dollars). The attention that the new Caribbean needs is a new currency for its commercial activities, especially e-Commerce.

Welcome to the Caribbean Dollar (C$).

As related in yet another previous blog-commentary…

… the book Go Lean … Caribbean proposed a monetary-currency (Caribbean Dollar or C$) solution involving a cooperative of the Central Banks already in the region, dubbed the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB). …. There is already currency interdependence for many member-states [with the sub-regional currency and the International Reserve currencies]. …

Now, we can launch our own crypto-currency and electronic payments, clearing and settlements from this strong foundation. The missing ingredient, Trust, would be fulfilled.

Rolling out a regional currency will be a Big Idea and Big Undertaking. The book states (Page 127):

Currency Union / Single Currency
Apolitical technocratic monetary control, by the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB), and foreign trade with a globally respected currency allows for the methodical growth of the Caribbean economy without the risk of hyper-inflation and/or currency devaluations. The CU/CCB trades in Caribbean Dollars (C$) of which the currency’s reserves are a mixed-basket of strong foreign currencies: US Dollars, Euro, British Pound and Japanese Yen.

For us in the Caribbean to transform to a digital currency will require country-wide implementations. Fortunately, other countries have done this already … successfully. We would need to study (look, listen and learn) their experiences, good and bad. Consider the experience of the European country of Italy and their autonomous region/island of Sardinia:

VIDEO – Sardinia’s virtual currency – https://youtu.be/6qqKvctFZt0

CBS Sunday Morning
Published on Aug 6, 2017 – On the island of Sardinia, thousands of firms are not using traditional money to buy, sell, or pay salaries. They use Sardex, a virtual currency that allows businesses to earn and spend without relying on the Euro, or on banks that wouldn’t lend. Seth Doane reports on how the Mediterranean island is creating a new kind of wealth.

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Category: News & Politics

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Title: Italy’s B2B cashless Sardex currency set to take on the world

Directors of Sardex, a regional mutual credit network encompassing several thousand small and medium-sized businesses on the Italian island of Sardinia, are thinking big — even globally — but moving cautiously.

By: Nils Zimmermann

The basic idea behind Sardinia’s business-to-business (B2B) electronic credit system is a simple one, even if its execution is somewhat more complex.

The country’s first regional currency, Sardex, gives several thousand participating small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) the opportunity to participate in a system of mutual credit and do business with other local companies.

Sardex’s business development team recruits a balanced portfolio of carefully screened Sardinian SMEs, such as electricians, plumbers, glaziers, carpenters, retailers, café owners, farmers, or small manufacturing businesses, to participate in the Sardex business network. Participating SMEs pay a flat annual fee to join. Once members, they gain access to new prospective customers and suppliers.

See the remaining of the article in the Appendix below.

The lessons-learned from the experiences of Sardinia are concise: currency and credit can be fostered regardless of the support of Big Banks or existing capital. This theme also aligns with previous Go Lean commentaries; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16848	Two Pies: Economic Plan for a new Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16530	International efforts to de-Americanize the world’s economy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16210	Mitigating the Real Threat of Currency Assassins
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15923	Industrial Reboot – Payment Cards 101
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14248	Leading with Money Matters – Almighty Dollar vs Caribbean Dollars
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13744	Rebooting Caribbean Economics: The Quest for a ‘Single Currency’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8704	Lessons from MetroCard – Model for the Caribbean Dollar
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7034	The Future of Mobile Money Payment Systems

These previous commentaries all depict that it is conceivable, believable and achievable for the banking stakeholders in the Caribbean to deploy a new currency regime. In order to consider an e-Commerce culture, we must have the banking products in place … first. These innovations will bring so many benefits that we must embark on the roadmap to manifest these changes. We have already started … with the planning. Just notice these last 4 blog-commentaries published by the Go Lean movement:

Continuity of Business: Learning from Instagram’s system failures	e-Commerce sites require good management to maintain systems up-time and to minimize downtime.
Wal-Mart now doing ‘Next Day’ deliveries	Optimal logistics allow e-Commerce merchants to optimize the shopping experience.
Bad Ethos Retarding ‘New Commerce’	Bad government policy can curtail e-Commerce progress. For restaurants, a mandatory gratuity policy on take-out orders is just plain rent-seeking, a bad ethos.
Moving Forward with Transportation Solutions	The Caribbean does not have the highway networks to facilitate cheap shipping options, but we can deploy a network of ferries in our Union Atlantic Turnpike scheme.

This commentary now – Culture and Currency – completes this series on the preparation for e-Commerce in the Caribbean. This whole collection depicts the heavy-lifting that regional stakeholders must do. Let’s lean-in for this effort. This is how we can make our 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 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 – Italy‘s B2B cashless Sardex currency set to take on the world – Cont’d

…

Marketing help
All Sardex members have access to a searchable database of all the network’s members. They can post trade offers on Sardex’s web platform, and they’re encouraged to look for business opportunities within the network. Many join WhatsApp or Telegram groups comprising hundreds of members, to stay in touch and make each other aware of offers.

In addition, Sardex employs deal brokers whose job is to identify possible trading opportunities within the network. The brokers call up business owners to suggest deals, for example, by proposing plumbers, electricians, and builders they could cooperate with on a local construction project.

New business
“The point of Sardex is to facilitate new sales that would otherwise not occur, and make use of idle capacity,” said Giovanni Dini, who works on Sardex’s research and development team. “By joining Sardex, a participating SME should see growth in its transaction volume with other Sardinian businesses.”

Each new member’s annual fee is individually negotiated, and amounts to a small fraction of its estimated underutilized business capacity.

A mutual credit club
Members avoid paying each other for goods and services through normal financial channels. Instead of using cash, bank transfer, or standard credit cards to settle transactions, the euro-denominated amount (1 SRD equals €1, $1.16) can be recorded as a debt the buyer owes the Sardex network, not the seller. The seller, in turn, records a credit to their Sardex account. This credit is, in effect, a debt owed by Sardex to the seller.

In this way, Sardex members can buy and sell from each other even if they’re cash-strapped, or have difficulty gaining bank credit. As an added benefit, there is no interest charged or paid on Sardex account balances.

Participants are expected to keep their Sardex account level within individually agreed maximum credit or debt levels —usually a few thousand Euros. Members must buy as well as sell, and the net amount of credit or debt on purchases and sales made on their Sardex account should net to zero over the course of a year.

Limits on transaction volume
There are limits to the volume of trade a Sardex member can or should do, as a proportion of its total business volume. “We recommend no more than 30 percent of the total,” Dini told DW. “Most of that should be additional transactions, i.e., sales that would not have been made if the business hadn’t been a member of the Sardex network.”

A key reason for the 30 percent limit: Value-added taxes continue to be due on all transactions, and taxes are only payable in conventional bank Euros or in cash. If a business were to do 100 percent of its trade in Sardex credits, it would end up owing a lot of Euros to the Italian treasury, but would have no Euros in the bank to pay its taxes.

Tourism, construction and retail are among the sectors most active within the network.

Growing business volume
Dini said the total volume of business in Sardex credits transacted on Sardinia in 2016 was just over €67 million ($87 million). In 2017, it was nearly €81 million.

Those numbers don’t include transactions in 11 additional regions of Italy where Sardex has initiatied B2B credit clubs within the past couple of years, all of them using the same web- and app-based credit circuit technology platform Sardex developed for Sardinia, but each running its own separate regional B2B credit circuit. Veneto, Marche, and Lombardy are among the 11 regions.

“We’re looking at enabling interregional trade as well, i.e., transactions between credit circuit members from different regions,” Dini said.

“We have to be careful,” Dini added, “our top priority is increasing within-region trade. Sardex was founded as an instrument to stimulate jobs and trade within Sardinia, one of Italy’s economically depressed regions. If we open interregional trade too much, we’ll end up reproducing the same imbalances in trading relationships that already exist, with some regions being big net exporters and others running up debts as net importers.”

Is small beautiful?
In each region, Sardex has partnered with a local entrepreneur to run credit-club recruitment and operations. Transaction volumes outside Sardinia totalled €14 million in 2016; they nearly doubled to €26 million in 2017.

Given that Italy’s GDP in 2017 was about €1.72 trillion, these numbers are tiny in comparison. But members of one of these regional B2B credit clubs can see meaningful benefits at their own scale of activity, for example, a tradesman or tour operator might see an extra €30,000 a year in transactions.

Sardex had signed up a total of 3,896 SMEs as full members as of June 2018. The total SME membership for all 12 regional networks was 8,512. After Sardex, the top three regional networks at present are Marchex with 1,010 B2B members (2013 start), Linx with 894 (2015 start), and Venetex with 514 members (2016 start), respectively in the Marche, Lombardy and Veneto regions.

National and international interest
The Sardex model has been successful enough that it has attracted attention from all over Europe, and even beyond: “We’ve had non-government organisations, entrepreneurs, regional and municipal governments, and even one national government come to us and express interest in setting up a mutual credit network using our platform,” Dini said.

But Sardex’s founders and managers are moving carefully, to avoid over-extending their capacities, and to ensure that they have thoroughly worked out all aspects of the business on Sardinia first, the researcher and developer added.

The importance of the man on the ground
Some of the regional credit circuits Sardex has set up with partners in other regions are doing better than others. According to Dini, the most progress has been made in Italian regions which are already relatively prosperous, such as the Veneto and Marche regions.

Factors driving a regional network’s success, according to Dini, include, “the skill of the partner team on the ground, their dedication, and their luck. They need a good pitch for recruiting new members, they need to know their territory well, they need good salespeople.”

In addition, it makes a difference how big a region’s pool of SMEs is, Lombardy or Veneto have multiple times more businesses than Sardinia or other southern Italian regions, which makes member recruitment easier.

“The online credit circuit platform itself is only one element for building a successful mutual credit network,” Dini emphasised. “Going out and recruiting new members face-to-face, teaching them how to use the platform effectively, providing effective deal-brokerage services — these are essential too.”

Sardex has indicated it’s in touch with entrepreneurs in Germany and elsewhere to discuss the possibility of setting up a regional B2B credit circuit there as well, and the company hopes to be able to announce its first step beyond Italy sometime in early 2019.

“We’re seeing that our B2B credit circuit model is interesting to entrepreneurs in prosperous regions too, not only to businesses in economically depressed regions.”

Source: Deutsche Welle – German Business News Site – Posted September 5, 2018; retrieved May 25, 2019 from: https://www.dw.com/en/italys-b2b-cashless-sardex-currency-set-to-take-on-the-world/a-45300395

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Banks, e-Commerce, EU, Model, Transform

Wal-Mart now doing ‘Next Day’ deliveries

Posted on May 22, 2019 in Economics, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Wal-Mart, the Big-Box store, is now doing Next Day deliveries.

This is earth-shattering news! See the VIDEO here and the full story in the Appendix below.

VIDEO – Wal-Mart rolls out free next-day delivery service – https://finance.yahoo.com/video/walmart-rolls-free-next-day-132555700.html

The whole business model of Big-Box was bringing the customer to one destination, where they can find so many things in one place. Now, instead of the customer coming to the Big-Box, Wal-Mart – America’s largest employer – is coming to the customer.

The retail landscape is undergoing change; this is the actuality of the Retail Apocalypse as we have described in this previous commentary:

The underlying issue with the Retail Apocalypse is not the demand for retail products, it is the supply. Consumers are still demanding and consuming fashion and commodities, just not at shopping malls; e-Commerce is “all the rage”.

In a David versus Goliath analogy, Wal-Mart would be Goliath. (Amazon is equally giant-sized as an e-Commerce offering).

The Empire Strikes Back
The Retail Apocalypse change in this case is the Internet or e-Commerce (Electronic Commerce). But in the Appendix article, we see that the biggest brick-and-mortar retailer – the Empire: Wal-Mart – is striking back. They are using their Big-Box reality to foster an advantage for their business operations. This could be good for consumer choice. It is definitely good for modeling and learning-lessons for the Caribbean.

The topic of Big-Box is familiar for the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean; it includes this excerpt (Page 201):

The Bottom Line on Big-Box Stores

A big-box store (also supercenter, superstore, or megastore) is a physically large retail establishment, usually part of a chain. The term sometimes also refers, by extension, to the company that operates the store. The store may sell general dry goods in which case it is a department store, or may be limited to a particular specialty (such establishments are often called “category killers”) or may also sell groceries. Typical architectural characteristics include the following:

Large, free-standing, rectangular, generally single-floor structure built on a concrete slab. The flat roof and ceiling trusses are generally made of steel, the walls are concrete block clad in metal or masonry siding.
The structure typically sits in the middle of a large, paved parking lot, sometimes referred to as a “sea of asphalt.” It is meant to be accessed by vehicle, rather than by pedestrians.
Floor space several times greater than traditional retailers in the sector, providing for a large amount of merchandise; in North America, generally more than 50,000 square feet, sometimes approaching 200,000 square feet. In cities, like London, where space is at a premium, stores are more likely to have two-plus floors [and smaller numbers overall].

Commercially, big-box stores can be broken down into two categories: general merchandise (examples include Wal-Mart and Target), and specialty stores (such as Menards, Barnes and Noble, or Best Buy) which specialize in goods within a specific range, such as hardware, books, or electronics. In recent years, many traditional retailers – such as Tesco and Praktiker – have opened stores in the big-box-store format in an effort to compete with big-box chains, which are expanding globally.

Some worry about the economic impact of big-box retailers on established downtown merchants or the sprawl-inducing impacts on character of such developments, as these stores are associated with heavy traffic near the stores.

This Big-Box retail concept is not just limited to the US mainland. Many of the Big-Box players have locations in many other countries …

… including the Caribbean. Wal-Mart’s Caribbean locations are only in Puerto Rico:

Source: https://corporate.walmart.com/our-story/our-locations#/united-states/puerto-rico

The business model prescribed in the Go Lean book envisions more of such installments in the Self-Governing Entities spread throughout the region; the book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean economic engines. The book states (Page 234):

Self-Governing Entities
The CU will promote and administer all self-governing entities (SGE) throughout the region. This refers to scientific labs, industrial parks, commercial campuses, experimental hospitals, and even foreign bases. These facilities will not be subject of the laws of the local states of their address, [but] rather CU [federal regulations tied to different standards:] international, foreign sovereignty, or maritime laws; but depend on the local infrastructure to provide basic needs. Thereby creating jobs and economic activity.
…

Some mixed-use urban initiatives envisioned by the CU include: Main Street / Downtown Developments …

The Go Lean book also provides for effective strategies, tactics and implementations so as to be better in competition with Big-Box stores. See this excerpt here (Page 201):

Big-Box Competition: Cooperatives
The strategy of Big-Box stores is volume discounts. They purchase merchandise in bigger volumes that thereby garner bigger discounts from manufacturers. To compete against this reality, Main Street businesses need the benefits of aggregation and sharing their burdens with aligned firms. The formal Cooperatives movement allows such benefits.

Big-Box Competition: e-Commerce
Electronic commerce holds the promise of “leveling the playing field” so that small merchants can compete against larger merchants. To facilitate e-Commerce, purchased merchandise must get to their destinations as efficiently as possible. The CU’s implementation of the Caribbean Postal Union allows for better logistics for package delivery.

The Go Lean book (Page 57) has identified these trends – Globalization and Technology – as Agents of Change but it can frankly be described as Agents of Disruption or Agents of Destruction. For downtown merchants, Big-Box stores are disrupting their business models. For Big-Box merchants, e-Commerce is disrupting their business models. No matter your station on the retail industry vertical, there will always be competition and Agents of Disruption to contend with.

The lesson-learned for the planners for a new Caribbean is to always be On Guard for competition and to respond accordingly, with the best-practices for strategies, tactics and implementations. This is the Way Forward for retail operations in the Caribbean region. The roadmap describes how an optimized postal operation can be leveraged across 42 million people in the 30 Caribbean member-states, then we would be able to better deploy our e-Commerce offerings. The book states (Page 198):

Regional Postal Services – CPU
The CU will assume the responsibility for mail services in the region; (all member-state postal employees will become federal civil servants). The embrace of the Caribbean Postal Union allows for parcel mail to be optimally shipped and delivered throughout the region, with Customs considerations in place. The CPU will therefore ensure the fulfillment side of e-commerce, even allowing for computer applications for printing electronic stamps/barcodes for value savings.

This theme – fostering an e-Commerce eco-system – aligns with previous blog-commentaries; see these Amazon lessons here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12291	Amazon’s e-Commerce – The Retailers’ Enemy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1416	Amazon’s Smartphone model for e-Commerce

We need to be On Guard for other disruptions as well. The Caribbean is losing in competition with the rest of the world. We continue to lose our young people to foreign shores. One report has listed the abandonment rate at 70 percent of the tertiary-educated population; many times, the expatriates leave seeking jobs and other economic opportunities. This is not a sustainable reality for us. We must do better.

Consider this Wal-Mart story and the lessons we glean; with more e-Commerce and delivery offerings, we can create jobs and grow our economy right here at home. This will help us make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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.

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

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.

xv. Whereas the business of the Federation and the commercial interest in the region cannot prosper without an efficient facilitation of postal services, the Caribbean Union must allow for the integration of the existing mail operations of the governments of the member-states into a consolidated Caribbean Postal Union, allowing for the adoption of best practices and technical advances to deliver foreign/domestic mail in the region.

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 – Walmart launches free next-day delivery with no membership fee
By: Julia La Roche, Yahoo Reporter

Walmart (WMT) just upped the stakes in the shipping wars with its latest offering — free next-day delivery with no membership fee.

Shoppers on Walmart.com can access NextDay delivery via a stand-alone function where they can browse up to 220,000 of the most commonly purchased items, everything from diapers to cleaning products to toys and electronics.

“Think of things like Bounty paper towels, some of our Great Value paper lunch plates, flushable wipes, diapers, dog food. Everything from that to a Little Tikes toy set,” Janey Whiteside, Walmart’s chief customer officer, told Yahoo Finance. “It’s a combination of items that you forget that you need and you need them in a rush. If I’m a busy mom and I look at the diary and realize that tomorrow I have a kid’s birthday party and I’ve forgotten to buy a present, there are things in there for that. There are consumable items. You’ll see a range of things that we know the customers are looking for.”

Orders of $35 and up are eligible for NextDay delivery, and the offering will debut in Phoenix and Las Vegas before expanding to Southern California.

“It will roll out gradually over the coming months, with a plan to reach approximately 75% of the U.S. population this year, which includes 40 of the top 50 major U.S. metro areas,” Marc Lore, CEO of Walmart e-Commerce U.S., wrote in a blog post.

In the blog, Lore said the service “isn’t just great for customers, it also makes good business sense.”

“Contrary to what you might think, it will cost us less – not more – to deliver orders the next day,” he wrote.

The reason it won’t cost as much is that the items will ship from one fulfillment center nearest the customer, he explained.

“This means the order ships in one box, or as few as possible, and it travels a shorter distance via inexpensive ground shipping. That’s in contrast to online orders that come in multiple boxes from multiple locations, which can be quite costly,” Lore wrote.

That said, some are still skeptical about the expense associated with the new offering.

“My reaction is that it’s awesome for customers. For you and me, it’s great. We get more options, and it’s going to be faster to get anything we order,” Sucharita Kodali, a retail analyst at Forrester, told Yahoo Finance, before adding, “Is it great in the long-term from an expense standpoint? Is this the most efficient way? I think that question hasn’t been answered.”

Walmart’s NextDay lets customers shop up to 220,000 of the items most frequently purchased items, ranging from diapers and laundry detergent to toys and electronics.

Kodali doesn’t think shoppers are likely to turn down free, expedited shipping.

“The shopper doesn’t value it for what it is — an incredibly expensive endeavor,” Kodali said.

To Walmart’s credit, though, she said the retailer is approaching it in a “smart way,” by launching in a couple of cities with a finite number of eligible items and a threshold of $35.

“[They’re] trying not to lose their shirt while doing it,” she said, later adding, “All of those are incredibly important to making it successful.”

King Kong v. Godzilla
Walmart’s move is helpful in the “King Kong versus Godzilla fight” Walmart is in with Amazon, Kodali added.

In late April, Amazon (AMZN) said it would spend $800 million in the second quarter to speed up its delivery to one day from two for all its Amazon Prime members. Presently, the e-commerce giant offers free two-day shipping and same-day delivery on $35 orders for eligible items in specific areas. A Prime membership costs $119 per year.

Shortly after the Amazon news broke, Walmart hinted at its future plans around delivery.

“Both retailers are climbing up the next rung of immediacy. It’s another form of convenience,” Laura Kennedy, a vice president at Kantar Consulting, said. “Not every shopper is going to need it or think it’s the most convenient option.”

Forrester’s Kodali sees Walmart’s move as more about maintaining wallet-share and not surrendering that opportunity to Amazon.

“I think that’s really the crux of what this is,” she said.

What’s more, there’s also the potential for Walmart to attract a different shopper from that core shopper.

Kodali believes that Walmart’s online grocery pickup and delivery, especially with the convenience and broad organic offering, has already broadened the retailer’s appeal. The new NextDay offering is billed as a “complement” to Walmart’s same-day grocery delivery, which is expected to reach 1,600 stores by year-end.

“This has the ability to broaden the appeal. It’s all about incremental new customers,” Kodali said.

Julia La Roche is a finance reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow her on Twitter.

Source: Yahoo Finance – May 14, 2019; retrieved May 22, 2019 from: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/walmart-free-next-day-delivery-040200955.html?.tsrc=notification-brknews

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Bad Ethos Retarding ‘New Commerce’

Posted on May 21, 2019 in Economics, Ethos, Industries, Locations

Go Lean Commentary

Unlike most places, the Bahamas mandates that restaurants charge 18% gratuity … even for take-out operations. This is extreme, as gratuity is universally accepted as remuneration for the Wait Staff. But when the mode of operation is “take-out”, gratuity is superfluous – there is no Wait Staff.

Further, this “take-out gratuity” it is an example of …

rent-seeking – extracting uncompensated value from others without making any contribution – getting something for nothing.

To mandate gratuity under this extreme is really a bad community ethos – fundamental character or spirit of a culture; the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society.

Remember, this old maxim:

The chickens have come home to roost
This expression was renewed by Malcolm X after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, The adage dates back to at least 1810 when the English poet Robert South wrote, “Curses are like young chickens; they always come home to roost”. From an agricultural expression, it is true, domesticated foul may wander about all day – think Free Range – but in the evening, they do return to their default nesting location, the hen-house. This saying is comparing a person’s evil or foolish deeds to chickens. If a person does wrong, the “payback” might not be immediate. But at some point, at the end of the day, those “chickens” will come home to roost. “One has to face the consequences of one’s past actions”.

The lesson-learned is simple: we are NOT entitled to other people’s money.

Now, there is a New Economy, the bad attitudes about other people’s money have repercussions and consequences. Foolish policies like mandatory gratuity on take-out dinning are not tolerated under the New Economy regime. Places like the Bahamas – and other Caribbean member-states – must reform and transform.

The New Economy has brought forward a “Sharing Eco-System” in which industrial trends like ride-sharing, home-sharing and delivery assignments have emerged. There is now the concept of “ghost” restaurants – delivery services only; see details in the Appendices below.

Welcome to the Gig Economy.

Want a piece of this?
End mandatory gratuity on Restaurant Take-out activities!

All of these developments have created new jobs, new businesses and new opportunities. If we want a piece of this New Economy, then we have to adapt; we must rid ourselves of the bad community ethos and adopt some new ones. This theme – positioning our society for the New Economy – aligns with previous commentaries; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17040	Uber: A Better ‘Mousetrap’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13916	Model of ‘Gig Economy’ – Mother’s Love in Haiti
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10220	Waging a Successful War on Rent
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8262	UberEverything in Africa – Model of ‘Gigs’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7646	Going from ‘Good to Great’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5542	Economic Principle: Bad Ethos of Rent-Seeking
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2571	More Business Travelers flock to Airbnb

The Caribbean region must prepare and foster opportunities and dictate economic progress, so we must “weed out” bad practices and/or “rent” in our community ethos; instead we must pursue better ethos, as in the Greater Good. The book Go Lean…Caribbean defines this attribute as follows (Page 37):

“The greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong”. – Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832).

There are repercussions and consequences of bad community ethos. For one, people feel cheated, they leave-flee-abandon their homeland!

People may love their homeland, but seek refuge in more progressive societies, on foreign shores. The reasons why people leave in the first place have been identified as “Push and Pull”:

“Push” refers to the reasons people who feel compelled to leave, to seek refuge in a foreign land. “Refuge” is an appropriate word; because of societal defects – like unearned entitlements – many from the Caribbean must leave as refugees – think Disability, Domestic-abuse, Medically-challenged and LGBT – for their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
“Pull”, on the other hand refers to the lure of a more prosperous life abroad; many times our people are emigrating to communities where there are less rent-seeking and Crony-Capitalism practices.

If only we can mitigate these “push and pull” factors, then we can dissuade our societal abandonment and have a chance of reforming and transforming our societal engines in the homeland. Having an entitled attitude towards other people’s money is a bad attitude. The reality of the New Economy is premised on good business values and good societal values: Win-Win.

A Win-Win for Caribbean stakeholders is the motive for this movement behind the Go Lean book. We want to change – reform and transform – our Caribbean society by optimizing the eco-systems for economics, security and governance.

Yes, we can …

… it is heavy-lifting, but conceivable, believable and achievable that we can make changes and succeed in elevating our communities. This is about bad attitudes and bad habits. We have seen this before. The Go Lean book relates (Page 20):

Change is not easy …

Just ask anyone attempting to quit smoking. Not only are there physiological challenges, but psychological ones as well, to the extent that it can be stated with no uncertainty that “change begins in the head”. In psycho-therapy the approach to forge change for an individual is defined as “starting in the head” (thoughts, visions), penetrating the heart (feelings, motivations) and then finally manifesting in the hands (actions). This same body analogy is what is purported in this book for how the Caribbean is to embrace change – following this systematic flow:

Head – Plans, models and constitutions

Heart – Community Ethos

Hands – Actions, Reboots, and Turn-arounds

Leaning in and going lean for Caribbean regional integration hereto requires engaging all three body parts, figuratively speaking, none more important than the heart. The people of the Caribbean must change their feelings about elements of their society – elements that are in place and elements missing. This is referred to as “Community Ethos”.

Let’s get started. Let’s quit smoking, rent-seeking and all other bad habits and practices. This is how we can make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

xxvi. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries, like that of ship-building, automobile manufacturing, prefabricated housing, frozen foods, pipelines, call centers, and the prison industrial complex. In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism, fisheries and lotteries – impacting the region with more jobs.

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

——————

Appendix – What Are Ghost Restaurants?

If you’re tuned into restaurant trends, you may have heard of ghost restaurants. These new types of foodservice establishments are increasing in popularity as more and more restaurateurs decide to depart from traditional brick-and-mortar establishments and focus on delivery instead. If you want to learn more about what ghost restaurants are, how they work, and how you can start a successful one, keep reading.

What Is a Ghost Restaurant?
A ghost restaurant, also known as a virtual restaurant or delivery-only restaurant, is a foodservice establishment that offers take-out only. These “ghostly” eateries don’t have a storefront, so customers can’t come to pick up their own food. Ghost restaurants deliver food directly to their patrons, often through the use of third-party delivery services.

Mostly Made-to-Order
Generally, virtual restaurants function just like traditional restaurants, in that customers’ food is prepared once they order it. As a result, many establishments offer a lot of customization options for their menu items.

Where Do Ghost Restaurants Work Best?
This type of foodservice model is especially great for high-rent areas. Instead of hoping to find a prime location to draw foot traffic, restaurateurs can establish their virtual restaurant in any neighborhood they see fit, so long as their delivery service can easily access customers.

Making the Most of Their Space
Many popular fast-casual establishments in cities are bound by the requirement for seating and waiting space, even though a large percentage of their customers aren’t dining in. So, offering only delivery helps virtual restaurants avoid the problem of underutilized space.

Advantages of Ghost Restaurants
Here are some things that ghost restaurants can do that traditional eateries can’t:

Flexibility of concept: Being app- or web-based means that you can change your menu whenever you like, without having to worry about updating signage or printed materials.
Adjustable menu: If an ingredient becomes too expensive or is no longer accessible in your area, you can easily swap out your menu items to suit what is available to you.
Smaller financial investment: Think about all the expensive elements that don’t apply to virtual restaurants: decor, signage, dinnerware, and additional staff members to serve as servers or hosts.
Opportunity for experimentation: Ghost restaurants are the perfect opportunity to experiment with new concepts, because you can easily scrap ideas that aren’t working.

What Is a Ghost Restaurant Kitchen Like?
In virtual restaurants, the kitchen is where a lot of your investment goes. Because you don’t have to allow square footage for a dining area, you have much more room to customize your kitchen space. Depending on your budget, you can opt for some specialized cooking equipment that you probably never had room for in a traditional restaurant.

Using One Kitchen for Several Concepts
You can even own multiple ghost restaurants and operate them out of the same kitchen. Especially if your menus have ingredient overlap, you can prepare food for two separate concepts in one efficient space.

…

Source: Retrieved May 21, 2019 from: https://www.webstaurantstore.com/blog/2348/what-are-ghost-restaurants.html

————–

Appendix VIDEO – How Ghost Restaurants are Changing the Food Industry – https://youtu.be/59sPK73YjA0

Cheddar
Published on Feb 23, 2019 – With the rise of delivery services has come the rise of Ghost Restaurants which will cook your food and deliver it, but you’d never be able to order “for here”.

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Category – Entertainment

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Bahamas, e-Commerce, Model, Transform

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Marshall Plan – Is $91 Billion a Redux for Puerto Rico?

Posted on May 14, 2019 in Economics, Government, Locations

Go Lean Commentary

The US gave $13 Billion to Western Europe to recover, reboot and turn-around the deficient societal engines of that region, post World War II. It made a huge difference and restored the national production (think GDP) to levels exceeding the years before the war.

This was the Marshall Plan; it worked for Europe. There are even lessons for us to learn and apply in our Caribbean region.

In September 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated the island of Puerto Rico (PR), “bombing” its infrastructure. The island needed (actually still needs) all the help it could get. PR must reboot! Help came from the US Federal government … eventually. The US President now claims that his administration has given $91 Billion.

If so, wouldn’t this constitute a turn-around for Puerto Rico; perhaps another round – a redux – of the Marshall Plan, the original European Recovery Plan of 1948 – 1952?

The answer is: No!

Despite the need for a Marshall Plan for PR, they have not gotten one. They also did not get $91 Billion!

Wait, what?! See the news story-VIDEO here:

VIDEO – CNN reporter responds to Trump: That’s not true – https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2019/05/09/trump-puerto-rico-storm-relief-false-claim-crn-vpx.cnn

CNN Right Now
Posted May 9, 2019 – President Trump falsely claimed that Puerto Rico has been given $91 billion in disaster aid following Hurricane Maria that devastated the island.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean asserts that the Caribbean must first look to the Caribbean to effect the needed change in the region. The idea of someone “swooping in” and bringing the relief that the Caribbean needs – a panacea – is simply a fantasy. This has not happened, is not happening and will not happen.

“We” must be the change our homeland needs.

The 2013 Go Lean book anticipated the repercussions and consequences of natural disasters in the Caribbean. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This is the solution that we need, a regional regime to shepherd the economic, security (including Emergency Management), and governing engines of the 30 member-states, as one integrated unit.

This could be fact, not fantasy!

The Go Lean/CU roadmap does include a Marshall Plan for some member-states (Cuba & Haiti), that need to simply catch-up. Puerto Rico, while needing a Way Forward to reboot, recover and turn-around, is not envisioned for such a Marshall Plan. This is entry 5-of-5 in this series of commentaries – the final one – on the Marshall Plan, the historic European one and Caribbean versions. Here, as follows, is the full series being presented this month of May (2019):

Marshall Plan: A Lesson in History
Marshall Plan: Cuba – An imminent need for ‘Free Market’ Emergence
Marshall Plan: Haiti – Past time for Mitigation
Marshall Plan: Funding – What Purse to Fund Our Plans?
Marshall Plan: Is $91 Billion a Redux for Puerto Rico?

So if no Marshall Plan for PR, what solutions do we propose for this island. The theme of rebooting PR has been detailed in many previous Go Lean commentaries; consider this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17135	Way Forward – Puerto Rico: Learns its status with America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15012	In Life or Death: No Love for Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14101	‘We Are The World’ Style Campaign to Help Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13995	First Steps – Congressional Interstate Compacts – No Vote; No Voice
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13391	After Maria, Failed-State Indicators: Destruction and Defection for PR
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11647	Righting a Wrong: Puerto Rico’s Bankruptcy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7963	‘Like a Good Neighbor’ – Being there for Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6260	Puerto Rico Bondholders Coalition Launches Ad Campaign
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1325	Puerto Rico Attempts to Reboot the Landscape for Entrepreneurs (SME)
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=599	Ailing Puerto Rico open to radical economic fixes

The status quo for the Caribbean is deficient and defective. The status quo for Puerto Rico is deficient and defective. This same assessment requires some of the same solutions. The Go Lean/CU roadmap presents the solutions to fix the entire region.

This is the Way Forward.

Is the Way Forward part-and-parcel of their American experience?

How was the $91 Billion?

Oh wait! It’s a mirage. It is past time for PR to realize that its panacea is not the American eco-system. It is time to Grow Up, Already! The heavy-lifting that is needed for Puerto Rico must be exerted by Puerto Rico.

You are acting like a colony … towards your imperial masters, Washington D.C..

Instead, we propose that you act like a Good Neighbor, willing to partner with others “in the same boat” with common problems to find common solutions.

Puerto Rico should be fully inclusive in the political, social, economic, security, musical and athletic fabric of the regional society. This is the Caribbean’s future … and Puerto Rico’s future. This is how we can make our regional homeland, PR included, a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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.

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

——-

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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[Top]

Marshall Plan – Funding: How to Pay for Change

Posted on May 13, 2019 in Economics, Government, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

About that purse …
… we have been saying here repeatedly:

Will someone walk-up to Cuba/Haiti and give them $13 Billion (or $91 Billion in today’s dollars) to reboot, recover and turn-around their periods of dysfunction?

Probably, not!

So how to ensure that all this talk of a Marshall Plan is not just simply talk?

Answer: We create the purse ourselves.

Purse , noun
a: Resources, Funds
b: a sum of money offered as a prize or present also : the total amount of money offered in prizes for a given event

The book Go Lean…Caribbean asserts that the Caribbean region as an entity can create a new regional purse, one that can fund the Marshall Plan that is needed to reform the de facto Failed-States of Cuba, Haiti and other declining member-states.

Once we reform these problematic communities, then we can focus on transforming the entire region. Leverage is the key!

So we can comfortably declare that change is on the way for the Caribbean!

While the purpose of the Go Lean roadmap is NOT just Cuba & Haiti alone, we know that we cannot elevate the societal engines for all of the Caribbean while ignoring these near-Failed States. These member-states constitute 48% of the region’s population and a huge portion of the landmass. There is no Caribbean without these Cuban/Haitian countries and cultures.

So to repeat, if we can fix Cuba & Haiti, we can fix the entire Caribbean region. This is the “Why’ and “How” – Marshall Plan – and these are important considerations; but more importantly, we need to know how to fund our plans.

We must know if “someone” will walk-up to and give us $13 Billion (or $91 Billion in today’s dollars) to reboot, recover and turn-around our dysfunctional member-states. We can now hereby declare:

Probably, not … for any external entities.
Definitely yes … for doing it ourselves … internally.

The Go Lean roadmap asserts that it is up to the Caribbean to solve the Caribbean’s problems. We must plan, fund and execute our own Marshall Plan. Yes, we can!

The next step: graduate from just regional integration – Caribbean Community (CariCom) – to a Single Market.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean, serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), to facilitate a Single Market. The book features (Page 101) this one advocacy for creating a purse, entitled: “10 Ways to Pay for Change“. These “10 Ways” include the following highlights, headlines and excerpts:

1	*Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market* – Ratify treaty for the CU.** This treaty allows for the unification of the region into one market, expanding to an economy of 30 member-states of 42 million people, to impact a GDP of over $800 Billion. In order for the CU to reboot the economic engines of the region, the political entity of the unified Caribbean must be rebooted first. … The CU will generate its own initial funding, as listed here, below.
2	Spectrum Auctions The CU will function as a government-owned multinational corporation to deliver services for an integrated Caribbean administration. Having the regional authority, the CU will hold auctions for the radio spectrum in the region. This will generate the CU’s own initial revenue stream, as only rights are being awarded; there is no performance – no fabrication of products or rendering of services. With this strategy, there will be revenues to return back to CU share-holders, member-states, even in the 1st year.
3	SGE Licenses The CU treaty empowers economic engines (Self-Governing Entities – SGE: industrial parks, technology labs, medical campuses, etc.) in and on behalf of the region. These independent entities pay fees to the CU, at the outset, so as to be licensed by the CU.
4	GPO Logistic Fees An important CU mission is the Group Purchasing Organization (GPO), an extension of the current [CariCom] Office of Trade Negotiations; but the CU will make purchases and fulfill delivery to member-states, for a handling fee.
5	Regional Lottery … The CU will implement a regional lottery, in conjunction with local state lotteries, with winnings awarded in Caribbean dollars (C$). The CU will outsource contracts for distribution, fund management and IT processing. These contracts can serve as an initial funding source.
6	EEZ Exploration Rights
7	Homeland Security – Private Protection Licensing
8	Homeland Security – Hurricane Insurance Fund
9	Warrants Paying for Change first optimizes the payment terms. All CU payments to member-states will be in the form of warrants attached to bonds; this allows the CU to pay lower interest rates. These warrants make the bonds sellable to the public. [See explanation of Registered Warrants in the Appendix below].
10	Foreign Aid & Grants *including Non-Government Organizations (NGOs)*

A Caribbean version of the previous European Marshall Plan will be very significant in the roadmap to reform and transform the Caribbean member-states. Planning the Plan is one thing; Executing the Plan is another. But in between the Plan and the Execution is the heavy-lifting task of funding the change. This is why this series of commentaries is so important. This is entry 4-of-5 in this series of commentaries on the Marshall Plan, the historic European one and Caribbean versions. Here, as follows, is the full series being presented this month of May (2019):

Marshall Plan: A Lesson in History
Marshall Plan: Cuba – An imminent need for ‘Free Market’ Emergence
Marshall Plan: Haiti – Past time for Mitigation
Marshall Plan: Funding – What Purse to Fund Our Plans?
Marshall Plan: Is $91 Billion a Redux for Puerto Rico?

In this entry for this series we focus on “How” to fund the Marshall Plan. In the European model, “it” was about the money; for the Caribbean version, money will be equally important. The theme of recovering and rebooting the Caribbean economic landscape has been detailed in many previous Go Lean commentaries; consider this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16848	‘Two Pies’ – Funding Plan for a New Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16836	Crypto-currency: Here comes ‘Trouble’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16530	Efforts to de-Americanize the world’s economy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16210	In Defense of Trade – The Real Threat of Currency Assassins
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15798	Lessons Learned from 2008 Great Recession – Region Still Recovering
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14834	Counter-culture – Monetizing the Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14248	Leading with Money Matters – Almighty Dollar – From US$ to C$
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13744	Caribbean Economics – The Quest for a ‘Single Currency’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10513	Transforming ‘Money’ Countrywide
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3582	For Canadian Banks – The Caribbean is a ‘Bad Bet’

The hope for a Marshall Plan for Cuba and Haiti will only be an empty promise unless the regional infrastructure accompanies the Planning and Executions. The Way Forward for the Caribbean economic landscape therefore presents these necessary ingredients:

Regional Currency – Trading in Caribbean Dollars (C$) rather than local currencies.
Regional Capital Markets – There are 9 Stock Exchanges; these will expand due to C$ adoption; i.e. Warrants.

The current economic landscape is deficient and defective. We must reboot and change all of it: Top-Down and Bottoms-Up. This is a Big Shift being considered here, transforming how we finance government spending: Looking to Capital Markets for fostering a landscape with Registered Warrants instead of “cash”. Wow! (See more on this in the Appendix below). Only with these technocratic strategies, tactics and implementations, can we even contemplate rebooting Cuba and Haiti.

This product offering – Registered Warrants – is part of the Way Forward for the new Caribbean.

Our Way Forward for the entire Caribbean includes the entire Caribbean, with Cuba & Haiti too. So we have to prepare the region for the full inclusion of these problematic countries. With them, we can better leverage the political, social, security and economic fabric of the regional society. This is the Caribbean’s future. This is how we intend to make our homeland, Cuba & Haiti included, better places to live, work and play. 🙂

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.

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

——-

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: Warrants of Payments

In financial transactions, a warrant is a written order from a first person that instructs a second person to pay a specified recipient a specific amount of money or goods at a specific time.^[1] The warrant may or may not be negotiable and may authorize payment to the warrant holder on demand or after a maturity date. Governments may choose to pay wages and other accounts payable by issuing warrants instead of checks.

History
In the 18th century, warrants were used by the military to authorize payments to soldiers and suppliers. George Washington, for example, signed warrants that ordered quartermasters to deliver money or acquire supplies.^[2] These warrants were used by quartermasters to issue vouchers to acquire food, supplies, munitions, clothing, transportation, etc., for the use of the American military and to maintain Washington’s headquarters. Warrants could be redeemed by the army paymasters, but most often they were used like cash by the recipient. Warrants, like bills of exchange and vouchers, were often heavily discounted and depreciated in value. The fortunes of war could be traced through the discount rates on warrants, vouchers, and Continental dollars.

Modern warrants
In government finance, a warrant is a written order to pay that instructs a federal, state, or county government treasurer to pay the warrant holder on demand or after a maturity date. Such warrants look like checks and clear through the banking system like checks, but are not drawn against cleared funds in a checking account (demand deposit account). Instead, they may be drawn against “available funds” or “out of fund 0027” so that the issuer can collect interest on the float or delay redemption. If the warrant is conditional on funds being available, the warrant is not a negotiable debt instrument. In the U.S., warrants are issued by government entities such as the military and state and county governments. Warrants are issued for payroll to individual employees, accounts payable to vendors, to local governments, to taxpayers receiving tax refunds, to recipients of unemployment benefits, and to owners of unclaimed money. A warrant differs from a check in that the warrant is not drawn on a checking account, is not necessarily payable on demand, and may not be negotiable.^[5][6]

Warrants deposited in a bank are routed (based on the MICR routing number) to a collecting bank which processes them as collection items like maturing treasury bills and presents the warrants to the government entity’s treasury department for payment to the bank each business day.

Regular warrants are redeemable by the government treasurer after they are issued. “Registered warrants” bear interest and need not be redeemed by the treasurer until the warrant maturity date.^[7] If warrants cannot be immediately redeemed by the issuing entity, the collecting bank may accept the warrants as short term debt instruments and collect interest when redeemed in accordance with a prior agreement with the issuing entity. The collecting bank may refuse to accept a warrant issue, in which case other banks may also refuse to accept them.^[8]

“The warrants of a municipal corporation are not negotiable instruments. They do not constitute a new debt, or evidence of a new debt, but are only the prescribed means devised by law for drawing money from the treasury.”^[9]

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission said on July 9, 2009, that California’s registered warrants are “securities” under federal securities law and will be regulated as municipal securities by the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board.^[10] Under these regulations, anybody who profits by buying and reselling warrants must be registered as a municipal securities broker-dealer.^[11]

Although registered warrants are evidence of a municipality’s obligation to pay, because they demonstrate an intent to disburse funds when those funds become available, the US Supreme Court has ruled that a holder of a valid warrant cannot obtain a writ of mandamus for specific performance of the obligation to pay, enforced against a treasurer or other employee of the municipality.^[12] …

United Kingdom
In the UK, warrants are issued as payment by the NS&I when a Premium Bond is chosen.

The difference between a warrant and a cheque is that a cheque usually places no explicit time frame on when the amount is to be paid.

Source: Retrieved May 13, 2019 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_of_payment

—————

VIDEO – What is WARRANT OF PAYMENT? What does WARRANT OF PAYMENT mean? WARRANT OF PAYMENT meaning – https://youtu.be/9LY7Ol5ec6E

The Audiopedia

Published on Apr 20, 2017 – … Governments may choose to pay wages and other accounts payable by issuing warrants instead of checks …

Category: Education
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Marshall Plan – Haiti: Past time for Mitigation

Posted on May 12, 2019 in Economics, Government, Locations

Go Lean Commentary

This is a deep philosophical discussion about Grace. What is it?

From a theological perspective, this can be defined as follows:

… not as a created substance of any kind, but as “the love and mercy given to us by God because God desires us to have it, not necessarily because of anything we have done to earn it”,^[1] “Grace is favour, the free and undeserved help that God gives us to respond to his call to become children of God, adoptive sons, partakers of the divine nature and of eternal life.”^[2] It is understood by Christians to be a spontaneous gift from God to people “generous, free and totally unexpected and undeserved”^[3] – that takes the form of divine favor, love, clemency, and a share in the divine life of God.^[4]

So a summary definition of Grace may just be: Undeserved Kindness.

Europe endured a lot of dysfunction during the 20th Century; think World War I and World War II. Let’s face it, these European countries did NOT deserve any kindness or help (such as the $13 Billion in the Marshall Plan) that were eventually given to them after WWII; it was a kindness and an investment from the US to the Europeans. It was Grace!

A lot of people in the North America felt that Europe brought this dysfunction on themselves; “they sowed the wind; they would have to reap the whirlwind”. This philosophy was referred to as Isolationism. But after the photos of poor, starving children came to light, attitudes began to change. See this manifestation as recorded by the Save the Children Fund (UK):

At the end of World War II, images of malnourished and sick children ran throughout Europe. [The Founders] worked to gain public sympathy in order to elicit support aid.^[12] Save the Children staff were among the first into the liberated areas after World War II, working with refugee children and displaced persons in former occupied Europe, including survivors of Nazi concentration camps. At the same time, work in the United Kingdom focused on improving conditions for children growing up in cities devastated by bombing and facing huge disruptions in family life.^[8]

The need for Grace eventually became evident.

During the period leading up to World War II, Americans were highly isolationist, and many called the Marshall Plan a “milestone” for American ideology. By looking at polling data over time from pre-World War II to post-World War II, one would find that there was a change in public opinion in regards to ideology. Americans swapped their isolationist ideals for a much more global internationalist ideology after World War II. – Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Change_in_American_ideology

All of this time, and before, the Caribbean country of Haiti languished. They were past the time that they needed Grace and help; but such deliveries were fleeting. (The same Save the Children Fund – founded in London in 1919 – is now active in Haiti; but only since 1985; see Appendix below).

What’s the difference in the response and attitudes towards these two populations?

Duh! Since Human Rights and Civil Rights only played “catch-up” in the mid 20th Century – gaining momentum in the 1960’s and beyond – the answer is self-evident:

Ethnicity and racism.
See the distribution of the Marshall Plan beneficiary countries here:

This is the assertion by the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean – and the whole world knows it – that due to Haiti’s Black-and-Brown population demographic, their country was ignored or maybe even further abused. (After 1804, the former slaves were required to pay reparations to their former masters: France). This was also the experience – uninvited abusers – after this 2010 Earthquake.

Remember the Missing/Unprocessed $500 Million the American Red Cross collected for the Haiti earthquake.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean asserts that Haiti had been restrained from fully participating in the world economic systems for most of the 19th & 20th Centuries; all because of the bold stand they took to secure their own freedom: the 1804 Slave Rebellion and subsequent Independence Declaration. The realities and possibilities of Haiti’s past and future are identified early in the Go Lean book, embedded in the opening Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing a need for reconciliation efforts (Page 12):

xiii. Whereas the legacy of dissensions in many member-states (for example: Haiti and Cuba) will require a concerted effort to integrate the exile community’s repatriation, the Federation must arrange for Reconciliation Commissions to satiate a demand for justice.

Change is on the way for Haiti! The country is now a de facto Failed-State. Their Way Forward to move upwards, must start with a Marshall Plan.

While the purpose of the Go Lean roadmap is NOT just Haiti alone, we know that we cannot elevate the societal engines for all of the Caribbean while ignoring Haiti …

(It possesses 21% of the region’s population; with the same demographic mix as was the case in the last 200 years: majority Black-and-Brown people).

… there is no Caribbean without Haiti.

So to repeat, if we can fix Haiti, we can fix the entire Caribbean region. This is the “Why’; but for the “How”; we need that Marshall Plan.

The focus of the Go Lean roadmap is the recognition that our region’s status quo is bad, critical and even to be considered “in crisis”. The book declares that “a crisis is a terrible thing to waste”, intimating that we must use crises as opportunities to forge change. This is the rationale for the Marshall Plan for Haiti. See the book’s proposal here (Page 238):

The Bottom Line on Marshall Plan
By the end of World War II much of Europe was devastated. The Marshall Plan, (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP), named after the then Secretary of State and retired general George Marshall, was the American program to aid Europe where the United States gave monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of the war. During the four years (1948 – 1952) that the plan was operational, US$13 billion in economic and technical assistance was given to help the recovery of the European countries. The plan looked to the future, and did not focus on the destruction caused by the war.
.
Much more important were efforts to modernize European industrial and business practices using high-efficiency American models, reduce artificial trade barriers, and instill a sense of hope and self-reliance.
.
By 1952 as the funding ended, the economy of every participant state had surpassed pre-war levels; for all Marshall Plan recipients, output in 1951 was at least 35% higher than in 1938. Over the next two decades, Western Europe enjoyed unprecedented growth and prosperity. Generally, economists agree that the Marshall Plan was one of the first elements of European integration, as it erased trade barriers and set up institutions to coordinate the economy on a continental level—that is, it stimulated the total political reconstruction of Western Europe.Today, the European Union, the latest successor of the integration effort, is the world largest integrated economy.

Will someone walk-up to Haiti and give them $13 Billion (or $91 Billion in today’s dollars) to reboot, recover and turn-around the prior 2 centuries of dysfunction?

Probably, not!

(What’s really sad, is people walk-up to further exploit and abuse Haiti and Haitians).

It will be up to the Caribbean to solve the Caribbean’s problems. We do have more than one Failed-State; think Cuba; and we have many other member-states, just a few notches behind Cuba & Haiti on the Failed-State indices. So we must execute strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to effect the needed reboot, recovery and turn-around.

Yes, we can succeed, the same as post-World War II Europe succeeded with the 4-year execution of their Marshall Plan. Yes, we can!

Haiti is already a member-state in the Caribbean Community (CariCom). So they have already embraced the concept of regional interdependence. What’s missing now is the leveraging of the Single Market, adding “teeth to the prospect” of a unified neighborhood with “Trade & Security” initiatives.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean, serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This roadmap provides the “teeth”; it presents this one advocacy for Haiti, entitled: “10 Ways to Re-boot Haiti“. These “10 Ways” include the following highlights, headlines and excerpts:

1	*Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market* – Ratify treaty for the CU.** This regional re-boot 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. Following the model of European integration, the CU will be the representative and negotiating body for Haiti and the entire region for all trade and security issues.
2	Marshall Plan for Haiti Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere. But what they have is impassioned human capital as opposed to financial capital or valuable minerals. The CU is a total economic reboot for this country, one that involves developing internally and not thru emigration. To reboot Haiti will require a mini-Marshall Plan. The infrastructure, for the most part, is archaic compared to modern societies. The engines of the CU will enable a rapid upgrade of the infra-structure and some “low hanging fruit” for returns on the investment.
3	Leap Frog Philosophy There is no need to move Haiti’s technology infrastructure baseline from the 1960’s, then to the 1970’s, and so on. Rather, the CU’s vision is to move Haiti to where technology is going, not coming from. This includes advanced urban planning concepts like electrified light-rail, prefab house constructions, alternative energies and e-delivery of governmental services and payment systems.
4	Repatriation and Reconciliation of the Haitian Diaspora
5	Access to Capital Markets
6	National Historic Places
7	World Heritage Sites As of 2012, there are 2 World Heritage Sites in Haiti. The CU will promote these sites (both in the same compound) as tourist attractions for the domestic and foreign markets.
8	Labor, Immigration and Movement of People
9	Educational Mandates
10	Language Neutrality of the Union

Now is the time to prepare the Marshall Plan to execute in and for Haiti.

Haiti needs the Caribbean and the Caribbean needs Haiti; the more people we can leverage, the better. This is entry 3-of-5 in this series of commentaries on the Marshall Plan, the historic European one and Caribbean versions. Here, as follows, is the full series being presented this month of May (2019):

Marshall Plan: A Lesson in History
Marshall Plan: Cuba – An imminent need for ‘Free Market’ Emergence
Marshall Plan: Haiti – Past time for Mitigation
Marshall Plan: Funding – What Purse to Fund Our Plans?
Marshall Plan: Is $91 Billion a Redux for Puerto Rico?

In this entry for this series we focus on Haiti, reforming and transforming that homeland. The theme of rebooting Haiti – finally mitigating their Bad Start with a Marshall Plan – has been detailed in many previous Go Lean commentaries; consider this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13974	The Spoken and Unspoken on Haiti
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13916	Haiti – Beauty ‘Only a Mother Can Love’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13105	Fixing Haiti – Can the Diaspora be the Answer?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12821	Remembering the Slave Trade and Haiti’s Slave Rebellion
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10336	A Lesson in History: Haiti’s 1915 Abuse … again
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8767	A Lesson in History: Haiti’s Slave Rebellion in 1804
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8508	UN troops Abused Mothers and local Babies born in Haiti
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5333	Haiti’s Legacy: Cause and Effect
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3662	Haitian Migrant flow into US spikes
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3473	Haiti to Receive $70 Million Grant to Expand Caracol Industrial Park

The status quo for the Caribbean is deficient and defective. The status quo for Haiti is deficient and defective. This same assessment requires some of the same solutions. If/when we fix Haiti, we fix the entire region.

Haiti needs this Marshall Plan.

The entire Caribbean needs a Way Forward.

Our Way Forward for the entire Caribbean includes the entire Caribbean, with Haiti too. So we have prepared the region for this full inclusion of Haiti in the political, social, musical, athletic, security and economic fabric of the regional society. This is the Caribbean’s future … and Haiti’s future. This is how we intend to make our homeland, Haiti included, a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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.

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

——-

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: Save the Children … in Haiti

We’ve been working in Haiti since 1985 helping children and families, providing child protection, education, health, food and helping people to earn a living. We also help children and families when disasters strike, like the devastating earthquake in 2010.

When the devastating earthquake struck on 12 January 2010, it created one of the most all-encompassing emergencies we’ve ever responded to.

Haiti’s earthquake killed 230,000 people and left more than 1 million homeless.
We were one of the first agencies to respond, reaching 100,000 people within two weeks.
By the end of 2010, we had helped a total of 870,000 people.

OUR WORK

Haiti was deep in poverty long before the disaster. That’s why we’ve been working there for more than 30 years, in urban and rural communities, making sure that children are protected, and providing education, health and food.

When disasters strike in Haiti, we’re there on the ground using our knowledge of the country and our expertise to help the most vulnerable children and their families.

Source: Save the Children Fund (UK) retrieved May 12, 2019 from: https://www.savethechildren.org.uk/where-we-work/south-central-america/haiti

————–

See the related VIDEO here:

VIDEO – A New Morning: Building Hope for Haiti – Save the Children – https://youtu.be/luzcJdtKmYw

Save the Children USA
Published on Jul 1, 2010 – July 12, 2010 — Thank you for helping to support Save the Children’s relief efforts in Haiti!

With a 30-year history in Haiti, Save the Children was on the ground when the earthquake hit on January 12, 2010. The organization’s staff immediately responded with emergency relief, including lifesaving distributions of food, shelter and supplies. To date, the organization has been able to reach 682,000 people.

Save the Children foresees a long-term process of intense reconstruction, rehabilitation and investment ahead and is implementing a 5-year response and recovery plan. The organization is focusing its efforts on the areas that have the most impact on the lives and well-being of thousands of children: education, protection, health and nutrition, water and sanitation, shelter, livelihoods, food security and the provision of food and nonfood items.

Download Save the Children’s Haiti six month report: http://bit.ly/cuPl9Z

Learn more about Save the Children’s Haiti response: http://bit.ly/bBHMQC

Support Save the Children’s Haiti Earthquake Children in Emergency Fund: http://bit.ly/ahyLMb

Category: Nonprofits & Activism

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Marshall Plan – Cuba: An Imminent need for ‘Free Market’ Emergence

Posted on May 10, 2019 in Economics, Government, Locations, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

im·mi·nent
adjective 1. about to happen.
Sample use: “they were in imminent danger of being swept away”

synonyms: impending, at hand, close, near, approaching, fast approaching, coming, forthcoming, on the way, about to happen, upon us, in store, in the offing, in the pipeline, on the horizon, in the air, in the wind, brewing, looming, looming large; threatening, menacing; expected, anticipated;
informal sample: “in the cards”
“there was speculation that a ceasefire was imminent”

This is the assertion – and the whole world knows it – Cuba will imminently re-emerge as a ‘Free Market’ economy.

Cuba sera libre!

The book Go Lean…Caribbean asserts that the “sleeping giant” – that is the Cuban economy – will awaken. The book presents a roadmap in preparation for Cuba’s re-emergence as a ‘Free Market’ economy. (Their 60-year experiment with extreme Socialism is concluding and has yielded a verdict: Failure). The realities and possibilities of Cuba’s past and future are identified early in the Go Lean book, embedded in the opening Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing a need for reconciliation efforts (Page 12):

xiii. Whereas the legacy of dissensions in many member-states (for example: Haiti and Cuba) will require a concerted effort to integrate the exile community’s repatriation, the Federation must arrange for Reconciliation Commissions to satiate a demand for justice.

Change is on the way for Cuba!

Already the Castro’s (Fidel & Raul) have moved on from the daily administration of the country; (Fidel has died and Raul has retired). See the related VIDEO in the Appendix below.

But 60 years is still 60 years; these Bad Old Days have created quite a legacy to overcome. This actuality “cries out” for a reboot and a turn-around. The 2013 Go Lean book anticipated as such and introduced the proposal for a Marshall Plan for Cuba in order to reform and transform that society. The country is a de facto Failed-State.

While the purpose of the Go Lean roadmap is NOT Cuba alone, we know that we cannot elevate the societal engines for all of the Caribbean while ignoring Cuba. It possesses 26% of the region’s population and a huge portion of the landmass. There is no Caribbean without Cuba.

So to repeat, if we can fix Cuba, we can fix the entire Caribbean region. This is the “Why’; but for the “How”; we need that Marshall Plan.

The Bottom Line on Marshall Plan
By the end of World War II much of Europe was devastated. The Marshall Plan, named after the then Secretary of State and retired general George Marshall, was the American program to aid Europe where the United States gave monetary support to help rebuild European economies after the end of the war. During the four years (1948 – 1952) that the plan was operational, US $13 billion in economic and technical assistance was given to help the recovery of the European countries. The plan looked to the future, and did not focus on the destruction caused by the war. Much more important were efforts to modernize European industrial and business practices using high-efficiency American models, reduce artificial trade barriers, and instill a sense of hope and self-reliance. This worked! By 1952 as the funding ended, the economy of every participant state had surpassed pre-war levels. Generally, economists agree that the Marshall Plan was one of the first elements of European integration, as it erased trade barriers and set up institutions to coordinate the economy on a regional level—today, the European Union, the latest successor of the integration effort, is the world largest integrated economy.

Will someone walk-up to Cuba and give them $13 Billion (or $91 Billion in today’s dollars) to reboot, recover and turn-around 60 years of dysfunction?

Probably, not!

It will be up to the Caribbean to solve the Caribbean’s problems. We have more than one Failed-State; think Haiti. We have many other member-states, just a few notches behind Cuba & Haiti on the Failed-State indices. The lyrics of this song – “Lean On Me” – nails it:

If there is a load you have to bear
That you can’t carry
I’m right up the road
I’ll share your load
If you just call me
— Lean On Me; by Bill Withers (1971)

Cuba’s 60-year experiment with extreme Socialism is concluding with this Failed-State acknowledgement. Now, we must execute strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to effect the needed reboot, recovery and turn-around. Yes, we can succeed, the same as Europe succeeded with the 4-year execution of their Marshall Plan.

Yes, we can! The next step:

Invite Cuba to join the regional integration effort; such as the Caribbean Community (CariCom).

The book Go Lean … Caribbean, serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). It provides this one advocacy for Cuba, entitled: “10 Ways to Re-boot Cuba“. These “10 Ways” include the following highlights, headlines and excerpts:

1	*Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market* – Ratify treaty for the CU.** This regional re-boot 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. Following the model of European integration, the CU will be the representative and negotiating body for Cuba and the entire region for all trade and security issues. This helps to assuage the political adversity expected from Anti-Castro [and Anti-Socialists] groups.
2	Political Neutrality of the Union Cuba is the only Communist-led state in the CU region. Other states have multiple party systems: left-leaning or right-leaning governments; many have more than 2 parties. The CU is officially neutral! The election of the popular leaders of each country is up to that country. The Election functionality of member-states can be outsourced to the CU as the organization structure will provide the systems, processes and personnel to facilitate smooth and fair election.
3	US Trade Embargo By-Pass The US embargo against Cuba is an economic, and financial embargo imposed in October 1960. It was designed to punish Cuba to dissuade communism and the nationalization of private property during the revolution. To date, there are judgments of up to $6 billion worth of claims against the Cuban government. Despite this US action, the rest of the Caribbean, Canada and Europe do trade with Cuba, with no repercussions in their relationship with the US. It is expected that after Fidel and Raul Castro, there will be greater liberalization of trade and diplomacy with the US.
4	Marshall Plan for Cuba To reboot Cuba will require a mini-Marshall Plan. The infrastructure, for the most part, is still the same as in 1958. The engines of the CU will enable a rapid upgrade of the infra-structure and some “low hanging fruit” for returns on the investment. The US-based Cuba Policy Foundation estimates that the embargo costs the U.S. economy $3.6 billion per year in economic output. The vision is for the CU to be the benefactor of a re-booted Cuban economy, not the US.
5	Leap Frog Philosophy There is no need to move Cuba’s 1950’s technology baseline to the 1960’s, then the 1970’s, and so on; rather, the vision is to leap-frog Cuba to where technology is going. This includes advance urban planning concepts like electrified light-rail, prefab house, alternative energies and e-delivery of governmental services and payment systems.
6	Repatriation and Reconciliation of the Cuban Diaspora
7	Access to Capital Markets
8	Optimization of Agricultural Exports
9	National Historic Places
10	World Heritage Sites As of 2012, there are 9 World Heritage Sites in Cuba. The CU will promote these sites as tourist attractions for the domestic and foreign markets.

Now is the time to prepare the Marshall Plan to execute in Cuba.

Cuba needs the Caribbean and the Caribbean needs Cuba; the more people/places we can leverage, the better. This is entry 2-of-5 in this series of commentaries on the Marshall Plan, the historic European one and Caribbean versions. Here, as follows, is the full series being presented this month of May (2019):

Marshall Plan: A Lesson in History
Marshall Plan: Cuba – An Imminent need for ‘Free Market’ Emergence
Marshall Plan: Haiti – Past time for Mitigation
Marshall Plan: Funding – What Purse to Fund Our Plans?
Marshall Plan: Is $91 Billion a Redux for Puerto Rico?

In this entry for this series we focus on Cuba, reforming and transforming that homeland. The theme of rebooting Cuba – the story arc and progress towards a ‘Free Market’ – has been detailed in many previous Go Lean commentaries; consider this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16864	Cuba’s Progress: New Constitution with some ‘Free Market’ Guarantees
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14732	‘Red Letter Day’ for Cuba – Raul Castro Retires
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7412	The Road to Restoring Cuba: Normalization of Travel, Mail, Internet, etc.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3455	Restoration of Diplomatic Relations Between Cuba and the USA
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3354	CariCom Chairman calls for an end to US embargo on Cuba
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2330	‘Raul Castro reforms not enough’, Cuba’s in-country bishops declare
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1609	Cuba’s Parliament mulls economy and some ‘Free Market’ changes
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=789	A Lesson in History – America’s War on the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=436	Cuba Approves New “Law on Foreign Investment” – a Start for Progress

The status quo for the Caribbean is deficient and defective. The status quo for Cuba is deficient and defective. This same assessment requires some of the same solutions. If/when we fix Cuba, we fix the entire region.

Cuba needs a Marshall Plan.

The entire Caribbean needs a Way Forward.

Our Way Forward for the entire Caribbean includes the entire Caribbean, with Cuba too. So we have prepared the region for this full inclusion of Cuba in the political, social, musical, athletic, security and economic fabric of the regional society. This is the Caribbean’s future … and Cuba’s future. This is how we intend to make our homeland, Cuba included, a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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.

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 aforementioned 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 – Cuba After Castros: Facing the future without Fidel and Raul Castro – https://youtu.be/0hJrXYnpqbE

TRT World
Published on Apr 15, 2018 – Cuba’s President Raul Castro will step down on Thursday. His departure will mean the end of almost 60 years of the Castro family’s dominance over the Carribbean island. In the second part of our series on Cuba, Giles Gibson reports on Raul Castro, who in 2008, took over from his more famous brother Fidel.

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Category: News & Politics

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Cuba, History, Model, Transform

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Marshall Plan – A Lesson in History

Posted on May 9, 2019 in Economics, Government, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

Fix Cuba & Haiti and we fix the entire region.

This is the assertion, that despite the fact there are 30 member-states that constitute the political Caribbean, 2 of them – Cuba & Haiti – constitute almost the majority of the population, and will require strenuous efforts to reform and transform. See the distribution here, based on 2010 numbers; (retrieved from the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean Page 66):

	Population	% of Whole
Cuba	11,236,444	26.63%
Haiti	9,035,536	21.41%
Cuba + Haiti	20,271,980	48.04%
Caribbean	42,198,874	100.00%

Yes, these two countries are heavily populated, but they have something else in common: they are de facto Failed-States.

So to repeat, if we can fix Cuba & Haiti, we can fix the entire region. How?

By executing strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies proven to be effective in rebooting other societies, no better model than recovering Europe from their Bad Old Days – World War II (1939 – 1945); see Appendix VIDEO below.

Neither Cuba nor Haiti have experienced the required Turn-around from their Bad Old Days.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean, a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), identified one solution: a Caribbean version of the Marshall Plan – the European Recovery Program. It is important that we understand that “Plan” better, so that we can model it locally.

George Marshall,(1880-1959) pictured here as a General of the Army before he became the US Secretary of State. It was during his term as Secretary of State that he planned, campaigned for and carried out the Marshall Plan.

The Go Lean book (Page 68) introduces the Marshall Plan for Caribbean remediation. See this excerpt here (and the Appendix VIDEO below):

The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was the American program to aid Europe, in which the US gave economic support, amounting to $12.4 billion, to help rebuild European economies after the end of World War II (1948-1952).

The ERP addressed each of the obstacles to post-war recovery. The plan looked to the future, and did not focus on the destruction caused by the war. Much more important were efforts to modernize European industrial and business practices using high-efficiency American models, reducing artificial trade barriers, and instilling a sense of hope and self-reliance. By 1952, as the funding ended, the economy of every participant surpassed pre-war levels, with output in 1951 reaching 35% higher levels than in 1938. Then over the next two decades, Western Europe enjoyed unprecedented growth and prosperity.

In addition to money, the Marshall Plan extended a Technical Assistance Program. By implementing technological literature surveys and organized plant visits, American economists, statisticians, and engineers were able to optimize European manufacturers, increasing productivity and efficiency in all industries.

The years 1948 to 1952 saw the fastest period of growth in European history. West Germany embarked upon an unprecedented two decades of growth that saw standards of living increase dramatically. In 1973, while this country was home to 1.26% of the world’s population, it featured the world’s fourth largest GDP of $944 Billion (5.9% of the world total).

There is some debate among economic historians over how much this should be credited to the Marshall Plan. Most reject the idea that it alone miraculously revived Europe shows that a general recovery was already underway. But most believe that the Marshall Plan sped this recovery, but did not initiate it, asserting that recovery was a result of eliminating central planning and restoring a market economy to Europe, especially in those countries which had adopted more fascist and corporatist economic policies. Former US Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank Alan Greenspan gives most credit to German Minister for Economy Ludwig Erhard for Europe’s economic recovery. Greenspan stated that it was Erhard’s economic policies and reductions in economic regulations that permitted Germany’s miraculous recovery. [Source: Cini, Michelle, in Schain, Martin, (ed.) “From the Marshall Plan to the EEC”, in The Marshall Plan: Fifty Years After, New York: Palgrave, 2001]

The Marshall Plan also played an important role in European integration. Many leaders felt that this was necessary to secure the peace and prosperity of Europe, and thus used the Marshall Plan guidelines to forge it. Institutions like the European Coal and Steel Community and the European Economic Community would eventually grow into the European Union.

The CU will implement a Caribbean-version Marshall Plan to reboot the economic engines of the region. These initiatives will entail funding (loans, grants, access to capital), technical assistance (coaching) and fostering a laissez-faire regulatory environment to institute pro-growth strategies.

There is so much that the Caribbean can benefit from in consideration of this historicity. This commentary commences a series on Lessons Learned from the Marshall Plan. Here for May 2019, we present a full series of commentaries related to Marshall Plans, the historic European one and the Caribbean versions. The full series is presented as follows:

Marshall Plan: A Lesson in History.
Marshall Plan: Cuba – An imminent need for ‘Free Market’ Emergence
Marshall Plan: Haiti – Past time for Mitigation
Marshall Plan: Funding – What Purse to Fund Our Plans?
Marshall Plan: Is $91 Billion a Redux for Puerto Rico?

In this series, reference is made to the need for a comprehensive roadmap for elevating the societal engines of Cuba & Haiti, and by extension, all of the Caribbean. Of all the plans out there, this – roadmap presented in Go Lean…Caribbean – is the only one that double-downs on the prospect of regional interdependence.

We are all in the same boat, the book states; we need to work together. This is the best way to recover, reboot and turnaround.

The theme of societal recoveries have been detailed in previous Go Lean commentaries; consider this sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16192	How did China Recover from Poverty? Trade, Trade, Trade
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15798	Lessons Learned from 2008: Still Recovering
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12994	The Science of ‘Power Restoration’ After Hurricanes
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11647	Righting a Wrong: Puerto Rico’s Bankruptcy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8370	A Lesson in Economic Fallacies – Austerity: Dangerous Idea
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6563	Lessons from Iceland – Model of Recovery
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3028	Recovery – Why India is doing better than most emerging markets
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=631	The Pope as a ‘Turnaround CEO’ – The Francis effect

This movement – behind the Go Lean book – just published a month-long series on the Way Forward. Some individual member-states and institutions were identified and qualified. Cuba & Haiti were not singled-out for any Way Forward consideration. The Go Lean book asserts that these two member-states are Special; they therefore need a Special Plan; this is the Marshall Plan. (They are not better nor worse than other Caribbean people; they just have a different history).

The Marshall Plan for Cuba and Haiti must do what the Post-WW-II Marshall Plan did for Western Europe.

No pressure!

But it is good to have a proven track record. We do not have to “re-invent the wheel”, only follow the well-traveled path of Best Practices. This is still not easy though, in fact, all communications from the Go Lean movement have consistently asserted that the effort to recover, reboot and turn-around the Caribbean member-states is:

Heavy-lifting!

We need all hands on deck! We will need all Caribbean hands just to impact Cuba & Haiti. But once we complete that, we actually would have impacted the entire Caribbean. So yes we can … make our homelands better places to live, work and play. 🙂

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.

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

———

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 Cold War: The Marshall Plan (Episode 9) – https://youtu.be/ALcX2BlrxOE

I’m Stuck – GCSE and A-Level Revision
Published on Feb 20, 2018 – In this video, we look at the Marshall Plan which was implemented in Europe as a way of consolidating US power in the west. After a negative review of Europe by both Clayton and Acheson, the Marshall Plan was seen as an essential means of preventing communism in all of Europe.

My Twitter: https://twitter.com/ImStuckYoutube?la…

For information on the full “Cold War” series: http://imstuck.wix.com/imstuckgcserev…

Category: Education

——–

Other VIDEO‘s:

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Way Forward – Caribbean ‘Single Market’ for Media

Posted on April 17, 2019 in Economics, Ethos, Industries

Go Lean Commentary

The host asked American media icon Oprah Winfrey this BIG Question at the promotional event for Apple on March 25, 2019:

“Why are you here?”
Ms. Winfrey: “They are in a Billion pockets …”

———
VIDEO – Oprah to return to TV as part of Apple TV+ – https://youtu.be/8PdJvXfw76k

CNBC Television
Published on Mar 25, 2019 – Oprah Winfrey takes the stage at Apple’s Steve Jobs Theater to announce her inclusion in the company’s new streaming service, Apple TV+.

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Category: News & Politics

This is the reality of the Apple eco-system: 1 billion is 1 billion. The Way Forward for the television-media-video industry is this simple undeniable fact:

Numbers matter.

Numbers matter and size matters … when it comes to media!

This theme has been exhaustingly covered in many previous commentaries by the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. Consider this sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15858	Network Mandates for a New Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14224	How the Youth are Consuming Media Today
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13474	Future Focused – Radio is Dead … Almost
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8813	Lessons from China – Size Does Matter … for Hollywood
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8328	YouTube Millionaire: ‘Tipsy Bartender’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6464	Sports Role Model – ‘WWE Network’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4381	Net Neutrality: It Matters in the Caribbean too
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3244	Sports Role Model – espnW.

The Caribbean media markets (TV, radio and newspaper) should expect this same change in our region. The devices – computers, tablets, smartphones – will supplant traditional media: TV, radio, newspapers, books, etc..

This eventuality was anticipated in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The roadmap is designed to elevate Caribbean society and the book relates that media – Internet Communications Technologies (ICT) actually – is a BIG element in this elevation quest.

Apple’s devices also proliferate in the Caribbean; (though no where close to 1 billion units). We therefore have the opportunity to prepare our media offerings for direct-to-consumers via their devices. This is already the Go Lean strategy for the new social media site: www.myCaribbean.gov. As related in a previous blog-commentary:

Change has come to the world and to the Caribbean region. The advent of Internet Communications Technologies (ICT) now has voluminous options for media to be delivered without the large footprint … or investment. Now anyone can easily publish VIDEO’s and Music files to the internet and sell them to the public – models abounds: i.e. pay-per-play, or subscription.

Apple – see their strategies and options in the Appendix below – is not the only game in town…

… there is also Google, and sometimes Amazon.

All in all, devices abound; no need for expensive satellites and broadcast towers.

This is the Way Forward for Caribbean media. We must be ready for this New Media eco-system.

This commentary continues this recent series – April 2019 – for the Way Forward for our Caribbean region and individual member-states. In fact, we just recently completed a 4-part series as follows:

Way Forward: Puerto Rico learns its “status” with America
Way Forward: Virgin Islands – America’s youngest colony
Way Forward: Bahamas – “Solutions White Paper” – An Inadequate Plan
Way Forward: Jamaica: The need to reconcile the Past
——–
Way Forward: Caribbean Media Strategy & Deliveries

This entire series asserts that “no man is an island” and that “no island is an island”, therefore the full Caribbean region – all 30 member-states and 42 million people – need to combine, collaborate and confederate to form a Single Market for media and other economic activities. Our failure to do so in the past have imperiled our economic, security and governmental engines.

(With no viable Single Market, our people fled and left in exile to other Single Market destinations: US, Canada and EU countries).

We should now be ready for the challenge and change in our Caribbean society; we must be ready to reform and transform, despite the heavy-lifting. We should be up to the task, because the rest of the world is counting the devices – 1 billion for Apple.

We must also count … and be counted. Otherwise our Caribbean people will just be Less Than.

This quest – of the Go Lean/CU roadmap – for the Caribbean Way Forward is conceivable, believable and achievable. We must do the heavy-lifting ourselves to forge our Single Media Market and thereafter make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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.

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

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.

xxvii. Whereas the region has endured a spectator status during the Industrial Revolution, we cannot stand on the sidelines of this new economy, the Information Revolution. Rather, the Federation must embrace all the tenets of Internet Communications Technology (ICT) to serve as an equalizing element in competition with the rest of the world. The Federation must bridge the digital divide and promote the community ethos that research/development is valuable and must be promoted and incentivized for adoption.

xxviii. Whereas intellectual property can easily traverse national borders, the rights and privileges of intellectual property must be respected at home and abroad. The Federation must install protections to ensure that no abuse of these rights go with impunity, and to ensure that foreign authorities enforce the rights of the intellectual property registered in our region.

xxx. Whereas the effects of globalization can be felt in every aspect of Caribbean life, from the acquisition of food and clothing, to the ubiquity of ICT, the region cannot only consume, it is imperative that our lands also produce and add to the international community, even if doing so requires some sacrifice and subsidy.

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

—————

Appendix – Apple TV app vs. Apple TV Channels vs. Apple TV Plus: What’s the difference?

Apple has three new ways to get you watching more TV shows and movies. Unfortunately they all have very similar names, and all start with “Apple TV.”

On March 25 in Cupertino, Apple CEO Tim Cook finally took the wraps off his company’s latest “service” ambitions. It was an Apple event without any new gadgets. Instead we saw a news and magazine aggregation app, a subscription gaming play and an Apple credit card.

Most of the event focused on streaming TV shows and movies, however, culminating in Apple’s new television service with original shows from stars like Jenifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon and Kumail Nanjiani and producers like J.J. Abrams and Oprah Winfrey. It’s called Apple TV Plus.

But Apple also talked about updates to its new TV app, which includes a new Channels option. So what’s actually new and what do we know? Here’s a cheat sheet.

Apple TV app

Introduced in 2016, this app for the Apple TV streamer as well as iPhones and iPadsprovides a single place to browse, discover and resume watching TV shows and movies from apps like Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, ESPN, PlayStation Vue and many more. It shows individual episodes and movies but doesn’t let you watch them from within the Apple TV app itself. Instead you’ll select one and get bounced out to the app in question (such as Hulu for The Handmaid’s Tale) to begin or resume watching.

An updated version of the app, coming in May 2019, will integrate purchases from iTunes TV shows and movies, as well as provide suggestions for more TV shows and movies to watch. Apple says the app will also come to smart TVs from Samsung this spring, as well as Sony, LG and Vizio TVs and Roku and Amazon Fire TV streamers and TVs in the future. It would also be available to MacOS computers this fall.

More: Apple TV app coming to Macs, smart TVs in 2019

Apple TV Channels

This is an all-new addition to the Apple TV app that allows subscribers to add content from a variety of partners, including HBO, Showtime, Epix, Starz, Britbox and more. You subscribe within the TV app, with no additional apps, accounts or passwords required. The same goes for watching content: Instead of being bounced out to the HBO Now app, for example, you can watch your Game of Thrones episode within the Apple TV app itself. Users can also share Apple TV channels subscriptions via Apple’s Family Sharing feature.

The service sounds similar to Amazon’s Prime Channels service, available now. Apple didn’t announce pricing, but one report says services like HBO will be discounted.

More: Apple TV Channel’s streaming service is here and wants to run the show

Apple TV Plus

Coming this fall, this is a separate TV streaming service that will be home to original TV shows, movies and documentaries exclusive to Apple. Apple has a multiyear partnership deal with Oprah and deals with Reese Witherspoon, J.J. Abrams and dozens of others. The company has spent more than $1 billion budget and has committed to 30 shows and a handful of movies. They include Steven Spielberg’s Amazing Stories series, The Morning Show starring Witherspoon, Jennifer Aniston and Steve Carell about workplace relationships and Little America, which features stories that center around immigrants. Pricing for an Apple TV Plus subscription was not announced.

More: Apple introduces Apple TV Plus for its original shows

Source: Posted March 29, 2019; retrieved April 8 2019 from: https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-tv-app-vs-apple-tv-channels-vs-apple-tv-plus-whats-the-difference/

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Way Forward – Virgin Islands: America’s Youngest Colony

Posted on April 4, 2019 in Economics, Ethos, Locations, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

The US Virgin Islands – St. Thomas, St. Croix and St. Johns – are 80 miles east of Puerto Rico. Their small population only peaks at about 110,000; they have a lot of challenges sustaining and elevating their society. If only their economy was bigger.

Wait, wait … next door Puerto Rico has a population of over 3 million people. Bigger economy! Bigger problems!

Obviously, size … of the economy is not the predictor for success.

Nor is age…

… the US Virgin Islands, as an entity, is in fact the youngest US Territory in North America; having been acquired from Denmark only in 1917 – see VIDEO below.

There must be something more?!

Maybe race! Maybe, if we have a population of homogeneous people who can form a brotherhood and work hand-in-hand without any concern for racial differences – “Power to the People”. Well, this land has a majority Black population – unique for any domicile (State or Territory) in the United States. It is a 76% majority! Here is the actual demographic breakdown from the last census (2010):

76.0% Black
15.7% White
17.5% Hispanic
4.9% Other
2.1% Multiracial
1.4% Asian

There are many people in America – especially in the Black community – that have theorized that if they had a “majority Black land in America” they could really be a more prosperous society.

Well, they have the US Virgin Islands, and what is the disposition? See summaries here:

U.S. Virgin Islands GDP Decreases in 2017 [by 2%]
Tourism spending declines following Hurricanes Irma and Maria
Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) is releasing estimates of gross domestic product (GDP) for the U.S. Virgin Islands (USVI) for 2017, in addition to estimates of GDP by industry and compensation by industry for 2016. These estimates were developed under the Statistical Improvement Program funded by the Office of Insular Affairs (OIA) of the U.S. Department of the Interior.

The U.S. Virgin Islands suffered extensive damage from two major hurricanes in September 2017. These hurricanes affected the availability of various source data used in the estimation of USVI GDP, including financial statements for the territorial government and its independent agencies.
…

Source: US Government Bureau of Economic Analysis – Posted December 17, 2018; retrieved April 3, 2019 from: https://www.bea.gov/news/2018/us-virgin-islands-gdp-decreases-2017

————–

Welcome to the Virgin Islands, One of the Most Indebted Places in the U.S.
The U.S. territory is running out of options as it faces rising debt and pension obligations, a declining population and tepid response to proposed new bond offerings

By: Heather Gillers

A U.S. territory famed for its white-sand beaches and azure waters is in a precarious financial position. This time, it isn’t just Puerto Rico.

The U.S. Virgin Islands shares many of the same fiscal problems as its Caribbean neighbor 80 miles to the west: high levels of debt, mounting pension obligations and a declining population.

…

Source: Wall Street Journal – posted January 26, 2017; retrieved April 3, 2019 from: https://www.wsj.com/articles/welcome-to-the-virgin-islands-one-of-the-most-indebted-places-in-the-u-s-1485426604

Obviously, race … of the demography is not the predictor for success. (Let this be the last word on this unnerving subject!)

The problems facing small Caribbean islands, or young Caribbean islands or Black Caribbean islands, are the same problems facing all Caribbean islands … it is failure to adapt to these undeniable Agents of Change:

It is Globalization, Climate Change, Technology and an Aging Diaspora.

These Agents of Change are devastating Caribbean life … for all people, in all the islands and coastal states. The book Go Lean…Caribbean asserts that we are “all in the same boat” and need to work together – to confederate – to seek solutions to our problems.

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste – Go Lean book (Page 8)

The Way Forward is a roadmap to actually consolidate, collaborate, and confederate the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region into a technocratic confederation. These USVI islands are among the “best addresses on the planet” …

… and yet, the residents, leaders and stakeholders cannot seem to provide proper stewardship for managing the affairs of these islands.

This theme – remediating and mitigating the failures in Caribbean island life – aligns with previous commentaries from the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean; see this sample list here as it relates to the US Virgin Islands; (but truth be told, there is application for the British Virgin Islands as well):

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13995	Island life is hard – The need for Congressional Interstate Compacts
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12959	Island life is hard – America Should Scrap the ‘Jones Act’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10771	Island life is hard – The need for Logical Addresses
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6867	Island life is hard – How to address high consumer prices
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4551	Island life is hard – Between a ‘rock and a hard place’

The Virgin Islands, the youngest American colony, are among the most beautiful places on the planet – it is paradise. See the VIDEO here:

VIDEO – Almanac: The U.S. Virgin Islands – https://cbsn.ws/2JSVJi7

CBS News – Posted March 31, 2019 – On March 31, 1917 the U.S. took possession of St. Thomas, St. John, St. Croix and about 50 other smaller Caribbean islands, which they purchased from Denmark for $25 million. Jane Pauley reports.

But this paradise is the flora and fauna; the societal engines, on the other hand, need some work. As related in the previous blog-commentary in this series, Puerto Rico suffers from the same fate as the Virgin Islands – “island life is hard”. So there needs to be a roadmap to reform and transform all “island life”.

Way Forward
This commentary continues the consideration on the Way Forward for Caribbean islands – for the Virgin Islands – and the rest of the Caribbean. This territory here is in dire straits, near-Failed-State status. Yet, the movement behind the Go Lean book asserts that any crisis can be useful, as an excuse to forge change. It is high time to change/elevate the societal engines of the Virgin Islands. This is entry 2-of-3 for this April 2019 series of commentaries related to the Way Forward for Caribbean member-states. The full series is presented as follows:

Way Forward: Puerto Rico learns its “status” with America
Way Forward: Virgin Islands – America’s youngest colony
Way Forward: ‘Solutions White Paper’ – An Inadequate Plan for the Bahamas

This series posits that “no man is an island”; or that “no island is an island”; that these Caribbean island-states need to come together, collaborate, cooperate, convene, and confederate for a better stewardship for the full region.

Yes, we can…

The Go Lean movement presents the strategies, tactics and implementations to make the US Virgin Islands – as part of the full US Territories – a better homeland to live, work and play. The book identify these main points, as follows (Page 244):

10 Ways to Impact US Territories

Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market & Economy (CSME) initiative: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).
Trading Partners based on Nature not Politics
Disaster Preparation & Response
Dual Currency
Emigration Circuit Breaker
Homeland Security Pact – NATO style
Intelligence Gathering
Cruise Line Collective Bargaining
Transportation / Turnpike Hub & Spokes
Spanish Integration – Reversal of European Imperialistic Maneuvers

Yes, it is conceivable, believable and achievable that with the proper guidance, “blood, sweat and tears”, this island chain can in fact actualize to be one of the greatest addresses on the planet.

Enough already! This is the Way Forward! It is now past time to lean-in to this roadmap to reform and transform our homeland. 🙂

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.

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

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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