April 2017 – Go Lean…Caribbean

Month: April 2017

Forging Change: Collective Bargaining

Posted on April 28, 2017 in Economics, Government, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Want to re-negotiate? You must be prepared to give the other party something they don’t currently have:

To the Caribbean Cruise industry, we present you: a Single Market of 42 million consumers.

These 42 million people were always there, just not considered potential customers for the Cruise Line Industry. But money is money; it still spends the same way.

This seems so familiar!

This feels like the Southern US during the days of Jim Crow Racial Segregation. The US States practicing these policies where the “best place to live” if you were White. The Black people were there, facilitating and supporting commerce and industry, but were not supposed to be seen; they were 2^nd Class citizens … in their own country. The Merchants wanted their money, just not their presence.

If you were Black and wanted to get lunch from a cafeteria, you had to “Go outback and get brown bag food from the kitchen”, while White customers got the hospitality of in-store dining.

Same money; different respect. The protests against this blatant wrong practice galvanized the US and the Civil Rights movement. See photos here:

See the news article in the Appendix below, commemorating the 50^th Anniversary of the Civil Rights Struggles of the early 1960’s. It has been 53 years now, since the abolition of this bad policy with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This history is sitting here as a teaching moment for us in the Caribbean:

Has our region learned any lessons from this history?

It can be concluded that the answer is “No”! We have tolerated an unjust system here in our region in which the 42 million residents in the Caribbean have been treated as 2^nd Class citizens … in their own countries regarding local cruise consumption.

Fact:
If you’re a Caribbean citizen and you want to take a Caribbean cruise, you have to fly to Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, Tampa, Port Canaveral, Baltimore, New York or Puerto Rico to originate the cruise, even though the ships itinerary may come right to your Caribbean port. This means you Nassau, Montego Bay, Grand Cayman, St Thomas, St. Martin and others.

Welcome to 1960’s … redux!

There is the need to forge change in the Caribbean; the same as there was the need to forge change in 1960’s America. Consuming cruises is just one of the challenges that we have to contend with in our region. This is reflective of the disrespect that exists in our society. We have dysfunctions in our economics, security and governing engines. We are 2^nd class citizens on the world stage! We have the greatest address on the planet – demonstrated in that 80 million tourists consume our marketplace every year, 10 million via cruises – and yet our own people have to break down the doors to get out to find the respectful life that they need, want and deserve in foreign countries.

Enough! Time to change … here … now! But how?

This is the quest of the movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean. It presents a roadmap to change – to elevate – Caribbean society by rebooting the economic, security and governing engines in the 30 member-states that constitute the Caribbean. The book opens with the thesis (Page 3) that the problems of the Caribbean are too big for any one member-state to tackle alone. Cruise vacations are not one of our biggest problems, but the issues here-in are indicative of the lack of respect we have in our region and as a region of 30 separate entities. We need the change of being considered one entity; we need Collective Bargaining. Yes, it makes us more formidable in our negotiations with the Cruise Lines, but as stated in the opening, it also brings something new to the table that the Cruise Lines do not currently have: our 42 million local consumers.

According to a previous Go Lean blog-commentary, this could be a win-win for all stakeholders connected to the cruise tourism eco-system:

Some of the most popular cruise destinations include the Bahamas, Jamaica, Cayman Islands and Saint Martin. Alone, these port cities/member states cannot effect change on this cruise line industry. But together, as one unified front, the chances for success improves exponentially. The unified front is the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The term Union is more than a coincidence; it was branded as such by design. The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the CU.

The vision of this integration movement is for the region to function as a Single Market. The quotation from the Go Lean book continues in advocating that the Caribbean member-states (independent & dependent) lean-in to this plan for confederacy, convention and collaboration. This is Collective Bargaining 101. From the outset, the book recognized the significance of our exercising authority over the Caribbean Seas. This point was pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 11):

v. Whereas the natural formation of our landmass and coastlines entail a large portion of waterscapes, the reality of management of our interior calls for extended oversight of the waterways between the islands. The internationally accepted 12-mile limits for national borders must be extended by International Tribunals to encompass the areas in between islands. The individual states must maintain their 12-mile borders while the sovereignty of this expanded area, the Exclusive Economic Zone, must be vested in the accedence of this Federation.

The confederacy goal entails accepting that there is interdependence among the Caribbean member-states. Implementation-wise, this shifts the responsibility for cruise line negotiations to a region-wide, professionally-managed, deputized technocracy that can result in greater production and greater accountability.

So this is one strategy for forging change in our region, in this case: collective bargaining, on behalf of the 42 million consumers in the Caribbean. This is a continuation of the various strategies, tactics and implementations that have been considered for forging change here in the homeland. These have been identified in a series of previous Go Lean blog-commentaries over the past 2 & 1/2 years, this is the tenth submission. These were presented as follows, in reverse chronological order:

Forging Change – Collective Bargaining (Today)
Forging Change – Addicted to Home (April 14, 2017)
Forging Change – Arts & Artists (December 1, 2016)
Forging Change – Panem et Circenses (November 15, 2016)
Forging Change – Herd Mentality (October 11, 2016)
Forging Change – ‘Something To Lose’ (November 18, 2015)
Forging Change – ‘Food’ for Thought (April 29, 2015)
Forging Change – Music Moves People (December 30, 2014)
Forging Change – The Sales Process (December 22, 2014)
Forging Change – The Fun Theory (September 9, 2014)

This commentary is urging Caribbean stakeholders to come together – to collaborate, convene and confederate – to better negotiate with Third Parties to forge change and impact the people that live, work and play here in the Caribbean.

This quest is conceivable, believable and achievable. Look at this news article here that depicts that one Cruise Line (Tropicana Cruises) and one port city (Port Castries, St. Lucia) who have implemented a strategy of local consumption. (The arrangement exists for other ports as well, as in Trinidad).

Title: New cost effective way for St. Lucians to cruise the Caribbean

Saint Lucians now have a cost effective way to cruise the Caribbean.

Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister with responsibility for tourism, Hon. Dominic Fedee, was on hand to greet the crew of the MV Adriana for its maiden call to Port Castries.

Accompanied by the Executive Chairperson of the Saint Lucia Tourist Board (SLTB) Agnes Francis, the minister said he was pleased at what this new development means for the people of Saint Lucia.

“Saint Lucians will now have a chance to board a cruise from Port Castries without having to fly to any destination or any other home port but right here from Saint Lucia,” he said.

Owner of the MV Adriana Captain Sergey Poniatovsky gave a background to the rationale of the visa-free Caribbean cruise.

“This ship is very unique, it is not like any other cruise ship. The ship is specifically for Caribbean islands, it is like a discovery vessel, with a family and private yacht atmosphere. We have an incredible itinerary which allows people living within these West Indies to have a synergy between islands. We have the opportunity to show each island nation as a destination and bring families together.”

In addition to touring the ship, the minister and the ship captain exchanged gifts to mark the momentous occasion.

Information on the MV Adriana Caribbean cruise can be found at the Saint Lucia Tourist Board and local travel agents.
Source: St Lucia Times Daily Newspaper – Posted March 30, 2017; retrieved April 27, 2017 from: https://stluciatimes.com/2017/03/30/new-cost-effective-way-st-lucians-cruise-caribbean

This quest for collective bargaining (negotiations) is both an art and a science. The Go Lean book describes this fact in a chapter on negotiations entitled (Page 32):

10 Ways to Improve Negotiations

#2 – Bargain from Position of Strength
For the CU, negotiation is an art and a science. As a technocratic institution representing the economic integration of the region, we must project the Single Market as bigger than initial appearances. The CU represents 42 million people in 30 member-states, with a GDP of over $800 Billion, but also some 8 million [to 20 million] engaged members of the Caribbean Diaspora, scattered throughout the US, Canada and EU countries. There are also many visitors, one estimate is at 80 million yearly. The economic opportunities, catering to this market, can be quite enormous, once properly exploited.

What is the art?

The fact that different people get different results from negotiations is indicative of the fact that not all people are Negotiating Artist.

Sounds familiar?

This was the campaign line from Donald J. Trump, the 45^th President of the United States. Previously as a successful business man and media star, he was proud of his artistic accomplishment in the arena of negotiations. His co-wrote this book to this effect:

Book title: “The Art of the Deal”

President Donald J. Trump lays out his professional and personal worldview in this classic work—a firsthand account of the rise of America’s foremost deal-maker.

“I like thinking big. I always have. To me it’s very simple: If you’re going to be thinking anyway, you might as well think big.”—Donald J. Trump

Here is Trump in action—how he runs his organization and how he runs his life—as he meets the people he needs to meet, chats with family and friends, clashes with enemies, and challenges conventional thinking. But even a maverick plays by rules, and Trump has formulated time-tested guidelines for success. He isolates the common elements in his greatest accomplishments; he shatters myths; he names names, spells out the zeros, and fully reveals the deal-maker’s art. And throughout, Trump talks—really talks—about how he does it. Trump: The Art of the Deal is an unguarded look at the mind of a brilliant entrepreneur—the ultimate read for anyone interested in the man behind the spotlight.
Source: Amazon.com retrieved April 27, 2017 from: https://www.amazon.com/Trump-Art-Deal-Donald-J/dp/0399594493

What about the science?

Nobel Prize Winner John F. Nash (1928 – 2015) is best known for his landmark work in applying science to the process of collective bargaining and negotiations (Game Theory). He was the subject character in the Hollywood movie: A Beautiful Mind; see Movie Trailer in the Appendix VIDEO. These encyclopedia details relate:

He was a mathematician who made fundamental contributions to game theory, differential geometry, and the study of partial differential equations.^[2][3] Nash’s work has provided insight into the factors that govern chance and decision-making inside complex systems found in everyday life.

His theories are widely used in Economics. Serving as a Senior Research Mathematician at Princeton University during the latter part of his life, he shared the 1994 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences with game theorists Reinhard Selten and John Harsanyi. …

Nash earned a Ph.D. degree in 1950 with a 28-page dissertation on Non-cooperative Games.^[13][14] His thesis contained the definition and properties of the [now widely accepted] Nash Equilibrium.

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The Nash equilibrium – a subset of game theory – is a solution concept of a non-cooperative game involving two or more players in which each player is assumed to know the equilibrium strategies of the other players, and no player has anything to gain by changing only his or her own strategy.^[1] If each player has chosen a strategy and no player can benefit by changing strategies while the other players keep theirs unchanged, then the current set of strategy choices and the corresponding payoffs constitutes a “Nash Equilibrium”. The Nash equilibrium is one of the foundational concepts in game theory. The reality of the Nash Equilibrium of a game can be tested using experimental economics methods.

Stated simply, Amy and Phil are in Nash Equilibrium if Amy is making the best decision she can, taking into account Phil’s decision while Phil’s decision remains unchanged, and Phil is making the best decision he can, taking into account Amy’s decision while Amy’s decision remains unchanged. Likewise, a group of players are in Nash equilibrium if each one is making the best decision possible, taking into account the decisions of the others in the game as long as the other party’s decision remains unchanged.

Applications
Game theorists use the Nash equilibrium concept to analyze the outcome of the strategic interaction of several decision makers. In other words, it provides a way of predicting what will happen if several people or several institutions are making decisions at the same time, and if the outcome depends on the decisions of the others. The simple insight underlying John Nash’s idea is that one cannot predict the result of the choices of multiple decision makers if one analyzes those decisions in isolation. Instead, one must ask what each player would do, taking into account the decision-making of the others.

Nash equilibrium has been used to analyze hostile situations like war and arms races^[2] (see prisoner’s dilemma), and also how conflict may be mitigated by repeated interaction (see tit-for-tat). It has also been used to study to what extent people with different preferences can cooperate (see battle of the sexes), and whether they will take risks to achieve a cooperative outcome (see stag hunt). It has been used to study the adoption of technical standards,^{[citation needed]} and also the occurrence of bank runs and currency crises (see coordination game). Other applications include traffic flow (see Wardrop’s principle), how to organize auctions (see auction theory), the outcome of efforts exerted by multiple parties in the education process,^[3] regulatory legislation such as environmental regulations (see tragedy of the Commons),^[4] analysing strategies in marketing^[5] and even penalty kicks in football [(soccer)] (see matching pennies).^[6]Source: Retrieved April 27, 2017 from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Forbes_Nash_Jr.; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium

The Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) is presented in the Go Lean book as a technocratic organization, where best-practices (art) and scientific methods are the norm. The book features the following chapter (Page 64):

Fostering a Technocracy

#1 – Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market.
This treaty calls for a technocratic confederation of the Caribbean region into a single market of 30 member-states and 42 million people. The term technocracy was originally used to designate the application of the scientific method to solving social & economic problems, in counter distinction to the traditional political or philosophic approaches. The CU must start as a technocratic confederation – a Trade Federation – rather than evolving to this eventuality due to some failed-state status or insolvency.

The art-and-science of negotiation is part-and-parcel of the heavy-lifting the Go Lean movement envisions for the Caribbean technocracy. Considering the natural law: “Reap what you sow”, we should be able to generate the benefits anticipated in the stated prime directives, identified with the following 3 statements:

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

Underlying to this issue of collective bargaining and negotiation is the quest to forge changes in the cruise industry – jobs and commerce are at stake. The Go Lean movement has frequently blogged on issues and efforts related to improving the cruise eco-system for the region. Consider these samples:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6635	New Security Chip in Credit Cards Unveiled
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5993	Carnival to ban carry-on bottled beverages
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5307	Cruise Passengers and Violent Crime Warnings
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5210	Cruise Ship Commerce – Getting Ready for Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4639	Tobago: A Model for Cruise Tourism
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3889	Electronic Payments– Ready for Change in Cruise Commerce
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3225	Regional aviation dysfunction leading to more cruise traffic

The elevation of cruise commerce in the region is one of 144 missions within the Go Lean roadmap. The book details the applicable community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementation and advocacies to succeed in these efforts. The Go Lean book explains that the benefits of this roadmap will not just happen, we must act; we must change and adapt to the changing world. The Cruise Line industry must also change, but we must present the end-result of these changes as win-win for all regional stakeholders.

In the end, the changes will be for the better; for the Greater Good and to promote a better partnership for all cruise industry stakeholders. These efforts will make Caribbean ports-of-call a better destination to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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Appendix Title: Key Clubs and the Slow Death of Restaurant Segregation

Soon after President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law on July 2, hundreds of restaurants across the South integrated.

I wrote about some of them in a recent Garden & Gun feature:

On July 3, Cafe du Monde, the coffee and beignet stand in the French Quarter of New Orleans, served its first black customers without incident. On July 5, the Sun and Sand motel in Jackson, Mississippi, served its first black dining room client, but closed the swimming pool.

Dozens more refused to desegregate. In the years after, the names of those restaurant owners became infamous: McClung in Alabama. Bessinger in South Carolina. Boyd in Georgia.

Their stories of defiance have long fascinated me.

One of the longest-running standoffs occurred in Shaw, Mississippi, where Dinty Moore owned and operated the Shady Nook. Over the course of a fifty-two year career, Dinty Moore, who died in 1984, never served a black man or woman in his restaurant’s dining room.

For an Oxford American column, published in 2000, I spoke with his son, Dana Moore:

“I talked to daddy about that back when the law was passed,” Dana told me. “I was serving in the legislature then and it seemed like everybody was looking for a way around the law. Things were different then. Daddy was thinking about making the café into a private club like some places were doing. I advised him that if he did, he needed to do it legally, to incorporate and get chartered as a bona fide private club. Next thing I knew, he was selling keys to the place for a dollar apiece and calling it the Shady Nook Key Club.”

Soon thereafter, the front door to the green masonry building was locked for good and a one-way mirror was installed so that Dinty Moore could see out but no one could see in. A door key or a smiling white face became the coin of the realm for those seeking admittance to the Shady Nook.

In this moment when we justly celebrate how far we have come since 1964, it’s also important to recognize that the struggle for equal access to public accommodations didn’t end on July 2 of that year.
Source: Posted July 1, 2014; retrieved April 27, 2017 from: https://www.southernfoodways.org/directors-cut-key-clubs-and-the-slow-death-of-restaurant-segregation/

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Appendix VIDEO – A Beautiful Mind Movie (2001) Official Trailer – https://youtu.be/YWwAOutgWBQ

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Civil Rights, Cruise, History, Model, Transform

Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Lower Ed.

Posted on April 27, 2017 in Economics, Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

“A fool and his money are soon parted” – Ancient British proverb that gleans inspiration from The Bible book of Proverbs 26:1-11, with the meaning of:
1. It is easy to get money from foolish people.
2. It is difficult or unlikely that foolish people maintain their hold on acquired wealth.

What’s ironic is there are similar colloquial expressions that are even more shocking for the prevalence of financial abuse of the unwise. Consider:

So who is more abominable? The fool who loses out on his new found fortune or the shrewd person that schemes to take advantage of that fool? (It should be noted in this case that the fortune is only rights and credits; every American citizen qualify for a need-based Student Loan from the federal government – that loan is non-dischargeable).

One commentator pushes this thesis even further, positing that:

“The ‘fools’ I think of are all rather harmless creatures, basically well-intentioned and innocent. All of them evoke a certain sense of pity, mixed with amusement.”

So imagine that one who exploits the “fool”! Imagine, if instead of an individual, it is a “system”, a government program, that does the exploiting. This is the actuality of Student Loan financing for Private, For-Profit Schools and Colleges in the US.

This is truly abominable; and yet this is the United States of America.

Say it ain’t so!

In a previous blog-commentary, the “abominable” judgment was even more direct:

The ‘Evil Empire‘ – For-Profit Educational firms and institutions – is finally facing resistance from governmental authorities. Companies in this industry have come under fire for their bad practices and abuse of their customers: young students.

… and now, today, ITT Educational Services, one of the largest operators of for-profit technical schools, ended operations at all of its ITT Technical Institutes.
Source: For-Profit Education – ‘Another one bites the dust’; posted September 6, 2016; retrieved April 26, 2017.

This commentary asserts that there is a need for the Caribbean communities to reform and transform our education deliveries, yet still, we do NOT want to model the American system. This point aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean, which seeks to reboot the 30 member-states of the Caribbean region, to ensure better stewardship of the Social Contract for all citizens in our homelands, strong and weak. The Go Lean book petitions the Caribbean region to do better! It describes the necessary empowerments to optimize the economic, security and governing engines of Caribbean society to ensure a better adherence to the principle of the Greater Good.

In a previous 5-part series of blog-commentaries on the “Strong versus the Weak”, the pattern from the Code of Hammurabi was detailed and presented as an Old World model that is being ignored in the US. The one place we would expect to find mitigations for foolishness – to turn the foolish one wise – would be the education arena. Yet this is where we are finding a consistent pattern of the “Strong abusing the Weak”.

This commentary is an addition submission to that already completed series; we are adding this 6^th entry. The full series is now as follows:

Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Model of Hammurabi
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Mental Disabilities
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Bullying in Schools
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Book Review: Sold-Out!
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – An American Sickness
Managing the Strong versus the Weak – Book Review: Lower Ed!

The need for this 6^h entry was spurred by the release of this new book on February 28, 2017 entitled: Lower Ed – The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy by Dr. Tressie McMillan Cottom (Ph.D. Sociology who teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University). It is ‘spot-on’ for the judgment of the pattern of abuse of the ‘Weak’ in American society who are innocently looking for “pull themselves up by the boot strap”. See the review-synopsis of this book here following by an PODCAST-interview with the Author:

Book Review: Lower Ed: The Troubling Rise of For-Profit Colleges in the New Economy
“With great compassion and analytical rigor, Cottom questions the fundamental narrative of American education policy, that a postsecondary degree always guarantees a better life.” – The New York Times Book Review

More than two million students are enrolled in for-profit colleges, from the small family-run operations to the behemoths brandished on billboards, subway ads, and late-night commercials. These schools have been around just as long as their bucolic not-for-profit counterparts, yet shockingly little is known about why they have expanded so rapidly in recent years —during the so-called Wall Street era of for-profit colleges.

In Lower Ed Tressie McMillan Cottom — a bold and rising public scholar, herself once a recruiter at two for-profit colleges—expertly parses the fraught dynamics of this big-money industry to show precisely how it is part and parcel of the growing inequality plaguing the country today. McMillan Cottom discloses the shrewd recruitment and marketing strategies that these schools deploy and explains how, despite the well-documented predatory practices of some and the campus closings of others, ending for-profit colleges won’t end the vulnerabilities that made them the fastest growing sector of higher education at the turn of the twenty-first century. And she doesn’t stop there.

With sharp insight and deliberate acumen, McMillan Cottom delivers a comprehensive view of post-secondary for-profit education by illuminating the experiences of the everyday people behind the shareholder earnings, congressional battles, and student debt disasters. The relatable human stories in Lower Ed—from mothers struggling to pay for beauty school to working class guys seeking “good jobs” to accomplished professionals pursuing doctoral degrees—illustrate that the growth of for-profit colleges is inextricably linked to larger questions of race, gender, work, and the promise of opportunity in America.

Drawing on more than one hundred interviews with students, employees, executives, and activists, Lower Ed tells the story of the benefits, pitfalls, and real costs of a for-profit education. It is a story about broken social contracts; about education transforming from a public interest to a private gain; and about all Americans and the challenges we face in our divided, unequal society.

Source: Posted and Retrieved 04-26-2017 from: https://www.amazon.com/Lower-Ed-Troubling-Profit-Colleges/dp/1620970600/

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AUDIO Podcast – Terry Gross with Tressie McMillan Cottom – Heard on Fresh Air

March 27, 2017 – For-profit colleges have faced federal and state investigations in recent years for their aggressive recruiting tactics — accusations that come as no surprise to author Tressie McMillan Cottom.
Cottom worked as an enrollment officer at two different for-profit colleges, but quit because she felt uncomfortable selling students an education they couldn’t afford. Her new book, Lower Ed, argues that for-profit colleges exploit racial, gender and economic inequality.
Cottom tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that for-profit institutions tend to focus their recruiting on students who qualify for the maximum amount of student aid. “That happens to be the poorest among us,” she says. “And because of how our society is set up, the poorest among us tend to be women and people of color.”

Notice this small sample of the book’s revelations and disclosures, symptomatic of Crony-Capitalism:

A peer-reviewed analysis, with over 100 interviews – with students, employees, executives, and activists – the story is consistently reflective of a sad, abusive American eco-system.
Big-money industry using shrewd recruitment and marketing strategies to tempt the most vulnerable in society.
Despite well-documented predatory practices and some well-publicized campus closings, ending for-profit colleges won’t end the vulnerabilities that made them the fastest growing sector of higher education.
The weakest in American society – single mothers, systematically poor, underserved and under-privilege – are the ones targeted, exploited and abused – again and again.
The growth of for-profit colleges is inextricably linked to larger questions of race, gender, work, and the promise of opportunity in America.

This commentary and the previous 5 commentaries in this series all relate to nation-building, stressing the community ethos necessary to forge a society where all the people are protected all the time. Who really is the fool in these scenarios? The person being abused by the American eco-system or the ones abandoning home to join that society. The premise in the Go Lean book and subsequent blog-commentaries is that the people of the Caribbean can more easily “proper where planted” in their homeland than to emigrate to the American foreign shores for relief. It is foolish to think that America cares about “us”, when they undoubtedly do not care about the “weak” in their own society.

We need more education in our region; because we need economic growth. Economists have established the relationship between economic growth and education:

“For individuals this means that for every additional year of schooling they increase their earnings by about 10%. This is a very impressive rate of return.” (Go Lean book Page 258).

A lot of Caribbean students do matriculate in American colleges and universities. But this commentary is hereby declaring that we must assuredly look beyond the American model to fulfill our educational needs. According to the foregoing book and AUDIO Podcast, only a fool would invest in American For-Profit private educational institutions.

The word “invest” seems so misplaced. No wonder we have such a poor “Return on our Investment” from our Caribbean students studying abroad. (So many times, they do not even return “home”.)

This is already a familiar thesis for the Go Lean movement – a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) – as the Go Lean book advocates establishing local educational options mostly in response to the failings of the “study abroad model”. We have problems with the American quality education in the For-Profit institutions and we have problems with the threat of further brain-drain. See more details from the book here:

10 Ways to Improve Education – Page 159.
# 2 – Promote Industries for e-Learning
For 50 years the Caribbean has tolerated studying abroad; unfortunately many students never returned home. The CU’s focus will now be on facilitating learning without leaving. There have emerged many successful models for remote learning using electronic delivery or ICT. The CU will foster online/home school programs, for secondary education, to be licensed at the CU level so as to sanction, certify, and oversee the practice, especially for rural areas/islands. At the tertiary level, the CU will sponsor College Fairs for domestic and foreign colleges that deliver online education options.

We need more e-Learning options in our Caribbean homeland, for all education levels: K-12 and college. There are many successful models and best practices to adopt. We are in position to pick, choose and refuse products and services from all our foreign trading partners, including from the US. (We must assuredly avoid their societal defects).

One successful model is “iReady” – see more in the Appendix below.

The US, despite its advanced democracy status, has definite societal defects in the education arena. Overcoming the defects – particularly Crony-Capitalism or exploiting public resources for private gains – make depending on American solutions, foolish.

The Go Lean roadmap seeks to transform the Caribbean education deliveries There are so many successful role models to emulate. Yet still, this will be hard. So many in our society hold the default view:

White is Right

Therefore these one may rather spend their education monies abroad in the US than to engage in a local empowerment plan. That is so foolish!

So yes, the transformation will be hard, heavy-lifting, but not foolish! It will engage all 3 societal engines: economic, security and governance. In fact, the prime directives of the Go Lean/CU roadmap includes the following 3 statements:

Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion & create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus – including emergency management – to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic.
Improve Caribbean governance for all people – with empowerments like education – to support these engines.

This comprehensive view – economics, security and governance – is the charge of the Go Lean roadmap, opening with these pro-education pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13):

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

xxi. Whereas the preparation of our labor force can foster opportunities and dictate economic progress for current and future generations, the Federation must ensure that educational and job training opportunities are fully optimized for all residents of all member-states, with no partiality towards any gender or ethnic group… This responsibility should be executed without incurring the risks of further human flight, as has been the past history.

So any tertiary education plan for the Caribbean must address the preponderance to exacerbate the brain drain. Going to an American For-Profit institution would just be foolish. We, as a community, would be spending good money, but getting bad returns. What’s worst, imaging getting student loans to finance that education? How likely would there be a “Return on Investment”?

Overall, the Go Lean book stresses the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to reboot, reform and transform tertiary education delivery in the Caribbean; see this expressed in this one advocacy here:

10 Ways to Impact Student Loans – Page 160

1	Embrace the advent of the CU Single Market to leverage across the 42 million people in the 30 member-states.
2	Buy Existing Loans
3	Loan Forgiveness
4	Deferments / Postponements
5	Non-Dischargeable with Bankruptcy
6	Forgivable with Death *and Organ Transplantation Dynamics*
7	Diaspora Eligibility for CU Institutions
8	Grace Periods
9	Public – Private servicers
10	Lessons from Occupy Wall Street (OWS) The OWS protest movement highlighted some legitimate issues with the student loan industry. The US Federal government provides guarantees on student loans (direct and indirect), and the loans are non-dischargeable in any Bankruptcy process, so private loan issuers were assured a profit. The issuers would therefore drive the industry to lend more and more to less capable students at high interest rates. As a result of the protest, the Obama Administration eliminated the indirect channel for student loan, taking the profit motive out of the process; (See more in Appendix IH of the Go Lean book on Page 286). The CU [model] will only direct lend.

The points of effective, technocratic stewardship of tertiary education and student loans were further elaborated upon in previous blog/commentaries. Consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9724	“Why”, “How” and “When” to Transform Caribbean Universities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8669	A Model from Failing Detroit – Make Community Colleges free
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8373	A Lesson in Economic Fallacies – Student Loans As Investments
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5482	For-Profit Education: Plenty of Profit; Little Education
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4487	FAMU – Finally, A Model for Facilitating Economic Opportunity
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1256	Is a Traditional 4-year Degree a Terrible Investment?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=709	Student debt holds back many would-be home buyers

There is an absolute abomination of the “strong abusing the weak” in the American eco-system. We must avoid this American pattern; it may even be necessary to avoid America when it comes to our tertiary education needs.

“We can do bad all by ourselves”.

We have so many options elsewhere. The Go Lean plan is to create the better options here in the Caribbean; if not in your homeland, then perhaps in the next one, to the left or to the right.

It is not hard to do better than the American For-Profit model. Since many times in the past American abuse has proliferated, for those weaker physically, mentally and economically. The movement behind the Go Lean/CU roadmap wants us, in the Caribbean, to do better. Yes, let’s be wise!

Education can be so beneficial to our communities. But let’s not be the fool! Let’s keep “it” here at home and let’s “weed out” any bad practices of Crony-Capitalism in our tertiary education delivery system. Let’s pursue the Greater Good (greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong).

Now is the time to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap to reboot, reform and transform Caribbean education. If we do this, we will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work, learn and play. 🙂

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

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

———–

Appendix VIDEO – Intro to/Login for iReady – https://youtu.be/rhNO2-DQMCU

Published December 15, 2016 – iReady Teacher providing instructions for logging on.
See Video recording of a sample lesson here: https://youtu.be/_xoxdLaudDY

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Civil Rights, College, Crony-Capitalism, Model, Power

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End of ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’

Posted on April 26, 2017 in Economics, Ethos, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Come this May (2017), it will be ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’ … no more!

After 146 years, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus will close, shut down and come to an end for good. The Agents of Change in entertainment has been chasing this fabled institution, and time finally caught up with it.

Kenneth Feld, the Chairman and CEO of Feld Entertainment, the company that owns the circus, verbalizes the drama succinctly:

“The competitor in many ways was ‘time’.”

“It’s a different model that we can’t see how it works in today’s world to justify and maintain an affordable ticket price. So you’ve got all these things working against it.”

So now the legacy of exotic animals, flashy costumes, death-defying acrobats and clowns is over, under this model. The iconic American spectacle was felled by a variety of factors, company executives explained these contributing factors:

Changing public tastes
Declining attendance combined with high operating costs
Prolonged battles with animal rights groups

While this spells the end of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, it is not the end of circuses in general or the company Feld Entertainment; they also own-operate other profitable shows that will continue; a sample include:

Monster Jam, Disney on Ice and Marvel Live, etc.

Still, in the end – starting next month – some 500 people who perform and work on the circus shows will be impacted. According to the news article here by the Associated Press, “a handful will be placed in positions with the company’s other profitable shows but most will be out of a job”. See the full article here:

Title: Ringling Bros. circus to close after 146 years
By: Tamara Lush
ELLENTON, Fla. (AP) — After 146 years, the curtain is coming down on “The Greatest Show on Earth.” The owner of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus told The Associated Press that the show will close forever in May.

The iconic American spectacle was felled by a variety of factors, company executives say. Declining attendance combined with high operating costs, along with changing public tastes and prolonged battles with animal rights groups all contributed to its demise.

“There isn’t any one thing,” said Kenneth Feld, chairman and CEO of Feld Entertainment. “This has been a very difficult decision for me and for the entire family.”

The company broke the news to circus employees Saturday night after shows in Orlando and Miami.

Ringling Bros. has two touring circuses this season and will perform 30 shows between now and May. Major stops include Atlanta, Washington, Philadelphia, Boston and Brooklyn. The final shows will be in Providence, Rhode Island, on May 7 and in Uniondale, New York, at the Nassau County Coliseum on May 21.

The circus, with its exotic animals, flashy costumes and death-defying acrobats, has been a staple of entertainment in the United States since the mid-1800s. Phineas Taylor Barnum made a traveling spectacle of animals and human oddities popular, while the five Ringling brothers performed juggling acts and skits from their home base in Wisconsin. Eventually, they merged and the modern circus was born. The sprawling troupes traveled around America by train, wowing audiences with the sheer scale of entertainment and exotic animals.

By midcentury, the circus was routine, wholesome family entertainment. But as the 20th century went on, kids became less and less enthralled. Movies, television, video games and the internet captured young minds. The circus didn’t have savvy product merchandising tie-ins or Saturday morning cartoons to shore up its image.

“The competitor in many ways is time,” said Feld, adding that transporting the show by rail and other circus quirks — such as providing a traveling school for performers’ children— are throwbacks to another era. “It’s a different model that we can’t see how it works in today’s world to justify and maintain an affordable ticket price. So you’ve got all these things working against it.”

The Feld family bought the Ringling circus in 1967. The show was just under 3 hours then. Today, the show is 2 hours and 7 minutes, with the longest segment — a tiger act — clocking in at 12 minutes.

“Try getting a 3- or 4-year-old today to sit for 12 minutes,” he said.

Feld and his daughter Juliette Feld, who is the company’s chief operating officer, acknowledged another reality that led to the closing, and it was the one thing that initially drew millions to the show: the animals. Ringling has been targeted by activists who say forcing animals to perform is cruel and unnecessary.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, a longtime opponent of the circus, wasted no time in claiming victory.

“After 36 years of PETA protests, which have awoken the world to the plight of animals in captivity, PETA heralds the end of what has been the saddest show on earth for wild animals, and asks all other animal circuses to follow suit, as this is a sign of changing times,” Ingrid Newkirk, president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, wrote in a statement.

Wayne Pacelle, president and CEO of The Humane Society of the United States, acknowledged the move was “bittersweet” for the Felds but said: “I applaud their decision to move away from an institution grounded on inherently inhumane wild animal acts.”

In May of 2016, after a long and costly legal battle, the company removed the elephants from the shows and sent the animals to live on a conservation farm in Central Florida. The animals had been the symbol of the circus since Barnum brought an Asian elephant named Jumbo to America in 1882. In 2014, Feld Entertainment won $25.2 million in settlements from groups including the Humane Society of the United States, ending a 14-year fight over allegations that circus employees mistreated elephants.

By the time the elephants were removed, public opinion had shifted somewhat. Los Angeles prohibited the use of bull-hooks by elephant trainers and handlers, as did Oakland, California. The city of Asheville, North Carolina nixed wild or exotic animals from performing in the municipally owned, 7,600-seat U.S. Cellular Center.

Attendance has been dropping for 10 years, said Juliette Feld, but when the elephants left, there was a “dramatic drop” in ticket sales. Paradoxically, while many said they didn’t want big animals to perform in circuses, many others refused to attend a circus without them.

“We know now that one of the major reasons people came to Ringling Bros. was getting to see elephants,” she said. “We stand by that decision. We know it was the right decision. This was what audiences wanted to see and it definitely played a major role.”

The Felds say their existing animals — lions, tigers, camels, donkeys, alpacas, kangaroos and llamas — will go to suitable homes. Juliette Feld says the company will continue operating the Center for Elephant Conservation.

Some 500 people perform and work on both touring shows. A handful will be placed in positions with the company’s other, profitable shows — it owns Monster Jam, Disney on Ice and Marvel Live, among other things — but most will be out of a job. Juliette Feld said the company will help employees with job placement and resumes. In some cases where a circus employee lives on the tour rail car (the circus travels by train), the company will also help with housing relocation.

Kenneth Feld became visibly emotional while discussing the decision with a reporter. He said over the next four months, fans will be able to say goodbye at the remaining shows.

In recent years, Ringling Bros. tried to remain relevant, hiring its first African American ringmaster, then its first female ringmaster, and also launching an interactive app. It added elements from its other, popular shows, such as motorbike daredevils and ice skaters. But it seemingly was no match for Pokemon Go and a generation of kids who desire familiar brands and YouTube celebrities.

“We tried all these different things to see what would work, and supported it with a lot of funding as well, and we weren’t successful in finding the solution,” said Kenneth Feld.
Source: Associated Press – Posted January 15, 2017; retrieved April 25, 2017 from: https://apnews.com/020bc7b2f16f4446ade338bcf4a500ed

While this is an American drama (consider the slice of Americana portrayed in the movie “The Greatest Show on Earth” highlighted in the Movie Trailer in the Appendix below), there is a lot of consideration in this news that relate to the Caribbean. There are lessons for us to learn and apply in the stewardship of Caribbean affairs. These points are being highlighted by the promoters of the book Go Lean…Caribbean; it presents a roadmap to elevate the 30 member-states in the Caribbean region through economic, security and governing empowerments. The book asserts that the entertainment industry can be a great economic contributor to Caribbean communities. Already, tourism is our primary economic driver, and so amusement and entertainment are closely linked.

There are changing trends in tourism, the same as there had been for circus appreciation. At many Caribbean resorts, the business models of casino gambling and golf resources simply do not have the same appeal as in previous days. There is the same factor that affected the circus: “changing public taste”.

So let’s consider the following lessons that the Caribbean is able to glean from experiences (good and bad) of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus:

There is a need to reconcile past abuses – The Circus had a checkered past of abuses; of the 3 separate circuses that merged over the 146 years, (Ringling Brothers, Barnum, Bailey), the Barnum entity – famed for P.T. Barnum – was known for its exploitation and displays of Freaks, people who were malformed or disabled in some way. This is a total disrespect to dignity and human rights. Lesson: Past sins must be repented and reconciled. (See Go Lean book Page 34: 10 Ways to Manage Reconciliations).
By extension, the abuse of animals was clearly documented by animal rights activists and advocates. The Circus should have just conceded this bad practices and worked to rectify. Instead, after decades of denials, when the irrefutable evidence were presented, the circus had no choice but to retire the Elephants and other exotic animals. There was no structured Change Management so as to prepare the public for the new absence of the elephants. The Circus attendance assuredly declined. Lesson: The Circus did have to answer to animal protection entities in the State and Federal governments; they should have negotiated with stakeholders – even opposers – like partners, not enemies. (See Go Lean book Page 32: 10 Ways to Improve Negotiations).
Circus performers are people too; they have families and children; many performers are children. Many media productions (i.e. documentaries) abound describing Carnie Life. There should have been more concerted effort to bring dignity to this travelling profession, like the travelling schools, without the need for the hard-fought labor rules and concessions. Carnies should have been viewed as indispensable partners. Lesson: The Caribbean can apply many lessons in the management and administration of Sports and Student Athletes; think Sports Academies. (See Go Lean book Page 229: 10 Ways to Improve Sports).
Circuses have excelled with their Transportation innovations – Ringling’s use of railroad tracks, trains and cars have been ingenious. They have also deployed residential cars for the cast and crew while they are on the road. Lesson: The Go Lean roadmap calls for deployment of innovative transportation solutions like ferries and the Union Atlantic Turnpike; logistics are necessary to empower communities. (See Go Lean book Page 205: 10 Ways to Improve Transportation).
Circuses have innovated and engineered amazing Event Centers – Tents and Temporary Stadiums. These have been advantageous since the circus only makes a temporary occupancy. Lesson: The strategies for Event Tourism in the Caribbean member-states require facilitations for stadiums and arenas. What we learn from the circus, is they do not have to be permanent structures. (See Go Lean book Page 191: 10 Ways to Impact Events).
Changing public tastes: – There is a need to understand the market and plan the business for the Caribbean economic engines. Lesson: In our region, casinos and golf are declining as hotel amenities, while Cruises Lines are transforming the public taste for how to consume the Caribbean. (See Go Lean book Page 193: 10 Ways to Impact Cruise Tourism).
Listen to the complaints – Ringling’s officials confess that “public opinion had shifted somewhat”. So in effect, the complainers (animal protesters for the circus; negative commentators for the Caribbean) represent the customers views.
Can’t beat them, join them – Ringling should have partnered with their stakeholders (Cities, Animal Advocates, “Carnies”) to develop a win-win product; but rather, for much of their 146-year history they were exploiters. Lesson: Lean Project Management methodologies, calls for “Plan, Do & Review”. Each year’s post-analysis goals should have been on finding solutions for the known challenges. (See Go Lean book Page 147: 10 Ways to Measure Progress).
Value the ‘Genius’ Factor – The Art & Science of circus must be fostered as an ongoing vocation. With their Clown College, Ringling made the proper effort to foster genius. Lesson: The Caribbean region must also foster those with genius qualifiers. (See Go Lean book Page 27: 10 Ways to Foster Genius).
Circus amusement is a leisure activity, 100% discretionary spending. The public can readily lower their spending. Lesson: The Caribbean cannot depend solely on Tourism, its a leisure activity; we need to trade in essentials. (See Go Lean book Page 195: 10 Ways to Impact Extractions).
Patriarchy & Orthodoxy must go – Diversity and Inclusion should not have been optional for the Ringling circus. Only in recent years, has the Ringling Circus even tried to remain relevant, hiring its first African American ringmaster, then its first female ringmaster, and also launching an interactive smart-phone app. Lesson: Institutions should reflect the better values of society, the Greater Good. (See Go Lean book Page 37: 10 Ways to Impact the Greater Good.).
The Ringling Circus will be missed – An absence of circuses hurts society. Circus amusement can be effective for influencing people: make people happy, feed them and entertain them, then heavy-lifting tasks can be pursued – see this point developed in this previous blog.

As alluded to earlier, there is a model for circus entertainment that works successfully in today’s economy:

Cirque Du Soleil …

This model had previously (1984) rebooted, reformed and transformed circus entertainment, and now they are one of the most successful entertainment enterprises in North America – they continue to soar. This model features death-defying acrobats, costumes, and clowns; only no exotic animals. See the pricing here for their permanent show – Cirque du Soleil La Nouba – in Orlando’s Downtown Disney (Disney Springs) entertainment complex. The field of Economics teaches an important lesson here: Price is a measurement of demand.

Click to Enlarge

Lessons learned!

The Go Lean book presents a plan to reboot, reform and transform the regional economy and create the needed jobs and careers, some even in the amusement & entertainment industry. But, the Go Lean book asserts that this effort is too big a task for just for Caribbean member-state alone; all the 30 member-states must convene, confederate and collaborate in order to effect change. As such, the Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of Caribbean society. 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 and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines. There needs to be an organized support for artists and performers. Those with Genius Qualifiers must be fostered and protected.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies.

The Go Lean book stresses that reforming and transforming management of Caribbean talent must be a regional pursuit, considering the genius-qualifier of show-business and sports. This was an early motivation for the roadmap as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 14):

xxxi. Whereas sports have been a source of great pride for the Caribbean region, the economic returns from these ventures have not been evenly distributed as in other societies. The Federation must therefore facilitate the eco-systems and vertical industries of sports as a business, recreation, national pastime and even sports tourism ….

xxxii. Whereas the cultural arts and music of the region are germane to the quality of Caribbean life, and the international appreciation of Caribbean life, the Federation must implement the support systems to teach, encourage, incentivize, monetize and promote the related industries for arts and music in domestic and foreign markets. These endeavors will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

This commentary previously related details of the subjects of talent management and fostering genius (including show-business and sports) that can be applied directly in the Caribbean. Here is a sample of previous blogs:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10351	‘Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7866	Switching Allegiances: Jamaican sprinters represent other countries
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2415	How ‘The Lion King’ roared into history
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1446	Caribbean Players in the 2014 World Cup
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1214	The Art & Science of Temporary Stadiums – No White Elephants
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=498	Book Review: ‘The Sports Gene’

The Go Lean book details the community ethos, strategies, tactics and operational advocacies to effectuate this goal of preparing the Caribbean for change. This 5-year roadmap does not want our economic engines to just stop, like the circus is about to do in the US in May 2017. There will still be the need for amusement, entertainment and fun, all such things associated with the circus and leisure travel. And just like the circus was branded “The Great Show on Earth”, our Caribbean destination have been branded, according to the Go Lean book (Page 251):

… the greatest address in the world …
… appreciated not only by the residents but also by the visitors to these shores – estimated at 80 million. But things are missing here. Since we cannot move the islands, the only solution is to fill the deficiency. … This is not the first time a society has had to institute change to adjust to the realities … Many examples abound; lessons can be applied from the success and failures of others.

In this vein, the Go Lean book identifies the Agents of Change affecting the Caribbean marketplace and then tries to prepare the region for its eventuality. The book describes some of these agents as:

Technology
Globalization
Climate Change

The book (and this commentary) concludes (Page 252):

Get moving … now is the time. Opportunities abound; … there is opportunity enough in the preparation for the coming change. So act now! Get moving to that place, the “corner” of preparation and opportunity.

🙂

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

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

————-

Appendix – Movie Trailer VIDEO – The Greatest Show on Earth – https://youtu.be/2QswjButLfA

Published on Sep 10, 2012 – Charlton Heston stars as Brad Braden, the diehard circus manager who lives and breathes to keep the show rolling. With the Big Top about to hit rock bottom, Braden hires The Great Sebastian (Cornel Wilde), a daring trapeze legend, to revitalize the circus. His arrival sparks the rivalry and admiration of Holly (Betty Hutton), Braden’s girlfriend and trapeze star.

License: Standard YouTube License

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History, Model, Play, Sports

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Location Matters, Even in a Virtual World

Posted on April 24, 2017 in Economics, Industries

Go Lean Commentary

Location, location, location …

Despite the direct references to the physical world, it turns out that ‘location’ is equally important in the virtual world.

The consideration of location is the most important factor in the Art-and-Science of Marketing. That field has these 4 charters, considered the 4 P’s, but location rises to the front of the priorities:

Place – Location, location, location… (See Appendix below).
Can also refer to distribution; the destination and activities that make the product available to consumers.
Product – The goods and/or services offered by a company to its customers.
Price – The amount of money paid by customers to purchase the product
Promotion – The activities that communicate the product’s features and benefits and persuade customers to purchase the product.
Source: Marketing Online Journal

But for the virtual world – or electronic commerce – the discussion of location considers “community” more so than buildings. “Community” as in community ethos; this is defined as the fundamental character of a culture, that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society.

So where – which community – an e-Commerce company is located in really matters … for access to the right ethos, skilled talent, support services and capital. Is the Caribbean a good location for electronic commerce? No, we are not!

Can we be a good location for electronic commerce? Yes, we can!

We must simply adopt the appropriate community ethos; then execute the proper strategies, tactics and implementations to foster the industrial policies, entrepreneurial opportunities and jobs.

There is a model for us to follow:

Ann Arbor, Michigan.

In a previous blog-commentary on April 16, 2015 by the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean, the college-town of Ann Arbor was examined as part of a year-long tour of the economic anatomy of City of Detroit and surrounding Michigan cities. The book identified the Detroit metropolitan area (Page 140) as a Failed-City that parallels many Caribbean communities. Yet still, out of the “ashes of decay”, a few positive innovations were observed-and-reported on, such as the impactful community of Ann Arbor. That previous blog quoted the following:

The idea of impactful cities aligns with the book Go Lean…Caribbean in stressing the elevation of the societal engines through entrepreneurial endeavors. The book asserts that Caribbean society can be elevated by improving the eco-system to live, work, learn and play. This is the example of Ann Arbor.
…
The Go Lean roadmap accepts that change has come to the global marketplace, due mostly to the convergence of Internet & Communications Technology (ICT). The book posits that size no longer matters, that from any location – like Ann Arbor … – innovative solutions can be developed and promoted to an appreciative audience. What matters most is the innovation, not the location; so any Caribbean member-state, large or small can be impactful. The first requirement is the community ethos of valuing intellectual property. This ethos would be new for the Caribbean market; it is therefore a mission of the CU to forge.
…
The Go Lean roadmap asserts that one individual or community can make a difference in the quest to elevate Caribbean society – the promoters of Go Lean have come to Ann Arbor to observe and report on their progress. We want the same outcomes by fostering genius qualifiers in our region; we therefore need impactful college-towns in the Caribbean.

Consider this example of a world renowned company, based in Ann Arbor, that embraced that city’s spirit and most-assuredly rebooted their company, culture and fortunes. That company is Domino’s Pizza. Yes, a pizza company with more staff in Information Technology than any other department in the corporate headquarters. They place a huge emphasis on developing- deploying technology-based solutions, while also improving their underlying product, Pizza. This story is portrayed in this VIDEO here:

VIDEO: Behind Domino’s Pizza’s recipe for success – http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/dominos-pizzas-recipe-for-success

Published on Mar 25, 2017 – Domino’s Pizza is hotter than ever.
One big reason has to do with marketing seven years ago that helped save the day when the flat-bread company was flatlining… .
“In 2009, we decided that technology was going to be a big deal,” CEO Patrick Doyle said. Domino’s has more people working in IT than anywhere else in the company, at its Ann Arbor, Michigan, headquarters. CBS News correspondent Michelle Miller reports.
(Read the full transcript here: http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/dominos-pizzas-recipe-for-success)

See a related VIDEO here: Domino’s® Pizza Turnaround by Domino’s Pizza on YouTube

The book Go Lean…Caribbean strategizes technology as well; in fact that Internet & Communications Technologies (ICT) – e-Commerce is one such economic activity – is presented as a great equalizer for Small Country-States versus Big States on the world stage. The book stresses this point early (on Page 14) in the opening Declaration of Interdependence:

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.

The Go Lean book details technology and other strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to forge a cyber-friendly community ethos in the Caribbean. The book presents one such advocacy on Page 127, entitled:

10 Big Ideas … in the Caribbean Region

Cyber Caribbean
Forge electronic commerce industries so that the internet communications technology (ICT) can be a great equalizer in economic battles of global trade. This includes e-Government (outsourcing and in-sourcing for member-states systems) and e-Delivery, Postal Electronic Last Leg mail, e-Learning and wireline/wireless/satellite initiatives.

The opening Declaration of Interdependence also stressed the need for entrepreneurship and job creation. The book relates that the right community ethos can be – must be – forged, especially if we want to create jobs … in this new economy; (we want those jobs). See that pronouncement here also in the opening Declaration of Interdependence on Page 14:

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 … frozen foods …. In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism… – impacting the region with more jobs.

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU), for the elevation of all 30 member-states of the Caribbean. 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 and create 2.2 million new jobs.
Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

This commentary examined many other companies and many other cities, detailing their successes and failures in transforming their communities. Consider this sample of earlier blogs:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10449	Model of an ‘empowering’ family/company empowering a city: Detroit
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10140	Lessons Learned from Detroit demolishing thousands of structures
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8982	GraceKennedy: Profile of a Caribbean Transnational Corporation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8669	Detroit makes Community College free
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7586	Company Blink Health: The Cure for High Drug Prices
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7235	Flint, Michigan – A Cautionary Tale
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5155	Tesla unveils super-battery to power homes
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4587	Burlington, Vermont: First city to be powered 100% by renewables
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3152	Making a Great Place to Work®
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3490	How One Entrepreneur Can Rally a Whole Community
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2488	Role Model Jack Ma brings Alibaba to America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1416	Role Model Amazon’s new FIRE Smartphone

The Go Lean book and these accompanying blogs posit that the economic failure in the Caribbean in the past in general is the result of the lack of diversity in our industrial development. The region depends too heavily on tourism. We need to be prepared for the new economy – with the tenants of ICT. While location does not matter online, when it comes to e-Commerce, location does matter for having a community that fosters the right attitudes and achievements.

The Go Lean book asserts that the Caribbean nations must do better! We must look for these ICT opportunities for economic expansion; consider “10 Ways to Foster e-Commerce” (Page 198).

The requisite investment of the resources (time, talent, treasuries) for this goal may be too big for any one Caribbean member-state alone, so shifting the responsibility to a region-wide, professionally-managed, deputized technocracy will result in greater production and greater accountability.

The Go Lean roadmap is designed to facilitate economic growth and job creation, by modeling companies like Domino’s and cities like Ann Arbor. We want to be their protégés … and definitely not their parasites.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people, entrepreneurs, business establishments and even the governing institutions, to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap to make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

———-

Appendix Title: Who coined the phrase ‘location, location, location’?

Language expert William Safire searches for who came up with the phrase “location, location, location” in the Times Magazine this weekend after a colleague working on a wedding announcement said the phrase was attributed to a British real estate tycoon named Lord Harold Samuel. Lord Samuel’s 1987 obituary names him as the phrase coiner, but the editor of the “Yale Book of Quotations” found the phrase used in a real estate classified ad in the Chicago Tribune in 1926.

Lord Samuel was 14 years old at the time. Safire said the context of the 1926 ad suggests it was already a familiar phrase in Chicago and phrasal etymologists are not yet finished with this challenge.
Source: The Real Deal – South Florida Real Estate News – Posted June 9, 2009; retrieved April 24, 2017 from: http://bit.ly/2jyEzbD

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Detroit, e-Commerce, ICT, Model, Transform

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Caribbean Roots: Al Roker – ‘Climate Change’ Defender

Posted on April 21, 2017 in Ethos, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Make us proud ‘My Brother’; go fight our battles.

This is the message the Caribbean needs to send to one of its own, Al Roker, the on-air meteorologist for NBC and co-host of the morning newscast The Today Show.

Al Roker has Caribbean roots, as a legacy of parents from the Bahamas (and Jamaica; see Appendix A). He, himself has spent a lot of time there and reflect a lot of its values. Right now, he is being a Champion for a cause that is dear to the Bahamas, and all Caribbean for that matter:

Climate Change.

See how this Caribbean Champion battled prominent Climate Change deniers in this TV broadcast here. What’s sad is the actual denier in this case is Scott Pruitt, the Head of the American federal government environmental Watch-Dog, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency).

America may have the luxury of “sticking its head in the sand” and not deal with Climate Change, but for those of us in the Caribbean, we do not have that luxury – we have a Clear-and-Present Danger right now.

See the news article and VIDEO of this champion’s defense:

Title: Al Roker Debunks EPA Head Scott Pruitt’s Stunning Denial On Human-Caused Climate Change
Sub-title: Roker: “No Credible Science Or Scientist” Would Support Pruitt’s Assertion CO2 Is Not A Primary Contributor To Global Warming
By: Media Matters Staff

NBC weatherman Al Roker debunked EPA head Scott Pruitt’s false claim that carbon dioxide is not a primary contributor to global warming during an appearance on MSNBC Live, explaining that there is “no credible science or scientist” to support Pruitt’s statement.

During the March 10 segment, Roker addressed Pruitt’s comments on the March 9 edition CNBC’s Squawk Box in which Pruitt said “I would not agree” that CO2 is “a primary contributor to the global warming that we see” — a statement completely at odds with the consensus among climate scientists that human activity is the primary cause of climate change.

To rebut Pruitt’s statements, Roker referenced an interview he recently conducted with climate scientist Dr. Marshall Shepherd, who explained that “greenhouse gases are in fact the primary forcing function on a warming climate system. … their fingerprint is there on our naturally varying climate in the same way steroids were on the naturally varying cycle of home runs during the Major League Baseball era.”

Roker also stated “there is no credible science or scientist” that would back up Pruitt’s assertion. Indeed, a number of climate scientists have weighed in on Pruitt’s statement, stating Pruitt’s denial “demonstrated that he is unqualified to run the EPA or any agency” and suggesting that Pruitt “talk with his own scientists and read the National Climate Assessment.”

Notably, however, NBC did not address Pruitt’s climate denial on the widely viewed Today show the same day, nor NBC Nightly News air a segment on Pruitt’s climate denial on March 9 — even though Pruitt’s denial received widespread attention across mainstream media.

————-

See full transcript of the interview between Al Roker and the MSNBC Host Katy Tur in Appendix B below.

————-

VIDEO – From the March 10 edition of MSNBC Live – https://mediamatters.org/embed/clips/2017/03/10/52688/msnbc-msnbclive-20170310-alrokerpruitt

This issue of monitoring, messaging and managing the stakeholders for Climate Change is an important mission for the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean. The book presents the Caribbean region a roadmap to elevate its societal engines – economics, security and governance – and to be prepared for the Agents of Change impacting daily life in the Caribbean homeland. In total, the book identified these 4 Change Agents:

Technology
Globalization
Aging Diaspora
Climate Change

As a region, we are able to employ mitigations and remediation for all of these agents except for Climate Change. We are all small countries, nowhere on the list of “Big Polluters”, like the US (#2) and China (#1). We have neither a voice nor a vote in those countries, yet we need them to take the issue of Climate Change remediation seriously. Messaging is key! We need people like “Al Roker” – daily audience of 4 to 9 million people – speaking truth to power … on our behalf.

This advocacy – to proclaim impending danger to life and limb – is part of a new effort to elevate the societal engines of the Caribbean. This started with the Go Lean…Caribbean book and is being followed up by this and many other blog-commentaries. See here a sample of previous submissions heralding the need for the Caribbean region to be “on guard” for the imminent threats from Climate Change:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9455	Fix ‘Climate Change’ – Yes, We Can
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7103	COP21 – ‘Climate Change’ Acknowledged
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6893	A Meteorologist’s View On Climate Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4673	Merchants of Doubts – Dynamics of Climate Change Deniers
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2465	Book Review: ‘This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2276	Climate Change May Affect Food Supply Within a Decade
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2119	Cooling Effect – Oceans and the Climate
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1883	Climate Change May Bring More Kidney Stones

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) as an inter-government agency for 30 regional member-states. This confederation will provide a technocratic stewardship for all the societal engines in the Caribbean. In fact, the prime directives of the roadmap includes the following 3 statements:

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

Overall, the Go Lean book stresses the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to reboot, reform and transform the economic engines of Caribbean society.

What do we do now?

While we hope, pray and lobby the big polluting nations to do more, we have to prepare our Caribbean communities for the imminent onslaughts.

In previous blogs, this commentary cautioned the stakeholders in the Caribbean region, as follows:

Crap Happens! Prepare – The peril of a Climate Change-fueled hurricane is now a constant threat for Caribbean life, for all 30 member-states. It is assured that some Caribbean location will be impacted every year. While there is no guarantee for a strike “here or there”, there is a guarantee that there will be a strike somewhere.
Do Not be Hypocritical – Go ‘Green’ – If excessive carbon in the atmosphere by the Big Polluters is the culprit for infusing Greenhouse Gases, then we, as a region of small countries, need to do our share and set a good example of lowering our carbon footprint. Though our numbers are too small to make an impact, it does send the message that we are willing to “swallow the hard pill/take the medicine” ourselves that we are asking the Big Polluting nations to endure.

The global crisis of Climate Change is impacting all aspects of Caribbean life: economics, security (disaster preparation and response) and governance. A comprehensive view of the challenges befalling our region is the charge of the Go Lean roadmap, opening with these pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 11 and 12):

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

viii. Whereas the population size is too small to foster good negotiations for products and commodities from international vendors, the Federation must allow the unification of the region as one purchasing agent, thereby garnering better terms and discounts.

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

Now is the time for all stakeholders – residents, governments, Diaspora, scientists, disaster planners, etc. – in the Caribbean to lean-in for the empowerments described here-in and in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. Climate Change is the Number One threat for our society; for the whole world actually, but we are on the frontlines. “We must protect this house”. We must be better and do better and help to make our homelands better places to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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Appendix A – Al Roker’s Earliy Life

Al Roker was born in Queens, New York,^[4] the son of Isabel, of Jamaican descent, and Albert Lincoln Roker, Sr.,^[5] a bus driver of Bahamian descent.^[6] Roker initially wanted to be a cartoonist.^[5] He was raised Catholic^[5] (in the faith of his mother) and graduated from Xavier High School in Manhattan.^[7] He worked on several projects as a member of the school’s Cartooning & Illustration Club. He attended the State University of New York at Oswego where he received a B.A. in communications in 1976.

According to the July 2011 issue of Us Weekly in “25 Things You Did Not Know About Me”, Roker is the first cousin once removed of the late actress Roxie Roker, who was most notable for her role as Helen Willis on the sitcom The Jeffersons and the mother of popular rock musician Lenny Kravitz. That makes Kravitz Roker’s second cousin.^[8]Source: Retrieved April 21, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Roker#Early_life

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Appendix B – Transcript: Al Roker Interview by Host Katy Tur

KATY TUR (HOST): The head of the Environment Protection Agency stunned many when he denied carbon dioxide is a primary contributor to global warming.

[…]

TUR: Today show host and weatherman, a man who needs no introduction, Al Roker joins me now. “Stunned many” is a bit of an understatement, said most almost all, gosh, CO2 is not a factor when it comes to climate change. Was all of the schooling that I had as a child and into my adult life completely wrong, Al Roker?

AL ROKER: No, it wasn’t wrong and there is no credible science or scientist who will tell you the contrary. The fact is, carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gases is responsible for climate change.

TUR: No scientist will say this, but we’re having the EPA head say this?

ROKER: Well, look, this is America and you can make whatever statements you want to, but everybody will pretty much agree — in fact, just about an hour ago I interviewed one of the leading climate scientists in this country, Dr. Marshall Shepherd, and here’s what he had to say about it.

[BEGIN VIDEO CLIP]

MARSHALL SHEPHERD (DIRECTOR FOR UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA’S PROGRAM IN ATMOSPHERIC SCIENCES): The basic physics of the atmosphere suggest that greenhouse gases are in fact the primary forcing function on a warming climate system. Greenhouse gases and the impacts post-industrial age or –– industrial revolution are certainly — their fingerprint is there on our naturally varying climate in the same way steroids were on the naturally varying cycle of home runs during the Major League Bbaseball era.

[END VIDEO CLIP]

ROKER: I think that pretty much sums it it up.

TUR: Yeah, so where — if the EPA head is saying there needs to be more research, but the EPA is losing money to do research, give me the consequences. How important is it and how significant is it to have the EPA head deny something like this?

ROKER: Well I think hopefully cooler heads will prevail upon him to say we need to continue to research this. We need to continue what we’ve been doing because if you look, we’ve got a graphic that basically right around the industrial revolution, we had — there’s been no time in this history of our planet where CO2, even naturally occurring or not, was above 290 parts per million. Alright, now you look at the temperature, we put the temperature on top of that, you can see from the 1880s into the 1940s, temperatures are below average, below the global average, but once we really start to see that red line go up, as the CO2 starts to increase, you can see those average global temperatures continue to rise, and they peaked last year, the warmest temperature ever on record for this planet. So as we continue to add those greenhouse gases — now, that’s not to say that — the greenhouse gases allow us to live on this planet. Without them completely, we would freeze to death. At night we would die. So there has to be some small amount of greenhouse gases. We’re just adding too much.
Source: Retrieved 04-21-2017 from: https://mediamatters.org/blog/2017/03/10/al-roker-debunks-epa-head-scott-pruitt-s-stunning-denial-human-caused-climate-change/215635

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‘Black British’ and ‘Less Than’

Posted on April 21, 2017 in Planning, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Truth be told, a Black person speaking with a British accent gets more respect than a Black person speaking with a Caribbean slang or a ‘Hip-hop’ /‘Jive’ dialect.

It is what it is! Notice this portrayal in the Appendix VIDEO where many Afro-Caribbean citizens in Britain, seem to self-identify more as British than their Caribbean heritage; (POINT 5).

Does this mean that the Black British person is better off on the world stage? Sadly no! The actuality of Blackness still means “Less Than“.

The problem is not the Blackness, but rather Whiteness, the proliferation of White Supremacy … throughout the world.

This is the assertion of the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean, in consideration of reasons why the Diaspora should repatriate back to the Caribbean homeland and why the Caribbean youth should not even depart their homelands in the first place. This thesis was presented in a 9-part series, with these submissions:

All of these prior commentaries related to the disposition of the Caribbean Diaspora in the United States; now we take a look at England, Britain or the United Kingdom. There is a difference … supposedly.

“Britain has done a great job as painting itself as the humanitarian, with the US being the torturer. But that shit ain’t true.” – Patrisse Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter movement.

The purpose of this commentary – considering these source materials below – is to relate the following 5 strong points of contention; (these labels are shown throughout this commentary where applicable):

POINT 1 – The world is not fair, equal or just; and if you are of the Black-and-Brown races, the injustice is even more pronounced.
POINT 2 – Charity begins at home! There is a need to reform and transform society wherever you are. No one else will reform your homeland; you must!
POINT 3 – Leaving home, hurts home.
POINT 4 – The children of the Diaspora identify more with their current home, than their parent’s ancestral home.
POINT 5 – When the children do not want to identify with your land of heritage, it is Time to Go, to take them back home.

See this interview here relating Black British reality, with VICE News (UK Desk), the provocative media outlet that exposes the harsh realities of daily life in the Third World and the “First World”; (find more on VICE in Appendix A):

Title: We Spoke to the Activist Behind #BlackLivesMatter About Racism in Britain and America
By: Michael Segalov

… Patrisse Cullors is co-founder of Black Lives Matter — the movement and oft-trending hashtag. Based in LA ([Los Angeles]), she’s been on the front line at uprisings across the US in response to a wave of high-profile deaths of black people in police custody.

[While] on a speaking tour of the UK and Ireland, heading to communities, universities, and holding meetings in Parliament. VICE caught up with Patrisse on the train from Brighton to London in the midst of a hectic schedule. VICE chatted [with her] about how she’s spreading the Black Lives Matter movement across the globe, what’s happening in the States at the moment, and why that’s relevant to the UK.

VICE: Tell us about the origins of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Patrisse Cullors: After George Zimmerman was acquitted of the murder of Trayvon Martin, back in July 2013, myself and two friends came up with the hashtag. My friend Alicia had written a love letter to folks, saying, “Our Lives Matter, Black Lives Matter.”

I put a hashtag in front—within days people were using it across the world. We’re talking about all black lives; we weren’t just talking about black men dying in the hands of the police. We’re talking about black women, black trans people, black queer people. We want to show that under the current system of white supremacy, anti-blackness has major consequences. Inside the US, and around the world, anti-black racism has global consequences. Black Lives Matter is a call to action—it’s a mantra, a testimony.

How did you end up at the heart of it?
I’ve been organizing since I was 16. I came out as queer, and was kicked out of home. Along with a bunch of other young queer women of color, we raised each other. We also dealt with poverty, being black and brown in the USA, and trying to figure out how to live our daily lives. My brother was incarcerated in LA county jails at 19, and he was almost killed by the sheriffs. They beat him. They tortured him and brutalized him. This was my awakening, seeing how far the state will go, and how they treat our families.

Most disturbing was the lack of support and absolute neglect that my brother and my family faced after he was brutalized. Part of my upbringing was a feeling of rage, but I also knew I could do something about it. With my mentors, and a civil rights organization, I learned my craft over 11 years. I focused on the school-to-prison pipeline [where young people go straight from school into the juvenile criminal justice system], environmental justice, and police violence.
…
You’ve been in the UK for a week, how has it been, and how does the situation here relate to the USA?

In theory the UK has a significant amount of structures to allow for accountability, of law enforcement in particular. That’s the theory. But in the US we don’t really have these structures to allow for accountability. There aren’t really independent investigators; its just very rare for prosecutions for law enforcement. And so, being here, I’ve realized, there are some systems in place that might actually be good for the US. It just seems those systems don’t work.

Then there are the similarities, the ways in which black people are treated—it’s outright racism. From Christopher Alder being brutalized on tape, hearing the officers calling him racist slurs, to the G4S guards who killed Jimmy Mubenga with racist texts on their phones. You have that same hatred, these white supremacist ideologies coming out of both of our countries. And here too, justice is not being served. We have Mike Brown, no justice. We have Eric Garner, no justice. Here we see the same: Mark Duggan, Sean Rigg. The list is vast.

Is this stuff talked about in the States, like how in the UK we’re aware over here about what’s going on in Ferguson?
Here’s the thing, black people in the US don’t know what’s happening here in the UK. I’m well read, well educated, and coming here and learning these stories I’m like, “Why don’t I know about this? Why haven’t we heard?” The US is very insular. The UK has an image of being better, a humane society in which there isn’t the same level of racism. But now I have a very different perspective that I’m going to take home and talk about. Britain has done a great job as painting itself as the humanitarian, with the US being the torturer. But that shit ain’t true.

Here in the UK there’ve been solidarity actions. People shut down the streets in London and Westfield shopping center too. What’s the impact of these things for people on the ground? Do you notice?
Yes, it was noticed. We’ve seen all the work folks are doing on the ground. From here, where you guys shut down Westfield, to Spain and Brazil. In Israel, African refugees are using the Black Lives Matter mantra to talk about law enforcement violence by the Israeli police. We see it, and we’re in awe. We wanted and needed it to go global.

Where is this going? What happens next?
There are 23 Black Lives Matter chapters right now, in the US, Canada, and Ghana. We need to uplift the local struggles across the country, as well as pushing for greater accountability for law enforcement.

We want legislation that will see divestment from law enforcement and investing in poor communities. We want to build a national project linking families who have been impacted by state violence, with a national database that looks at individual law enforcement officers and agencies. We also want to look at how to develop a system of independent investigation. We want to figure out a victim’s bill of rights, to counter the police bill of rights. Until then, we’re gonna shut shit down.
Source: VICE (UK) News; Posted February 2 2015; retrieved April 20, 2017 from: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/patrisse-cullors-interview-michael-segalov-188?utm_source=vicetwitterus

See related VIDEO’s here on Britain’s Black History; (POINT 1 and POINT 4):

That Black British Feeling – Why Black People in the UK are Marching – https://youtu.be/fB2IcH668xo

Black and British: A Forgotten History Part 1 First Encounters; Full BBC Documentary 2016 – https://youtu.be/6WP6qEc2uaM

Black and British: A Forgotten History Part 2 Meaning of Freedom – https://youtu.be/Tjq1X3TZ02U

Black and British: Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners; The Price Of Freedom (2015) – https://youtu.be/kgaJyp8ix4M

For Caribbean people, the world thinks of us as “Less Than”, whether we are in the Caribbean or in the Diaspora in the UK, Europe or North America. We take the “Less Than” brand with us wherever we go. This is a crisis! The movement behind the book Go Lean…Caribbean seeks to use this crisis, to elevate the Caribbean brand …. globally.

Why is the Caribbean brand perceived as “Less Than”?

Yes, first there is the reality check of being Black-and-Brown in a White world. But also due to our own mis-management of our homeland. It is the greatest address on the planet, and yet our people beat down the doors to get out. Already we have lost 70 percent of our professional classes. So we send this subtle message to the world that “we would foul up the ground wherever we stand”; (POINT 1).

We – the Caribbean region as a collective – must do better; be better! We can reboot, reform and transform from this bad history and bad image; (POINT 2). How?

While easier said than done, this is the comprehensive action plan of the Go Lean book. The book serves as a roadmap for the introduction of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU is designed to optimize Caribbean society in the homeland – though there are many benefits to the Diaspora as well – through economic, security and governing optimizations. Therefore the Go Lean roadmap has 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 economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance – including empowerments for image promotion – to support these engines.

Reforming or transforming the UK, Britain or England is not within scope of the Go Lean/CU effort, notwithstanding the impact on our Diaspora there. But the subject of “Image” is inseparable from any discussion of elevating the Caribbean brand. So this commentary is on image, the facts and fiction of being a minority in a majority world or being an immigrant to a foreign country. This applies to any consideration of the Caribbean Diaspora in the British Isles, where their numbers have been reported between 4 and 5 percent of the population; (POINT 4). Consider these encyclopedic details:

British African Caribbean (or Afro-Caribbean) people are residents of the United Kingdom who are of West Indian background and whose ancestors were primarily natives or indigenous to Africa. As immigration to the United Kingdom from Africa increased in the 1990s, the term has sometimes been used to include UK residents solely of African origin, or as a term to define all Black British residents, though the phrase “African and Caribbean” has more often been used to cover such a broader grouping. The most common and traditional use of the term African-Caribbean community is in reference to groups of residents’ continuing aspects of Caribbean culture, customs and traditions in the United Kingdom.

A majority of the African-Caribbean population in the UK is of Jamaican origin; other notable representation is from Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Barbados, Grenada, Antigua and Barbuda, Saint Lucia, Dominica, Montserrat, Anguilla, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Guyana (which although located on the South American mainland is culturally similar to the Caribbean and was historically considered to be part of the British West Indies), and Belize.

African-Caribbean people are present throughout the United Kingdom with by far the largest concentrations in London and Birmingham.^[1] Significant communities also exist in other population centres, notably Manchester, Bradford, Nottingham, Coventry, Luton, Slough, Leicester, Bristol, Gloucester, Leeds, Huddersfield, Sheffield, Liverpool and Cardiff. In these cities, the community is traditionally associated with a particular area, such as Brixton, Harlesden, Stonebridge, Dalston, Lewisham, Tottenham, Peckham in London, West Bowling and Heaton in Bradford, Chapeltown in Leeds,^[2] St. Pauls in Bristol,^[3] or Handsworth and Aston in Birmingham or Moss Side in Manchester. According to the 2011 census, the largest number of African-Caribbean people are found in Croydon, south London.
Source: Retrieved April 20, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_African-Caribbean_people

There are a number of insights to glean looking at the demographics of the Afro-Caribbean population in the UK. (See Appendix B below). All in all, the Afro-Caribbean populations in the UK prefer to identify themselves more as British than as Caribbean; (POINT 4).

See this portrayal in the Appendix VIDEO below.

Despite the 60 years of futility, our Caribbean people continue to leave, abandoning our homeland; (POINT 3). This is bad; bad for the people and bad for the homeland. Our people “jump from the frying pan to the fire”:

Distress continues …
Oppression persists …
Image: “Less Than”!

This commentary asserts that it is easier for the Black-and-Brown populations in the Caribbean to prosper where planted in the Caribbean, rather than emigrating to foreign countries, like the UK. The reasons for the emigration in the first place have been identified as “push and pull”. “Push” refers to the societal defects in the Caribbean that drive people to move away (POINT 2); and “pull” factors refer to the impressions and perceptions that life abroad, as in England, is better. More details apply regarding these elusive “pull” factors:

The UK is NOT the #1 destination for the English-speaking Caribbean Diaspora, not anymore; that distinction is now towards the US. Today’s trending is for more and more new immigration to the US as opposed to the UK; Canada is Number 2.
While the “pull” factor had been compelling in the past, the decision-making of Caribbean emigrants – looking to flee – now needs a reality check! (POINT 1)
“Pull” is further exacerbated by the “push” factors; all of these continue to imperil Caribbean life; we push our citizens out. Then the resultant effect is a brain drain and even more endangerment to our society: less skilled workers; less entrepreneurs; less law-abiding citizens; less capable public servants – we lose our best and leave the communities with the rest. This creates even more of a crisis; (POINT 2).

The Go Lean roadmap posits that the entire Caribbean is in crisis now (POINT 3); so many of our citizens have fled for refuge in the UK and other countries, but the refuge is a mirage. The “grass is not necessarily greener on the other side”. Life in the UK is not optimized for Caribbean people. It is easier to fix the Caribbean than to fix the British eco-system. For our Diaspora there: it is Time to Go! For our populations in the Caribbean, looking to depart: Stay! Our people can more easily prosper where planted in the Caribbean … with the identified mitigations and remediation here-in.

The Go Lean book posits that Caribbean stakeholders made many flawed decisions in the past, both individually and community-wise; (POINT 2). But now, the Go Lean/CU roadmap is new (and improved). This is a vision of the CU as a confederation of the 30 member-states of the Caribbean to do the heavy-lifting of championing better nation-building policies, to reboot the region’s economic-security-governing engines. For one, there is the structure of a separation-of-powers between CU agencies and the individual member-states. So there are “two pies”, so citizens get to benefit from both their member-states’ efforts and that of the CU Trade Federation.

The Go Lean roadmap provides turn-by-turn directions on how to reform the society as a whole. This roadmap admits that because the Caribbean is in crisis, this “crisis would be a terrible thing to waste”. As a planning tool, the roadmap commences with a Declaration of Interdependence, pronouncing the approach of regional integration (Page 10 – 14) as a viable solution to elevate the regional engines:

Preamble: And while our rights to exercise good governance and promote a more perfect society are the natural assumptions among the powers of the earth, no one other than ourselves can be held accountable for our failure to succeed if we do not try to promote the opportunities that a democratic society fosters.
As the history of our region and the oppression, suppression and repression of its indigenous people is duly documented, there is no one alive who can be held accountable for the prior actions, and so we must put aside the shackles of systems of repression to instead formulate efficient and effective systems to steer our own destiny.

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

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

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

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

The Go Lean book details the community ethos to adopt, plus the executions of the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the eco-systems in the Caribbean region.

The book provides these recommendations in regards to the dynamics of Diaspora living:

Encourage the Caribbean Diaspora to repatriate back to their ancestral homeland – (10 Reasons to Repatriate to the Caribbean – Page 118).
Dissuade the high emigration rates of Caribbean citizens to foreign stories – (10 Ways to Make the Caribbean Better – Page 131).

These subjects (Repatriation and Diaspora) have been frequently commented on in other Go Lean blogs (POINT 4); as sampled here with these entries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11244	‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ or London …
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9485	10 Things We Don’t Want from the UK
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8099	Caribbean Image: ‘Less Than’?
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7151	The Caribbean is Looking for Heroes … ‘to Return’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1683	British public sector workers strike over ‘poverty pay’

The book also relates the significance of image/brand management, as with this advocacy: “10 Ways to Better Manage Image” (Page 133):

The Bottom Line on Martin, Malcolm, Mandela, Muhammad and Marley
The majority of the Caribbean population descends from an African ancestry – a legacy of slavery from previous centuries. Despite the differences in nationality, culture and language, the image of the African Diaspora is all linked hand-in-hand. And thus, when Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, Nelson Mandela, Muhammad Ali and Bob Marley impacted the world with their contributions, the reverberations were felt globally, not just in their homelands. It is hard for one segment of the black world to advance when other segments have a negative global image. This is exemplified with the election of Barack Obama as US President; his election was viewed as an ascent for the entire Black race.

Overall, we must elevate the Caribbean brand. There are active movements now to accentuate the image/brand; consider:

Proclaim ‘International Caribbean Day’

The African Renaissance Monument

Declared “Best in the World”

Accentuate Caribbean Image Tied to the Dreadlocks Hairstyles

Underlying to the Go Lean/CU prime directive of elevating the economics, security and governing engines of the Caribbean, is the desire to make the Caribbean homeland better, to reform and transform our society. If we can do this, we will dissuade the high emigration rate for our young people. But saying that it is “Time to Go“, must mean that we are ready to receive our Caribbean Diaspora from London and other British cities. Are we?

We are not! But this Go Lean roadmap gets us started. This is the intent of the book Go Lean … Caribbean.

The Go Lean/CU roadmap asserts that Britain should not be presented as the panacea for Caribbean ills – we must reform and transform our own society. While Britain or the UK does some things well, that country does not always act justly towards Black-and-Brown people of Caribbean descent; (POINT 5). We must do this ourselves (POINT 2); our region needs the empowerments here-in (jobs, economic growth and brand/image enhancement).

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people and governing institutions, to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This is the roadmap to elevate the Caribbean; to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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

———–

Appendix A – Vice News

Vice News (stylized as VICE News) is Vice Media, Inc.‘s current affairs channel, producing daily documentary essays and video through its website and YouTube channel. It promotes itself on its coverage of “under-reported stories”.^[1] Vice News was created in December 2013 and is based in New York City, though it has bureaus worldwide.

Background
In December 2013, Vice Media expanded its international news division into an independent division dedicated to news exclusively and created Vice News. Vice Media put $50 million into its news division, setting up 34 bureaus worldwide and drawing praise for its in-depth coverage of international news.^[2] Vice News has primarily targeted a younger audience comprised predominantly of millennials, the same audience to which its parent company appeals.^[3]

History
Before Vice News was founded, Vice published news documentaries and news reports from around the world through its YouTube channel alongside other programs. Vice had reported on events such as crime in Venezuela, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, protests in Turkey, the North Korean regime, and the Syrian Civil War through their own YouTube channel and website. After the creation of Vice News as a separate division, its reporting greatly increased with worldwide coverage starting immediately with videos published on YouTube and articles on its website daily.^[5]Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vice_News

———–

Appendix B – British Afro-Caribbean Demographics

Based on a variety of official sources and extrapolating from figures for England alone, the estimates for the number of people in Britain born in the West Indies grew from 15,000 in 1951, to 172,000 in 1961 and 304,000 in 1971, and then fell slightly to 295,000 in 1981. The estimates for the population of ethnic West Indian in 1981 were between 500,000 and 550,000.^[26]

In the UK Census of 2001, 565,876 people classified themselves in the category ‘Black Caribbean’, amounting to around 1 percent of the total population.^[38] Of the “minority ethnic” population, which amounted to 7.9 percent of the total UK population, Black Caribbean people accounted for 12.2 percent.^[38] In addition, 14.6 percent of the minority ethnic population (equivalent to 1.2 per cent of the total population) identified as mixed race, of whom around one third stated that they were of mixed Black Caribbean and White descent.^[38]

In the latest, the 2011 Census of England and Wales, 594,825 individuals specified their ethnicity as “Caribbean” under the “Black/African/Caribbean/Black British” heading, and 426,715 as “White and Black Caribbean” under the “Mixed/multiple ethnic group” heading.^[35] In Scotland, 3,430 people classified themselves as “Caribbean, Caribbean Scottish or Caribbean British” and 730 as “Other Caribbean or Black” under the broader “Caribbean or Black” heading.^[36] In Northern Ireland, 372 people specified their ethnicity as “Caribbean”.^[37] The published results for the “Mixed” category are not broken down into sub-categories for Scotland and Northern Ireland as they are for England and Wales.^[36][37] The greatest concentration of Black Caribbean people is found in London, where 344,597 residents classified themselves as Black Caribbean in the 2011 Census, accounting for 4.2 per cent of the city’s population.^[35]

The UK Census records respondents’ countries of birth and the 2001 Census recorded 146,401 people born in Jamaica, 21,601 from Barbados, 21,283 from Trinidad and Tobago, 20,872 from Guyana, 9,783 from Grenada, 8,265 from Saint Lucia, 7,983 from Montserrat, 7,091 from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, 6,739 from Dominica, 6,519 from Saint Kitts and Nevis, 3,891 from Antigua and Barbuda and 498 from Anguilla.^[39]

Detailed country-of-birth data from the 2011 Census is published separately for England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In England and Wales, 160,095 residents reported their country of birth as Jamaica, 22,872 Trinidad and Tobago, 18,672 Barbados, 9,274 Grenada, 9,096 St Lucia, 7,390 St Vincent and the Grenadines, 7,270 Montserrat, 6,359 Dominica, 5,629 St Kitts and Nevis, 3,697 Antigua and Barbuda, 2,355 Cuba, 1,812 The Bahamas and 1,303 Dominican Republic. 8,301 people reported being born elsewhere in the Caribbean, bringing the total Caribbean-born population of England and Wales to 264,125. Of this number, 262,092 were resident in England and 2,033 in Wales.^[40] In Scotland, 2,054 Caribbean-born residents were recorded,^[41] and in Northern Ireland 314.^[42]Guyana is categorised as part of South America in the Census results, which show that 21,417 residents of England and Wales, 350 of Scotland and 56 of Northern Ireland were born in Guyana. Belize is categorised as part of Central America. 1,252 people born in Belize were recorded living in England and Wales, 79 in Scotland and 22 in Northern Ireland.^[41][42][40]Source: Retrieved April 20, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_African-Caribbean_people#Demography

———–

Appendix VIDEO – Do you call yourself Black British? – https://youtu.be/i3dgzdsAZug

Published on Oct 21, 2016

Category: People & Blogs
License: Standard YouTube License

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Diaspora, Image, UK

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Building Better Cities

Posted on April 19, 2017 in Implementation, Locations, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Truth be told, it is hard to fix (reform) the broken processes of a whole country.

It is easier to fix a broken family; and easier to fix/reform just a broken neighborhood.

So a formula for success would be to reform broken neighborhoods (and broken families) one after another, and just like that, the country is transformed.

This “bottoms-up” approach is also the premise of the Six Sigma Quality Management concept (see Appendix below):

Do not try to perform 1 million perfect iterations; rather try to perform 1 iteration perfectly; then repeat it 1,000,000 times.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean presents the quest to elevate the 30 member-states in the Caribbean region. It does not limit the focus to the state governments; it drills down to a subset level: the cities. The book asserts that reforming and transforming cities would be integral to reforming and transforming entire countries.

Fix the cities; fix the world!

This is the theme of these many source materials. Consider the AUDIO Podcast, VIDEO and magazine column/article here:

AUDIO Podcast – Building Better Cities – http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/462178064/building-better-cities?showDate=2017-03-31

Posted March 31, 2017 – Cities are among our greatest experiments in human co-habitation. Do they also hold the answers to some of our biggest problems? This hour, TED speakers explore how cities can change the world. Listen to the full hour here: http://www.npr.org/programs/ted-radio-hour/462178064/building-better-cities?showDate=2017-03-31

———-

VIDEO – Atlanta’s Kasim Reed: How Are Mayors Better Poised to ‘Get Things Done’? – https://youtu.be/semT61CCNEE

Published on Oct 20, 2014 – “Cities are where hope meets the streets,” says Kasim Reed, mayor and son of Atlanta. In this powerful talk, he argues that transformation is really possible at the municipal level. Reforming the city he loves was not just a matter of tough financial calls, but of really listening to the wisdom within the community.

See more: tedcity2.org

Category: Nonprofits & Activism

License: Standard YouTube License

———-

Title: The Issues That Drive America’s Mayors
Sub-Title: Whether they’re Democrats or Republicans, a new survey shows that poverty and wealth inequality are what concern them most.
By: Bob Annibale, Mick Cornett

Before he died in 2014, Thomas Menino, a visionary urban leader who served as mayor of Boston for more than two decades, declared that we are living in “the era of the city.” This has never been truer than it is today.

As the world continues to urbanize at an unprecedented rate, cities and their surrounding areas wield more power than ever. Currently over half of the world’s population lives in cities, and that is expected to grow to 70 percent by 2050. In the United States, 82 percent of Americans live in metropolitan areas, an increase of 12 percent just since 2000.

Cities are rich with diversity and serve as vital hubs of innovation, culture and commerce. The world’s top 10 cities by GDP, five of which are in the United States, have economies rivaling all but the 10 most prosperous countries. But while the populations, capital and political power of many cities is enormous, so are the scale and complexity of their challenges — making insight into their leadership important.

Motivated by the belief that “the era of the city” is upon us, Boston University’s Initiative on Cities, with support from Citi, recently published the findings of its 2016 Menino Survey of Mayors to understand the important challenges facing these cities’ leaders. Named for the great Boston mayor, the survey gathered the perspectives of more than 100 sitting mayors from 41 states on contemporary issues through a series of one-on-one interviews conducted last summer.

The survey’s findings reveal that despite remarkable societal advancements in urban centers, new and more complex problems are cropping up or increasing in severity. The environment, infrastructure, public services and household financial security are presenting challenges at a level that cities have never experienced before.

Not surprisingly, the survey found that two of the central issues in the 2016 presidential campaign – wealth inequality and the shrinking middle class — were also of deep concern to mayors of cities throughout the country. Nearly half of those surveyed ranked poverty as their most pressing economic concern. In fact, 48 percent of mayors feel that those living in or near poverty are the most excluded group in their cities; when asked which constituency they need to do more to help, nearly a quarter named poor residents.

What is slightly more surprising is the level of agreement on the top issues regardless of mayors’ party affiliation or city size. Mayors from cities big and small are highly attuned to the plight of their most vulnerable residents, and even in this polarized political climate the focus on poverty is shared by both Democratic and Republican mayors. That’s also true of the benefits of diversity. While issues of economic inclusion and diversity illuminated deep divisions among the presidential candidates, the country’s mayors were united in the goal of building more inclusive cities that are welcoming to all.

The Menino Survey provides a window into how our nation’s mayors think, act and perceive their world. By gathering and synthesizing the priorities and challenges of our cities from the perspective of their leaders, the survey offers a roadmap of opportunities for civic innovation.

It also provides stakeholders in the nonprofit and private sectors with valuable insights that can inform the development of new programs, policies and partnerships, such as universal youth savings accounts in San Francisco, community land trusts in Washington, D.C., or a small-business support program for public-housing residents in New York City.

These types of innovations, often forged through public-private partnerships, enable us to tackle complex urban challenges such as poverty and economic insecurity and build more inclusive cities — ones where residents can fulfill their potential and contribute to thriving urban economies.

About the Authors:

Bob Annibale – Leader of CitiGroup’s partnerships with global, national and local organizations to support inclusive finance and community development

Mick Cornett – Mayor of Oklahoma City and president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors

Related:

5 Simple Urban Fixes for Unpredictable Times

It is important to glean these main points from the foregoing source media/articles:

This is “the era of the city”.
Cities are where hope meets the streets.
Currently, over half of the world’s population lives in cities, and that is expected to grow to 70 percent by 2050. In the United States, 82 percent of Americans live in metropolitan areas, an increase of 12 percent just since 2000.
Cities are rich with diversity and serve as vital hubs of innovation, culture and commerce. The world’s top 10 cities by GDP, five of which are in the United States, have economies rivaling all but the 10 most prosperous countries.

Reform the cities; reform the country!

The Go Lean book studies the good, bad and ugly lessons from a number of cities (New York City; Omaha, Nebraska; Detroit, Michigan; Los Angeles City-County, California); the book then proceeds to detail strategies, tactics and implementation to fix one particular Caribbean city (Freeport, Bahamas).

The Go Lean book presents a plan to grow the regional economy and create jobs. The Go Lean book asserts that this effort is too big a task for just one Caribbean member-state or city alone; all the 30 member-states and their cities must convene, confederate and collaborate in order to effect change. As such, the Go Lean book 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, and all cities. 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 and create 2.2 million new jobs. Caribbean cities need jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities. This roadmap calls for mini-cities, referred to as Self-Governing Entities, as a solution to optimize industrial policy. See a model/example here.
Establishment of a security apparatus to ensure public safety and protect the resultant economic engines. The origins of cities were for protective walls around the city perimeters.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, including a separation-of-powers between the member-states and CU federal agencies. See a model/example here.

A mission of the Go Lean roadmap is to reboot urban communities – defining a concerted effort in a concentrated area – with empowerments like:

Transportation – “Out of the box” thinking to transport people to places; i.e. Streetcars.
Mixed-use Developments – Optimize communities with one building for retail, office and residences.
Healthcare … on controlled campuses – Facilitating hands-off administration for advanced medical R&D.
Improving Local Government – Connecting citizens online for more and more electronic delivery.
Public Works – Infrastructure projects elevate cities … economically.
Libraries – These are for more than just reading books in this New Economy.
Events/Festivals – Culture, community pride and revenues cannot be ignored.
Main Street – Local Downtowns can be tranformed for the Greater Good.
Sports – These Big Business activities can impact more than just the fans and players.

The book stresses that reforming and transforming Caribbean urban communities must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 14):

vi. Whereas the finite nature of the landmass of our lands limits the populations and markets of commerce, by extending the bonds of brotherhood to our geographic neighbors allows for extended opportunities and better execution of the kinetics of our economies through trade. This regional focus must foster and promote diverse economic stimuli.

vii. Whereas our landmass is finite and therefore limited as to population growth potential, it is imperative that prudent growth management be practiced so as to protect our legacy and still foster future opportunities for the hopes and fulfillment of a prosperous future for our children.

viii. Whereas the population size is too small to foster good negotiations for products and commodities from international vendors, the Federation must allow the unification of the region as one purchasing agent, thereby garnering better terms and discounts.

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.

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… – impacting the region with more jobs.

This commentary previously related details of city life – elevating society at the urban level – that can be applied directly in the Caribbean. Here is a sample of previous blogs:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11244	‘To Live and Die in L.A.’ … City/County …
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4587	Burlington, Vermont: First city to be powered 100% by renewables
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3641	‘We Built This City …’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3326	M-1 Rail: Alternative Motion in the MotorCity
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1918	Philadelphia Freedom – We can Look, Listen and Learn
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1596	Book Review: ‘Prosper Where You Are Planted’

The Go Lean book and these accompanying blogs posit that the economic failures in the Caribbean in general and in cities in particular are the direct result of the lack of diversity in industrial development, and the subsequent societal abandonment. The region depends too heavily on one industry: tourism.

The roadmap asserts that this strategy is flawed; that while prudence dictates that the Caribbean nations expand and optimize their tourism products, the Caribbean must also look for other opportunities for economic expansion. Cities can be laboratories in urban civilization, but the requisite investment of the resources (time, talent, treasuries) for this goal may be too big for any one city alone. So rather, this roadmap shifts the responsibility to a region-wide, professionally-managed, deputized technocracy that will result in greater production and greater accountability. The end result of these “urban laboratories” will facilitate economic diversity and job creation.

This is the charge of the Go Lean…Caribbean roadmap, to do the heavy-lifting, to implement the organization dynamics to impact Caribbean society here and now. The following are the community ethos, strategies, tactics and operational advocacies to effectuate this goal:

Community Ethos – People Respond to Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influences Choices & Incentives	Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier	Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Make the Caribbean the Best Address on Planet	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Protect our residents, visitors and repatriates	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Fix the broken systems of governance	Page 46
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Union versus Member-States	Page 71
Implementation – Implement Self-Governing Engines	Page 105
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Re-boot Freeport – Sample City	Page 114
Implementation – Ways to Promote Independence – Autonomous Cities	Page 120
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Planning – Lessons from New York City	Page 137
Planning – Lessons from Omaha	Page 138
Planning – Lessons from Detroit	Page 140
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Local Governance	Page 169
Advocacy – Ways to Enhance Tourism	Page 190
Advocacy – Ways to Market Southern California – Learning from L.A. City	Page 194
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Main Street	Page 201
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Urban Living	Page 234

This Go Lean book accepts that the current State of the Cities does not have to be a permanent disposition. Under the Go Lean roadmap, cities can do better; all of the Caribbean can do better. This roadmap is a 5-year plan to effect change, to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play.

Now is the time to build better Caribbean cities; the people and governing institutions are urged to lean-in to this Go Lean … Caribbean roadmap. 🙂

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

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

————-

Appendix – The Bottom Line on Six Sigma

Six Sigma is a set of tools and strategies for process improvement originally developed by Motorola in 1985, but popularized in 1995 by General Electric’s Jack Welch as his central business strategy. Today it is used in different sectors of industry. Six Sigma seeks to improve the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors). It uses a set of quality management methods, including statistical methods, and creates a special infrastructure of people within the organization (Champions, Black Belts, Green Belts, Orange Belts, etc.) who are experts in these very complex methods.

With Six Sigma the maturity of a manufacturing process can be described by a sigma rating indicating its yield or the percentage of defect-free products it creates. A six sigma process is one in which 99.9999998% of products manufactured are statistically expected to be free of defects (3.4 defects per million). According to Wikipedia, Six Sigma projects follow a methodology, aimed at improving existing business processes, composed of five phases, bearing the acronyms DMAIC:

Define the problem, the voice of the customer, and the project goals, specifically.
Measure key aspects of the current process and collect relevant data.
Analyze the data to investigate and verify cause-and-effect relationships. Determine what the relationships are, and attempt to ensure that all factors have been considered. Seek out root cause of the defect under investigation.
Improve or optimize the current process based upon data analysis.
Control the future state process to ensure that any deviations from target are corrected before they result in defects.

Source: Go Lean … Caribbean (Page 147)

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Detroit, Model, New York, Omaha, Transform

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Retail Apocalypse – Preparing for the Inevitable

Posted on April 18, 2017 in Implementation, Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Remember the dream … of 7 Fat Cows and 7 Skinny Cows?

The articulation of the dream was that the 7 Fat Cows represented 7 prosperous years while the 7 Skinny Cows represented 7 years of famine with poverty and distress. – The Bible; Genesis Chapter 41.

In that Bible drama of Joseph in ancient Egypt, those circumstances were more than just in a dream; it was a prophecy of prosperity and famine. It came true!

Joseph was able to use the foresight to prepare that kingdom for adversity, after first exploiting the opportunities.

Here it comes again.

There is feast and famine “in the cards” as related to the retail eco-system. On one end of the spectrum , there will be prosperity for electronic commerce stakeholders, but on the other end, for brick-and-mortar establishments, there will be a Retail Apocalypse.

Will be? Actually, the threat has already manifested!

This is the assertion in this news article by the financial-economic magazine Business Insider:

Title: The retail apocalypse has officially descended on America
By: Hayley Peterson

Thousands of mall-based stores are shutting down in what’s fast becoming one of the biggest waves of retail closures in decades.

More than 3,500 stores are expected to close in the next couple of months.

Department stores like JCPenney, Macy’s, Sears, and Kmart are among the companies shutting down stores, along with middle-of-the-mall chains like Crocs, BCBG, Abercrombie & Fitch, and Guess.

Some retailers are exiting the brick-and-mortar business altogether and trying to shift to an all-online model.

For example, Bebe is closing all its stores — about 170 — to focus on increasing its online sales, according to a Bloomberg report.

Some are going out of business altogether, like The Limited which recently shut down all 250 of its stores.

Others, such as Sears and JCPenney, are aggressively paring down their store counts to unload unprofitable locations and try to stanch losses.

Sears is shutting down about 10% of its Sears and Kmart locations, or 150 stores, and JCPenney is shutting down about 14% of its locations, or 138 stores.

According to many analysts, the retail apocalypse has been a long time coming in the US, where stores per capita far outnumber that of any other country.

The US has 23.5 square feet of retail space per person, compared with 16.4 square feet in Canada and 11.1 square feet in Australia, the next two countries with the most retail space per capita, according to a Morningstar Credit Ratings report from October.

Visits to shopping malls have been declining for years with the rise of e-commerce and titanic shifts in how shoppers spend their money. Visits declined by 50% between 2010 and 2013, according to the real-estate research firm Cushman & Wakefield.

And people are now devoting bigger shares of their wallets to restaurants, travel, and technology than ever before, while spending less on apparel and accessories.

As stores close, many shopping malls will be forced to shut down as well.

When an anchor store like Sears or Macy’s closes, it often triggers a downward spiral in performance for shopping malls.

Not only do the malls lose the income and shopper traffic from that store’s business, but the closure often triggers “co-tenancy clauses” that allow the other mall tenants to terminate their leases or renegotiate the terms, typically with a period of lower rents, until another retailer moves into the anchor space.

To reduce losses, malls must quickly find a replacement tenant for the massive retail space that the anchor store occupied, which is difficult — especially in malls that are already financially strapped — when major department stores are reducing their retail footprints.

That can have grave consequences for shopping malls, especially in markets where it’s harder to transform vacant mall space into non-retail space like apartments, according to analysts.

The nation’s worst-performing malls — those classified in the industry as C- and D-rated — will be hit the hardest by the store closures.

The real-estate research firm Green Street Advisors estimates that about 30% of all malls fall under those classifications. That means that nearly a third of shopping malls are at risk of dying off as a result of store closures.
Source: Business Insider e-Zine. Posted 03/21/2017; retrieved 04/17/2017 from: http://www.businessinsider.com/the-retail-apocalypse-has-officially-descended-on-america-2017-3

Related:

1. Monday Market Mayhem – The Retail Apocalypse – Look out Wall Street

2. Dollar General is defying the retail apocalypse and opening 1,000 stores

See the related AUDIO Podcast below here:

———–

AUDIO Podcast – Wal-Mart battles Amazon with discounts for online ordering and store pickup – https://www.marketplace.org/2017/04/14/business/its-battle-amazon-walmart-offers-discounts-ordering-online-and-picking-store

Published April 14, 2017 – Big Box giant Wal-Mart battling e-Commerce giant Amazon for New Economy fulfillment.

As noted in the foregoing, the Retail Apocalypse is affecting the news in the United States. It’s only the news today, tomorrow will be jobs, the next day the finance apparatus holding the debt (mortgages and security instruments on Wall Street) for the many shopping malls and then soon, the rest of the economy will be impacted.

This is so familiar. Remember the housing-real estate bubble in 2003 to 2010. This previous blog-commentary identified the following 5 steps of a bubble:

1.   Displacement

2.   Boom

3.   Euphoria

4.   Profit Taking

5.   Panic

Here we go again! Sounds like a crisis is imminent.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) and Caribbean Central Bank (CCB); it declares that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste – quoting famed American Economist Paul Romer. Though the impending crisis is slated for the US, the actuality of economic contagions mean that the Caribbean member-states will be affected as well.

Where do the tourists come from that drive the Caribbean region’s primary economic driver?

The question is rhetorical; the answer is obvious!

The Go Lean book seeks to prepare the Caribbean region for the change dynamics impacting the world. The “Agents of Change” at play in the foregoing news source are as follows:

Technology
Globalization

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”.

Consider the experience of this commentator:

I went to buy 3 pairs of slacks.

I was only able to find one – with the brand, make, size and color – at a Big Box retail store. So then I went home and matched the brand, model, size with the e-Commerce merchant Amazon.com and acquired the same pants in 2 divergent colors that the Big Box retailer did not have in inventory. 3 days later, the whole shopping expedition was over; I acquired 3 pairs of slacks, primarily from the online merchant and delivered by the shipping company United Parcel Service (UPS).

The quest of the Go Lean/CU roadmap is to elevate the Caribbean’s societal engines – not the US – starting first with economics (jobs, commercial developments and entrepreneurial opportunities). In fact, the following 3 statements are identified as the prime directives of the CU:

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 protect the resultant economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance – as e-Commerce alters sales & border taxes – to support these engines.

The changes taking place in the US with the Retail Apocalypse will eventually traverse the Caribbean member-states as well. This is the parallel with the opening Bible Drama. A crisis is coming and we have the opportunity to exploit the prosperous years and prepare for the famine. The Caribbean region – all 30 member-states – needs to better exploit e-Commerce. There are so missing ingredients, fully detailed in the Go Lean book; see this sample advocacy on Page 198:

10 Ways to Foster e-Commerce

1	Leverage the full population – 42 million people in all 30 member-states to deploy the CU and the CCB.
2	Regional Currency (Caribbean Dollar or C$)
3	Card Culture The CU will seek to foster the eco-system for e-payments beyond government activity. To assimilate this change, a card culture, on Main Street, will entail utilizing debit/credit cards, benefits pay cards, and even smart cards on cruise ships. The CU will collectively bargain with the cruise lines to deploy C$ electronic “purses” to facilitate port-side and onboard retail commerce. All of these changes will garner a better monetary multiplier on the CU economy, by expanding M1.
4	CU Social Media The CU web portal www.myCaribbean.gov will grant free access, email, IM, and profile pages for CU stakeholders, even normalizing communications thru social media sites. This will facilitate internet commerce activities in the region, as the CU will have hot data on profiles, habits and previous activities, thereby creating opportunities for measured marketing.
5	A Market for the Downloads of Intellectual Properties
6	Remittance Methods (Card & Email)
7	Mobile Apps – *Hi-Density Wi-Fi*
8	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.
9	Turnpike Logistics
10	Customs and Import Optimizations

The missing ingredients for this new marketplace – electronic commerce – are not just banking-related, the full eco-system must be enabled: electronic (technology), commerce (trade) and fulfillment (logistics). The implementation of these provisions will constitute a New Day for the region. Overall, the Go Lean book stresses the community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to reboot, reform and transform the economic engines of Caribbean society, so as to benefit from changes coming due to the Retail Apocalypse, this New Day.

Though not directly mentioned in the Go Lean book, this Retail Apocalypse is planned for in the roadmap. A comprehensive view of the technocratic stewardship for the region’s economic engines, including the banking eco-system, is presented early in the book with these opening pronouncements in the Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13 and 14):

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.

The points of effective, technocratic banking and retail stewardship were further elaborated upon in previous blog/commentaries. Consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11184	Big Bank investing $Billion on ‘Fintech’ for e-Commerce positioning
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8823	Lessons from China – WeChat: Model for Caribbean Social Media
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8704	Lesson from MetroCard
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7991	Transformations: Caribbean Postal Union – Delivering the Future
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7034	The Future of Money
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6635	New Security Chip in Credit Cards Unveiled
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5668	Move over Mastercard/Visa – Time for Local Banking Cards
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4425	Cash, Credit or iPhone …
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3889	Royal Bank of Canada’s EZPay – Ready for Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3881	The Need for Regional Cooperation for Cyber-Security & e-Security
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3858	Model of Central Banking Technocracy: ECB 1 trillion Euro stimulus
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2488	Model of an E-Commerce Fulfillment Company: Alibaba
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1416	Model of an E-Commerce Fulfillment Company: Amazon
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1350	PayPal’s model to pay for e-Commerce
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=906	Bitcoin model to pay for e-Commerce
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=528	Facebook to pay for e-Commerce

Warning to all retail stakeholders – buyers, sellers and governments: Change is coming!

This is a familiar stance – preparing for the inevitable – for the Go Lean movement; there have been previous warnings of disruptive changes; see this sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7847	To the Personal Computer industry: Cloud Computing, Smartphones and Tablets are making actual laptop and desktop computers inconsequential.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6151	To the regional government’s Revenue Officials: 3-D Printing is coming and will change fabrication to local rather than import. This will disrupt border taxes revenue expectations.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6016	To the Infrastructure Planners: Climate Change is making Caribbean summers hot-hot-hot and northern winters milder; there must be cooperative refrigeration to provide relief, otherwise people will leave for northern destinations.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5784	To Jamaica’s Public Safety Officials: Human Rights protections must be extended to people who identify as LGBT. Whether you agree or not, the international community will force you to respect their rights for life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5210	To the Cruise Line industry: The Caribbean region’s collective bargaining will extract greater benefits and protections for port city commerce.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5155	To the Caribbean Power Grip: Home-based batteries will allow for successful deployments of solar/wind power generation and require less power from the grid.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4767	To the regional government’s Revenue Officials: Under the WTO regime, customs duties must eventually be eliminated; same too with conditional property taxes. VAT or Sales Taxes are OK.

As for the Retail Apocalypse, now is the time for all stakeholders of Caribbean banking, retail and governments to lean-in for the empowerments for e-Commerce described here-in and in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This is where the marketplace is going, not just tomorrow, but already here today. We can do this; we can elevate our communities and our retail eco-systems. We can be a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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Amazon, CPU, e-Commerce, ICT, Model, Transform

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ENCORE: Boston Bombing Anniversary – Learning Lessons

Posted on April 17, 2017 in Ethos, Government, Social, Tactical

Go Lean Commentary

It has been 4 years already! The hope now is for an incident-free Boston Marathon today, April 17, 2017.

But hope is not the only emotion at work in Boston. There is also fear, concern, anticipation and preparation. The City of Boston has learned important lessons from that terrible attack at the Patriots Day Marathon in 2013. See highlights from this VIDEO here:

VIDEO – New security plans in place for the Boston Marathon
– http://wwlp.com/2017/04/14/new-security-plans-in-place-for-the-boston-marathon/

How about the Caribbean? Have we learned lessons? Are we engaging the needed remediation and mitigation?

We have events – think Carnival in the Caribbean member-states or in the Diaspora – on our calendar that could also be victimized by attacks, assaults and incidents (terrorism or just plain street-crime). It is very important that we do better to present our participants, spectators, guests and tourists a more secure environment.

More than economic interests are at stake. It could be life-or-death.

Notice some of the headlines here describing the security dynamics of some Caribbean events (around the Caribbean and the world):

Trinidad Express Daily Newspaper March 2, 2017 – Trinidad Carnival: Reduction in Crime; but Carnival attacks nonetheless:
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/20170302/news/seven-killings-dillon-congratulates-lawmen-for-crime-free-carnival-2017
New York Post Daily Newspaper September 5, 2016 – 2 killed in J’Ouvert festival shootings in Brooklyn
BBC News August 30, 2016 – Notting Hill Carnival: Police officers ‘dread’ the event:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-37212493
The Standard, UK Daily Newspaper August 30, 2016 – Notting Hill Carnival Zombie Knife Incident:
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/boy-15-slashed-in-stomach-with-zombie-killer-knife-at-notting-hill-carnival-a3331921.html

Also, see the Encore of the previous blog-commentary that considered lessons learned from the Boston Marathon terrorist attack; this review was published on the 1-year anniversary in 2014. See it again here-now:

—————–

ENCORE – Original Commentary: Remembering and learning from Boston

April 15 [2014] is the one year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing. 3 people died directly, and countless others were maimed and injured. From any perspective this was a tragedy! To the families that lost loved ones on that date, our deepest condolences.

There are many lessons for the Caribbean to learn from this experience.

The book Go Lean … Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This CU is proffered to provide economic, security and governing solutions for the 30 member Caribbean states. This book posits that the Caribbean is not immune to similar experiences like Boston; that terrorism requires mitigation beyond the member-states; there needs to be a regional solution. The CU will furnish such a focus. There will be proactive and reactive measures to monitor, interdict, and marshal terroristic threats in the Caribbean. Most of the Caribbean has legacy affiliation with European/US countries that have been victims of terrorism. Though we have not had the tragedies of backpacks exploding at marathons, or chemical weapons used in subways, or airplanes crashing into our buildings, we must still hold a constant vigilance. The roadmap posits that “bad actors” always emerge where there is economic successes. See a related news article here:

Title: Year after Boston bombing, it’s clear that threat of homegrown terrorism overhyped
By: David Schanzer and Charles Kurzman

In the aftermath of the Boston Marathon bombing one year ago Tuesday, many commentators and public officials called this tragedy a harbinger of more homegrown terrorist attacks to come.

“We’re going to see an explosion in this radicalization and recruitment,” predicted Congressman Frank Wolf. “We are less secure than we were 12 years ago,” claimed think-tank terrorism expert Michael Swetnam. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey told Americans to “worry – a lot.

”To many, the Boston attack demonstrated the potency of the Islamist extremist ideology, the difficulty of detecting individuals radicalized through social media and the Internet, and the ease with which amateurs could cause massive harm in our open society. The Tsarnaev brothers, they claimed, had paved the way for more terrorism.

While only one year has passed, much of this concern appears to have been hyperbole.

No one has been killed by homegrown terrorists in the past year, and there have been no copycat attacks. To put this in context, over the same period there have been 14,000 murders in the United States, including 46 murders in Boston.

There also has been no epidemic of al-Qaida-inspired extremist behavior directed at American civilians. Our research shows that in the year since the marathon bombing, there have been 15 arrests of Muslim-Americans for terrorism-related offenses, below the average of 20 arrests per year since 9/11. Almost all of these arrests were for attempting to join a foreign terrorist organization abroad, not for planning attacks in the homeland, and were motivated by sympathies with rebels in Syria and elsewhere rather than by al-Qaida’s call for Muslims to attack the West.

Our law enforcement agencies have a far more balanced understanding of the nature of the extremist threat than many of those providing public commentary after the Boston attacks. A nationwide survey of law enforcement agencies we are conducting in collaboration with the Police Executive Research Forum shows that more than half of the agencies report little or no threat from al-Qaida-inspired extremism. Only 2 percent report the threat as “severe.” Agencies from large metropolitan areas reported somewhat higher levels of concern (27 percent reporting a low threat and 7 percent reporting a severe threat). Overall, law enforcement agencies are treating this as a serious, but manageable, issue rather than the existential crisis that many have feared.

Law enforcement agencies have embraced community outreach as an effective strategy to counter violent extremism. Almost every large metropolitan police force surveyed collaborates with Muslim-American communities that are targeted for recruitment by al-Qaida and related extremists. Most of these agencies report they have established a high level of trust with the community, and two-thirds say these relationships have helped develop actionable information. This track record contradicts claims by Congressman Peter King, a New York Republican, and others that Muslim-Americans have failed to cooperate with law enforcement.

One year after two individuals inflicted pain and suffering on the streets of Boston, we should not be overly fearful or cavalier about the threat of violent extremism. The low levels of violent conduct both before and after the Boston Marathon show that no matter how many extremist videos are posted on the Internet, the baseless ideas these videos propagate appeal to only a tiny fraction of our populace. Yet, since small numbers of people can do so much harm, law enforcement agencies and the communities they serve must be constantly vigilant and continue to work together to prevent the next atrocity.

David Schanzer is a Professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy and Director of the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security.

Charles Kurzman is a Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Source: News Observer Newspaper – a Raleigh, North Carolina Daily – Retrieved 04/15/2014 from: http://www.newsobserver.com/2014/04/14/3784842/year-after-boston-bombing-its.html

How can we apply lessons from this foregoing article in the stewardship of the Caribbean Homeland Security?

First, we have the direct lessons of the scourge of piracy in the Caribbean for centuries. The “after-effects” of this legacy still remain, even today. As Caribbean society traversed over the centuries, the attitudes that tolerated piracy, described in the book as “community ethos”, evolved to tolerate, incubate and even promote other lawless activities; (shipwrecking, bootlegging, drug smuggling). So with this history in mind, and the prime directive to elevate Caribbean society, the Go Lean economic empowerment mission is coupled with appropriate security provisions. This mandate is detailed early on in the book’s Declaration of Interdependence, with the following pronouncements (Page 12):

x. Whereas we are surrounded and allied to nations of larger proportions in land mass, populations, and treasuries, elements in their societies may have ill-intent in their pursuits, at the expense of the safety and security of our citizens. We must therefore appoint “new guards” to ensure our public safety and threats against our society, both domestic and foreign. The Federation must employ the latest advances and best practices of criminology and penology to assuage continuous threats against public safety. The Federation must allow for facilitations of detention for convicted felons of federal crimes, and should over-build prisons to house trustees from other jurisdictions.

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, including piracy and other forms of terrorism, 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.

There are many other lessons for us to learn from Boston. But there are other tragedies that appear to have gotten less attention in the past year since the marathon bombings. In Boston alone, there have been 46 murders since April 15, 2013. In total, there have been 14,000+ murders in the entire Unites States in that time. See the foregoing news article/commentary.

These have not gone unnoticed! Especially terrorism’s junior partner-in-crime, bullying; such incidents also call for mitigations.

The Go Lean roadmap therefore comes BIG, in its offering to effectuate change in the Caribbean. Notice these strategies, tactics, implementations, and advocacies detailed in the book related to Caribbean security:

10 Ways to Improve Sharing	Page 35
10 Foreign Policy Initiatives at Start-up	Page 102
10 Security Initiatives at Start-up	Page 103
10 Ways to Impact Justice	Page 177
10 Ways to Reduce Crime	Page 178
10 Ways to Improve for Gun Control	Page 179
10 Ways to Improve Homeland Security	Page 180
10 Ways to Mitigate Terrorism	Page 181
10 Ways to Improve Intelligence [Gathering]	Page 182
10 Ways to Improve Animal Husbandry	Page 185
10 Ways to Impact the Prison-Industrial Complex	Page 211
10 Ways to Impact Youth	Page 227

Further, the Go Lean roadmap portrays the need for public messaging to encourage adoption of better community ethos for the Greater Good (Page 37). We must not allow those innocent lives in Boston to pass without positive lessons for our society.

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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

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Events, Security, Terrorism

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Forging Change: Home Addiction

Posted on April 14, 2017 in Industries, Social, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

If only we can get people addicted to ‘home’ then they would want to stay ‘here’ or come back home.

We can! We can tease, tempt and program people to become addicted to being ‘home’, and homesick whenever they are away from home.

This would be similar to getting people addicted to …

… drugs, sex, Rock-n-Roll, games, alcohol, cigarettes, gambling and other vices.

This refers to a scientific process involving brain chemistry. The brain chemistry is dopamine. It is possible to make people addicted to different elements, whether they be physical and conceptual. See the details in the encyclopedic Appendix below.

This is an important issue. The movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean – wants to forge change in the Caribbean. We want to dissuade the bad trend of our people abandoning their homeland – fleeing – and pursuing life in the Diaspora abroad. We need our people at home. We need them to be addicted to their homeland and love it, and to miss it when separated. This describes …

Homesickness …
… the distress or impairment caused by an actual or anticipated separation from home.^[1] Its cognitive hallmark is preoccupying thoughts of home and attachment objects.^[2] Sufferers typically report a combination of depressive and anxious symptoms, withdrawn behavior and difficulty focusing on topics unrelated to home.^[3][4][5]

Homesickness is defined so similarly to withdrawal symptoms! And the reward-motivated behavior is powerfully addictive; think of a slot-machine in a casino.

Drug abuse = Bad! Casino gambling = Bad! Homesickness = Good.

The Go Lean book describes the effort of dissuading Caribbean residents from societal abandonment as heavy-lifting. The book explains that there are 2 reasons why people leave their beloved homelands – “Push” and “Pull” factors:

“Push” refers to people who feel compelled to leave, to seek refuge in a foreign land. “Refuge” is an appropriate word; because of societal defects, many from the Caribbean must leave as refugees – think LGBT, Disability, Domestic-abuse, Medically-challenged – for their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. For these people, it is like “they are on fire” and need to stop-drop-and-roll.
“Pull”, on the other hand refers to the lure of a more prosperous life abroad; many times our people are emigrating on the false perception that they can have a better “home” abroad. They have a deficient longing for their homeland.

In order to neutralize the “Push and Pull” factors, the heavy-lift of reforming and transforming Caribbean society must be done. This movement has identified many previous strategies, tactics and implementations (8 in total) for forging change in the region. These require technocratic deliveries and best-practices. The Go Lean book details the efforts to change the minds (head), hearts and hands (actions) of Caribbean people. This commentary describes one way to forge change, getting the people addicted to their homeland.

Yes, this is possible; it is scientific, and not science fiction. This approach is at work right now in the smart-phone industry; they employ strategies, tactics and operational efficiency to compel people to engage their devices … continuously. They make people addicted.

How can we introduce this addiction in our homeland, to forge change? Fortunately, the devices are already there; we only need to brain hack, to customize the content, for addiction.

See this Art-and-Science portrayed in this news story VIDEO here, from 60 Minutes:

VIDEO – Brain Hacking – http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/brain-hacking

Published April 9, 2017 – Why can’t we stop looking at our smartphones? And are the designers of the apps and content on them using brain science to keep us hooked? Anderson Cooper reports.

Various strategies, tactics and implementations for forging change have been identified in a series of previous Go Lean blog-commentaries over the past 2 & 1/2 years, this is the ninth submission. These were presented as follows, in reverse chronological order:

Forging Change – Addicted to Home (Today)
Forging Change – Arts & Artists (December 1, 2016)
Forging Change – Panem et Circenses (November 15, 2016)
Forging Change – Herd Mentality (October 11, 2016)
Forging Change – ‘Something To Lose’ (November 18, 2015)
Forging Change – ‘Food’ for Thought (April 29, 2015)
Forging Change – Music Moves People (December 30, 2014)
Forging Change – The Sales Process (December 22, 2014)
Forging Change – The Fun Theory (September 9, 2014)

This commentary is urging Caribbean stakeholders to customize the content on smart-phones and media (social website www.myCaribbean.gov) to forge addiction for the people that live, work and play there.

There is an art-and-science to this quest:

#addictionbydesign

The stakeholders in the smart-phone and social media industries have a proven track record. According to the foregoing VIDEO, whether they want to or not, these ones are “shaping the thoughts, feelings and actions of people [consuming their products]; they are programming people”.

We – the Go Lean movement – want to shape the “thoughts, feelings and actions” of Caribbean people. Understanding the science of Dopamine, allows us to structure the appeal and messaging to create an addiction – home-sickness – among Caribbean residents.

This quest will require a genius application of Art-and-Science to make this effort successful. The Go Lean book (Page 27) describes the process of starting early to identify Caribbean youth with genius qualifiers for the Arts and Science – we need them now. We need them to compete like “Drug Dealers” to get people in the community hooked on the content of Caribbean life: expressions of arts, music, dance, stories, drama, news, information, films, movies, TV shows and other media portrayals. While the actual content creators and curators may only be a handful of professionals, those with genius qualifiers, the impact, the addiction, can be felt on the whole community. This is an expression of the Greater Good. This is defined in the Go Lean book (Page 37) as:

“The greatest good to the greatest number of people which is the measure of right and wrong”. – Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832, a British philosopher, jurist, and social reformer.

This is why the Go Lean book, while commencing as an economic empowerment plan, devotes so many pages to the arts, music, media, social media, technology and communications.

The Go Lean book serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). The CU is set to optimize Caribbean society through economic, security and governing empowerments. Therefore the Go Lean roadmap has 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 economic engines.
Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines.

The Go Lean/CU roadmap asserts that forging change in the Caribbean will be a hard, heavy-lift task and many alternate strategies – the 9 from above – may have to be engaged. Any one person – artists or technologists – can make a difference and positively impact society; such a person can be a champion for our Caribbean cause . We can all work to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. This is why fostering the genius ability in Caribbean citizens is presented in the book (Page 27) as a community ethos.

The Go Lean book presents this and other (new) community ethos for the region to adopt, plus new strategies, tactics, implementation and advocacies to execute to forge change in the region. The following is a sample of these specific details from the book:

Community Ethos – Deferred Gratification	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Choose	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices	Page 21
Community Ethos – Economic Principles – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future	Page 21
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Lean Operations	Page 24
Community Ethos – Governing Principles – Cooperatives	Page 25
Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius	Page 27
Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship – Case Study of Incubators	Page 28
Community Ethos – Ways to Promote Intellectual Property	Page 29
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research and Development	Page 30
Community Ethos – Ways to Close the Digital Divide	Page 31
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Greater Good	Page 37
Strategy – Vision – Confederate 30 Member-States	Page 45
Strategy – Mission – Celebrate the Music, Sports, Art and Culture of the Caribbean	Page 46
Tactical – Confederating a Permanent Union	Page 63
Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy	Page 64
Tactical – Separation-of-Powers – Communications and Media Authority	Page 79
Implementation – Year 1 / Assemble Phase – Establish CPU	Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change – Spectrum Auctions for Mobile Deployments	Page 101
Implementation – Ways to Optimize Mail Service & myCaribbean.gov Marketplace	Page 108
Implementation – Ways to Deliver	Page 109
Implementation – Ways to Impact Social Media	Page 111
Planning – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region	Page 127
Planning – Ways to Make the Caribbean Better	Page 131
Planning – Reasons Why the CU Will Succeed	Page 132
Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy	Page 151
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs	Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Homeland Security	Page 180
Advocacy – Ways to Improve Communications – Community Messaging	Page 186
Advocacy – Ways to Foster Technology	Page 197
Advocacy – Ways to Foster e-Commerce	Page 198
Advocacy – Ways to Preserve Caribbean Heritage	Page 218
Advocacy – Ways to Improve the Arts	Page 230
Advocacy – Ways to Promote Music	Page 231
Appendix – Various Genres of Caribbean Music	Page 347

The Go Lean roadmap offers the technocratic execution of these deliverables. Imagine identifying and fostering the genius abilities of technologists (programmers, coders, designers, project managers and behaviorists) and artists (singers, actors, dancers, musicians, performers, etc.). The end-product of their genius may be Caribbean residents longing to stay home and foreign-based residents (Diaspora) being/becoming homesick. From the outset, the Go Lean book recognized the significance of our Diaspora and successful careers in these cutting-edge fields, with these statements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 13 & 14):

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

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

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.

xxxii. Whereas the cultural arts and music of the region are germane to the quality of Caribbean life, and the international appreciation of Caribbean life, the Federation must implement the support systems to teach, encourage, incentivize, monetize and promote the related industries for arts and music in domestic and foreign markets. These endeavors will make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play.

The Go Lean roadmap seeks to foster the eco-system for developing and deploying smart-phone arts-and-sciences. There is a lot of progress to be garnered from this field. The more lucrative the industry, the more participation from technologists and artists, the more impactful the content addiction can have on our society. We simply need to foster the regional industry and participation.

This quest – fostering the economic opportunities from smart-phones/social media – has been addressed in many previous Go Lean commentaries; see sample here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11184	Banks spending $Billions on ‘Financial Technologies’ for Smart-phones
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10750	Smart-phones causing more People to abandon Newspapers
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=9751	Where the Jobs Are – Animation and Game Design
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8823	Lessons from China – WeChat: Model for Caribbean Social Media
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8817	Lessons from China – Mobile Game Apps: The New Playground
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8328	Case Study: Caribbean-bred YouTube Millionaire: ‘Tipsy Bartender’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7991	Transformations: www.myCaribbean.com – Delivering the Future
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7920	eMerge Miami’s conference aims to jump-start tech hub for the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7806	Skipping School to become Tech Giants
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7034	The Future of Electronic Money – Mobile Phones are Key
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6921	A Rewards Program for the Caribbean
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6341	Tourism Stewardship — In the Information Age
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5034	Patents: The Guardians of Innovation
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3974	Google and Mobile Phones – Here comes Change
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2953	Funding Caribbean Entrepreneurs – The Online ‘Crowdfunding’ Way
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2126	Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1416	Amazon’s new FIRE Smartphone Eco-system
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=486	Venture Capital Firm backs Taxi-Cab booking app for Smart-phones
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=476	New Urgings on ICT for CARICOM

This Go Lean roadmap is committed to optimizing Caribbean societal engines – economic, security and governance – by means of initiatives in the industry for Internet & Communications Technologies (ICT) – including smart-phones and social media applications. But this roadmap is bigger than just smart-phones; its a concerted effort to elevate life in Caribbean communities – to make our society worthy of homesickness.

The Caribbean needs to be successful in keeping their citizens at home; we need our people to want to stay home or to long to come back. We can do this; we can make people homesick – by lowering the “push-and-pull” factors. We must forge change here. And we can; this quest is conceivable, believable and achievable. We can make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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

—————

Appendix Reference – Dopamine

Dopamine (DA, contracted from 3,4-dihydroxyphenethylamine) is an organic chemical of the catecholamine and phenethylamine families that plays several important roles in the brain and body. It is an amine synthesized by removing a carboxyl group from a molecule of its precursor chemical L-DOPA, which is synthesized in the brain and kidneys. Dopamine is also synthesized in plants and most multicellular animals.

In the brain, dopamine functions as a neurotransmitter—a chemical released by neurons (nerve cells) to send signals to other nerve cells. The brain includes several distinct dopamine pathways, one of which plays a major role in reward-motivated behavior. Most types of rewards increase the level of dopamine in the brain, and many addictive drugs increase dopamine neuronal activity. Other brain dopamine pathways are involved in motor control and in controlling the release of various hormones. These pathways and cell groups form a dopamine system which is neuromodulatory.

Outside the central nervous system, dopamine functions primarily as a local chemical messenger. In blood vessels, it inhibits norepinephrine release and acts as a vasodilator (at normal concentrations); in the kidneys, it increases sodium excretion and urine output; in the pancreas, it reduces insulin production; in the digestive system, it reduces gastrointestinal motility and protects intestinal mucosa; and in the immune system, it reduces the activity of lymphocytes. With the exception of the blood vessels, dopamine in each of these peripheral systems is synthesized locally and exerts its effects near the cells that release it.

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Cocaine, substituted amphetamines (including methamphetamine), Adderall, methylphenidate (marketed as Ritalin or Concerta), MDMA (ecstasy) and other psychostimulants exert their effects primarily or partly by increasing dopamine levels in the brain by a variety of mechanisms.^[84] Cocaine and methylphenidate are dopamine transporter blockers or reuptake inhibitors; they non-competitively inhibit dopamine reuptake, resulting in increased dopamine concentrations in the synaptic cleft.^{[85][86]:54–58} Like cocaine, substituted amphetamines and amphetamine also increase the concentration of dopamine in the synaptic cleft, but by different mechanisms.^[24][86]

The effects of psychostimulants include increases in heart rate, body temperature, and sweating; improvements in alertness, attention, and endurance; increases in pleasure produced by rewarding events; but at higher doses agitation, anxiety, or even loss of contact with reality.^[84] Drugs in this group can have a high addiction potential, due to their activating effects on the dopamine-mediated reward system in the brain.^[84]

Source: Retrieved April 14, 2017 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dopamine

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