Model – Page 2 – Go Lean…Caribbean

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Zero Sum: Lesson 101 – No More “Gold Standard”

Posted on February 20, 2021 in Economics, Ethos, Government, Social

Go Lean Commentary

Whether you realize it or not, Zero Sum Thinking is a real concern … and a real problem … in the Caribbean.

The default psychology of Zero-Sum Thinking refers to the perception that a situation is like a zero-sum game, where one person’s gain is another’s loss; (see the full encyclopedic treatment in the Appendix below).

This complex topic relates heavily to the economic discussions of “Supply and Demand“; actually it magnifies more on the different dynamics of Supply. The actuality is not everybody has the same level of supply – this is true despite whatever resource is being considered. If everyone had an adequate supply – if there was no scarcity – then this standard would not apply:

Golden Rule: He who has the gold, makes the Rules. – Old Adage

Just the premise of this Old Adage assumes a limited amount of gold, a “finite pie” and the challenge to get a slice of it. The term Zero Sum infers the same size pie and the activity to just change the slicing; the total mass of the pie never increases or decreases.

The actuality of a finite pie aligns with a primary Economic Principle, 1^st among the 6 principles established in the orthodoxy of Economic Principles. This concept was explained in full details in the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. See the excerpt here from Page 21:

People Choose: We always want more than we can get and productive resources (human, natural, capital) are always limited. Therefore, because of this major economic problem of scarcity, we usually choose the alternative that provides the most benefits with the least cost.
All Choices Involve Costs.
People Respond to Incentives in Predictable Ways.
Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices and Incentives.
Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth.
The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future.

This Economic Principle (1-of-6) predates the Go Lean book; it is Classic Economics. See the encyclopedic definition here:

Scarcity as an economic concept “… refers to the basic fact of life that there exists only a finite amount of human and nonhuman resources which the best technical knowledge is capable of using to produce only limited maximum amounts of each economic good … .”^[1] If the conditions of scarcity didn’t exist and an “infinite amount of every good could be produced or human wants fully satisfied … there would be no economic goods, i.e. goods that are relatively scarce…”^[1] Scarcity is the limited availability of a commodity, which may be in demand in the market or by the commons. Scarcity also includes an individual’s lack of resources to buy commodities.^[2] The opposite of scarcity is abundance.

The above points on scarcity are true and valid, when the supply of the limited resource – like gold – actually affects our life. But the world has actually moved away from Zero Sum Thinking, as there is no longer a Gold Standard for economic measurements. See more here:

A gold standard is a monetary system in which the standard economic unit of account is based on a fixed quantity of gold. The gold standard was widely used in the 19th and early part of the 20th century. Most nations abandoned the gold standard as the basis of their monetary systems at some point in the 20th century, although many still hold substantial gold reserves.^[1][2] – Source: Wikipedia

Unfortunately, the Caribbean has not caught up with this advanced thinking. There is no longer any excuses; we must now assimilate this concept that modern society has transformed to a Non-Zero Sum world. The sooner we accept this actuality, the better.

Many Caribbean people still believe that America is the “greatest” country in the world only because they have the largest Gold Reserves. But alas, as reported above, the Gold Standard no longer applies. The World now operates on a “Fiat Currency” principle, and so we can all grow, advance and win without someone else having to decline, lose or fail.

Let’s examine this closer! Every month, the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean presents a Teaching Series to address issues germane to Caribbean society. For this month of February 2021, we are looking at the psychology and sociology of Zero Sum Thinking. It turns out that many of our societal defects are tied to this reality – (see the Appendix below). This first entry, 1-of-6, introduces the concept and then we drill deeper and climb higher. The full catalog of this series is detailed as follows:

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

We start our discussion on Zero Sum by looking at the economic picture – the Gold Standard. This aligns with the assertions of the Go Lean book, that regional stewards can reform and transform Caribbean society by first rebooting the economy engines.

# 6 – Need People Too – Not All About Money, or is it?
The quality of life for the citizenry is very important, otherwise, people leave, and take their time, talents and treasuries elsewhere. Family, cultural pride is more important than economics, and yet when the economics are bad, people leave. This is evident by the large Caribbean Diaspora in foreign lands – where they re-assembled their culture and civic pride. – Go Lean book Page 26 – Title: “10 Ways to Impact the Future“

The regional stewards need to pay more than the usual attention to this consideration. What regional stewards?

There is no such stewardship and this is the first step the political Caribbean needs to do to reform and transform the regional homeland. So that same Page 26 Go Lean Advocacy calls for this #1 “Way to Impact the Future“:

# 1 – Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market & Economy initiative: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU)
This will allow for the unification of the region into a Single Market economy of 30 countries, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion (based on 2010 figures), thereby creating the world’s 29th largest economy. The CU will then forge multiple Agencies to foster technology growth and garner benefits from the economic “Catch-Up” principle. This should double the GDP after 5 years and help create the structures for the meaningful future that past visionaries had foreseen.

The European Union is the Model for the Caribbean Union

In addition to an integrated political stewardship – which must come first – the roadmap calls for an integrated economic stewardship. The Go Lean book (Page 32) introduces the Caribbean Central Bank (CCB) with this mandate:

CCB – Mixed Basket – Monetary Strength
An obscure Murphy’s Law states “when people claim that it’s the principle, and not the money, chances are, it’s the money”. There are more important things in life than money, but somehow all these things can be bought/sold … for money. The CU strategy is to consolidate monetary reserves for the region into one currency, the Caribbean Dollar, managed by the technocratic Caribbean Central Bank. The C$ will be based on a mixed-basket of foreign reserves (US dollars, Euros, British pounds & Yens). This strategy allows the CU to negotiate with sufficient economic strengths.

The Euro is the Model for the Caribbean Dollar

So if Gold is no longer the Reserve Standard, and we are not limited to Zero Sum Thinking, then nothing prevents us from growing and growing our economy – monetary reserves and Fiat valuations.

This concept was thoroughly explained in a previous blog-commentary from March 25, 2014 entitled:

How to Create Money from Thin Air
Something more amazing happens in our modern economic system, money is created out of “thin air” … . How is this possible? This is accomplished through the Commercial/Central Banking system.

First of all, banks are financial institutions that take in deposits from people and use their money to give out loans to others. The reason why banks provide this service [to the community] for free is because they earn a profit by letting people deposit their money. Banks charge higher interests rates on the money they lend out compared to the money deposited. All in all, banks are both borrowers and lenders. People trust banks to store their money. The deposits allow banks to lend out money with higher interest rates with the expectancy that the loans will be paid back.

Banks have something called a required reserve ratio, mandated by the Central Bank; (the “Fed” in the US). This is the ratio of reserves to total deposits that banks are supposed to keep as reserves. Banks also have the right to increase the reserve ratio. They lend out the remaining percentage. For example, the bank has a 10% reserve ratio meaning it reserves 10% of its total deposits. It will then lend out the remaining 90%. When a person deposits $100, the bank is able to lend out $90 and keeps $10 for reserves. The $10 does not count as money since it is used as a reserve and may not be used for lending. So far, the bank has $100 and $90 currency loaned out. This is a total of $190 created as opposed to $100 before. Currency held by the public is money.

Of course, the borrower doesn’t simply keep the $90 but he will spend it. For instance, he will spend his money for a pair of soccer cleats at the Nike store. Now the Nike store has $90 but it will then deposit it back into the bank. The cycle then repeats itself. If the bank has more borrowers, it will certainly make a profit. If it lends again, it will lend out $81 and keep $9 on reserves.

The way banks create money is a cycle and over time, the profit compounds on top of each other and the original $100 can be [extended] potentially [to as high as] $1,000.^[a]

So the new $900, compared to the original $100, is created from “thin air”.

Surely, you see how this new fractional banking regime is better than the old Gold Standard. If the monetary regime had remained tied to “gold”, the only value that would have mattered would have been an original deposit of $100 in Gold, not the $1000 in Fiat Currency. Rather than a Zero Sum system where that $100 in Gold only changes hands between parties and still amounts to $100, we now have a Non-Zero Sum regime, in which the focus and emphasis is on $1000, not only the $1000 – we now have a much Bigger Pie.

In this series, a reference is made to the need for a comprehensive roadmap for elevating the societal engines of the 30 Caribbean member-states for the Greater Good. We need to ensure that institutional stewardship is in place to manage this new economic regime. The world is already doing this with Non-Zero Sum Thinking. It is time we catch up.

Zero Sum Thinking is actually a bad Community Ethos – the underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of society – while Non-Zero Sum Thinking reflects a new Community Ethos.

The dread of Zero Sum

The Go Lean book provides 370-pages of turn-by-turn instructions on “how” to adopt the new Community Ethos we need for progress, plus the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to execute so as to reboot, protect, reform and transform the economic engines of Caribbean society. There is a lot of consideration in the book for establishing the CCB and the Single Currency (Caribbean Dollar or C$) in the region. Plus, there have been a number of previous blog-commentaries by the Go Lean movement that have highlighted the ecosystem of monetary, central banking and currency best practices. See a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19452	Big Hairy Audacious Goal: Regional Currency – ‘In God We Trust’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16530	China seeks to de-Americanize the world’s economy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16210	In Defense of Trade – The Real Threat of Currency Assassins
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14248	Leading with Money Matters – Almighty Dollar
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13744	Failure to Launch – Economics: The Quest for a ‘Single Currency’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13365	Case Study from West Africa: Single Currency for 8 Diverse Countries
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10513	Case Study from India: Transforming Money Countrywide
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8381	Case Study on Central Banking for Puerto Rico
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7140	Case Study from Azerbaijan – Setting its currency to Free Float
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6800	Case Study from Venezuela: Suing Black Market currency website
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3858	Case Study from ECB: Unveiling 1 trillion Euro stimulus program
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3814	Case Study from Switzerland: Unpegging the franc
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=360	Case Study on Central Banks: Creating Money from ‘Thin Air’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=833	Case Study from the Euro: One Currency, Diverse Economies

This consideration is bigger than just a discussion on the “Gold Standard” and regional currencies. As related in Appendix below, there are psychological and sociological limitations associated with Zero and Non-Zero Sum Thinking:

Labor Negotiations – Winners does not have to mean losers.
Immigration – New Arrivals does not mean “less for the status quo”.
Academic Grading – On the curve?
Jury Deliberation – Evidence has point to more than one conclusion
Job Skills Competence – Jack of all trades, master of …
Inter-personal relations – Love more than one person (i.e. best friends)
International Trade – Trade Deficits do not mean losses

See this portrayal in this VIDEO Book Review:

VIDEO – Thomas Sowell – Zero-Sum Thinking – https://youtu.be/5dbrzo5-sdE

Posted June 1, 2017 – Excerpt from Thomas Sowell “Basic Economics A Citizen’s Guide to the Economy 2nd Edition”: http://amzn.to/2quYW9l

Audible Free Trial: http://amzn.to/2lLpWCm

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In summary, it is inexcusable that the Caribbean has failed to adapt to this new monetary, economic, sociological and psychological growth that is associated with Non-Zero Sum Thinking.

Let move forward now!

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders – stewards and subjects – to lean-in to this comprehensive Go Lean roadmap to elevate Caribbean society. This is the work we must do to make our homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—————–

Appendix – Title: Zero-Sum Thinking

Zero-Sum Thinking perceives situations as zero-sum games, where one person’s gain would be another’s loss.^[1][2][3] The term is derived from game theory. However, unlike the game theory concept, zero-sum thinking refers to a psychological construct—a person’s subjective interpretation of a situation. Zero-sum thinking is captured by the saying “your gain is my loss” (or conversely, “your loss is my gain”). Rozycka-Tran et al. (2015) defined zero-sum thinking as:

A general belief system about the antagonistic nature of social relations, shared by people in a society or culture and based on the implicit assumption that a finite amount of goods exists in the world, in which one person’s winning makes others the losers, and vice versa … a relatively permanent and general conviction that social relations are like a zero-sum game. People who share this conviction believe that success, especially economic success, is possible only at the expense of other people’s failures.^[1]

Zero-sum bias is a cognitive bias towards zero-sum thinking; it is people’s tendency to intuitively judge that a situation is zero-sum, even when this is not the case.^[4] This bias promotes zero-sum fallacies, false beliefs that situations are zero-sum. Such fallacies can cause other false judgements and poor decisions.^[5][6] In economics, “zero-sum fallacy” generally refers to the fixed-pie fallacy.

Examples
There are many examples of zero-sum thinking, some of them fallacious.

When jurors assume that any evidence compatible with more than one theory offers no support for any theory, even if the evidence is incompatible with some possibilities or the theories are not mutually exclusive.^[5]
When students in a classroom think they are being graded on a curve when in fact they are being graded based on predetermined standards.^[4]
In a negotiation when one negotiator thinks that they can only gain at the expense of the other party (i.e., that mutual gain is not possible).^[7]
In the context of social group competition, the belief that more resources for one group (e.g., immigrants) means less for others (e.g., non-immigrants).^[8]
In the context of romantic relationships, the idea that loving more than one person at a time means loving each one less.^[9]
Jack of all trades, master of none: the idea that having more skills means having less aptitude (also known as compensatory reasoning).^[10]
In copyright infringement debate, the idea that every unauthorized duplication is a lost sale.^[11][12][13]
When politicians argue that international trade must mean that one party is “winning” and another is “losing” when transfer of goods and services at mutually-agreeable prices is in general mutually beneficial, or that a trade deficit represents “losing” money to another country.
Group membership is sometimes treated as zero-sum, such that stronger membership in one group is seen as weaker membership in another.^[14]

Causes
There is no evidence which suggests that zero-sum thinking is an enduring feature of human psychology. Game-theoretic situations rarely apply to instances of individual behaviour. This is demonstrated by the ordinary response to the prisoner’s dilemma.

Zero-sum thinking is the result of both proximate and ultimate causes.

Ultimate causes
In terms of ultimate causation, zero-sum thinking might be a legacy of human evolution. Specifically, it might be understood to be a psychological adaptation that facilitated successful resource competition in the environment of ancestral humans where resources like mates, status, and food were perpetually scarce.^[4][15][3] For example, Rubin suggests that the pace of technological growth was so slow during the period in which modern humans evolved that no individual would have observed any growth during their lifetime: “Each person would live and die in a world of constant technology and income. Thus, there was no incentive to evolve a mechanism for understanding or planning for growth” (p. 162).^[3] Rubin also points to instances where the understanding of laypeople and economists about economic situations diverge, such as the lump-of-labor fallacy.^[3] From this perspective, zero-sum thinking might be understood as the default way that humans think about resource allocations, which must be unlearned by, for example, an education in basic economics.

Proximate causes
Zero-sum thinking can also be understood in terms of proximate causation, which refers to the developmental history of individuals within their own lifetime. The proximate causes of zero-sum thinking include the experiences that individuals have with resource allocations, as well as their beliefs about specific situations, or their beliefs about the world in general.

Resource-scarce environments
One of the proximate causes of zero-sum thinking is the experiences that individuals have with scarce resources or zero-sum interactions in their developmental environment.^[16] In 1965, George M. Foster argued that members of “peasant” societies have an “Image of Limited Good,” which he argued was learned through by experiences in a society that was essentially zero-sum.

“The model of cognitive orientation that seems to me best to account for peasant behavior is the “Image of Limited Good.” By “Image of Limited Good” I mean that broad areas of peasant behavior are patterned in such fashion as to suggest that peasants view their social, economic, and natural universes—their total environment—as one in which all of the desired things in life such as land, wealth, health, friendship and love, manliness and honor, respect and status, power and influence, security and safety, exist in finite quantity and are always in short supply, as far as the peasant is concerned. Not only do these and all other “good things” exist in finite and limited quantities, but in addition there is no way directly within peasant power to increase the available quantities … When the peasant views his economic world as one in which Limited Good prevails, and he can progress only at the expense of another, he is usually very near the truth.” (pps. 67-68)^[16]

More recently, Rozycka-Tran et al. (2015) conducted a cross-cultural study that compared the responses of individuals in 37 nations to a scale of zero-sum beliefs. This scale asked individuals to report their agreement with statements that measured zero-sum thinking. For example, one item on the scale stated that “Successes of some people are usually failures of others”. Rozycka-Tran et al. found that individuals in countries with lower Gross Domestic Product showed stronger zero-sum beliefs on average, suggesting that “the belief in zero-sum game seems to arise in countries with lower income, where resources are scarce” (p. 539).^[1] Similarly, Rozycka-Tran et al. found that individuals with lower socioeconomic status displayed stronger zero-sum beliefs.

Resource scarcity beliefs
Related to experiences with resource-scarce environments is the belief that a resource is scarce or finite. For example, the lump of labour fallacy refers to the belief that in the economy there is a fixed amount of work to be done, and thus the allocation of jobs is zero-sum.^[17] Although the belief that a resource is scarce might develop through experiences with resource scarcity, this is not necessarily the case. For example, individuals might come to believe that wealth is finite because it is a claim that has been repeated by politicians or journalists.^[18]

Resource entitlement beliefs
Another proximate cause of zero-sum thinking is the belief that one (or one’s group) is entitled to a certain share of a resource.^[19][9] An extreme case is the belief that one is entitled to all of a resource that exists, implying that any gains by another is one’s own loss. Less extreme is the belief that one (or one’s group) is superior and therefore entitled to more than others. For example, perceptions of zero-sum group competition have been associated with the Dominance sub-scale of the social dominance orientation personality trait, which itself has been characterized as a zero-sum worldview (“a view of human existence as zero-sum,” p. 999).^[20] Individuals who practice monogamy have also been found to think about love in consensually nonmonogamous relationships as zero-sum, and it was suggested that this might be because they believe that individuals in romantic relationships have an entitlement to their partner’s love.^[9]

Effects
When individuals think that a situation is zero-sum, they will be more likely to act competitively (or less cooperatively) towards others, because they will see others as a competitive threat. For example, when students think that they are being graded on a curve—a grading scheme that makes the allocation of grades zero-sum—they will be less likely to provide assistance to a peer who is proximate in status to themselves, because that peer’s gain could be their own loss.^[2]

When individuals perceive that there is a zero-sum competition in society for resources like jobs, they will be less likely to hold pro-immigration attitudes (because immigrants would deplete the resource).^[8] Zero-sum thinking may also lead to certain social prejudices. When individuals hold zero-sum beliefs about love in romantic relationships, they are more prejudiced against consensual nonmonogamists (presumably because the perception of zero-sumness makes consensual nonmonogamy seem inadequate or unfair).^[9]

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Banks, Civil Rights, Model, Transform

Black History – Pandemic-wise: A Lesson from the Ancestors

Posted on February 17, 2021 in Ethos, Industries, Social

Go Lean Commentary

The Ancestors are speaking to us, telling us to remember them, remember their sacrifices and achievements, and then to follow their models on mitigating communicable diseases.

Listen carefully!

Listen, especially now during Black History Month 2021, in the middle of a global pandemic, to the lessons from previous generations, or forefathers and foremothers.

Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction and do not forsake your mother’s teaching. – The Bible; Proverbs 1:8 New International Version

There is no way to justify Slavery and the Slave Trade! It was an abominable stain on European society and the Church; see the Appendix VIDEO below.

But we cannot change that Bad History. Like all things historic, all we can do is study it, learn from it and change the present-future to optimize our lives and society based on those lessons. This aligns with the Old Adage:

Those who do not learn from history are forced to repeat it.

So now, we must listen to the lessons from our Ancestors in dealing with a modern day crisis – COVID-19 Coronavirus Pandemic. Our Ancestors told us, and the whole world how to mitigate, minimize and manage this and all epidemics. See this Lesson in History in the story here:

Title: How an Enslaved African Man in Boston Helped Save Generations from Smallpox
Sub-title: In the early 1700s, Onesimus shared a revolutionary way to prevent smallpox.
By: Erin Blakemore

The news was terrifying to colonists in Massachusetts: Smallpox had made it to Boston and was spreading rapidly. The first victims, passengers on a ship from the Caribbean, were shut up in a house identified only by a red flag that read “God have mercy on this house.” Meanwhile, hundreds of residents of the bustling colonial town had started to flee for their lives, terrified of what might happen if they exposed themselves to the frequently deadly disease.

They had reason to fear. The virus was extremely contagious, spreading like wildfire in large epidemics. Smallpox patients experienced fever, fatigue and a crusty rash that could leave disfiguring scars. In up to 30 percent of cases, it killed.

But the smallpox epidemic of 1721 was different than any that came before it. As sickness swept through the city, killing hundreds in a time before modern medical treatment or a robust understanding of infectious disease, an enslaved man known only as Onesimus suggested a potential way to keep people from getting sick. Intrigued by Onesimus’ idea, a brave doctor and an outspoken minister undertook a bold experiment to try to stop smallpox in its tracks.

Smallpox was one of the era’s deadliest afflictions. “Few diseases at this time were as universal or fatal,” notes historian Susan Pryor. The colonists saw its effects not just among their own countrymen, but among the Native Americans to whom they introduced the disease. Smallpox destroyed Native communities that, with no immunity, were unable to fight off the virus.

Smallpox also entered the colonies on slave ships, transmitted by enslaved people who, in packed and unsanitary quarters, passed the disease along to one another and, eventually, to colonists at their destinations. One of those destinations was Massachusetts, which was a center of the early slave trade. The first enslaved people had arrived in Massachusetts in 1638, and by 1700, about 1,000 enslaved people lived in the colony, most in Boston.

In 1706, an enslaved West African man was purchased for the prominent Puritan minister Cotton Mather by his congregation. Mather gave him the name Onesimus, after an enslaved man in the Bible whose name meant “useful.” Mather, who had been a powerful figure in the Salem Witch Trials, believed that owners of enslaved people had a duty to convert enslaved people to Christianity and educate them. But like other white men of his era, he also looked down on what he called the “Devilish rites” of Africans and worried that enslaved people might openly rebel.

Mather didn’t trust Onesimus: He wrote about having to watch him carefully due to what he thought was “thievish” behavior, and recorded in his diary that he was “wicked” and “useless.” But in 1716, Onesimus told him something he did believe: That he knew how to prevent smallpox.

Onesimus, who “is a pretty intelligent fellow,” Mather wrote, told him he had had smallpox—and then hadn’t. Onesimus said that he “had undergone an operation, which had given him something of the smallpox and would forever preserve him from it…and whoever had the courage to use it was forever free of the fear of contagion.”

The operation Onesimus referred to consisted of rubbing pus from an infected person into an open wound on the arm. Once the infected material was introduced into the body, the person who underwent the procedure was inoculated against smallpox. It wasn’t a vaccination, which involves exposure to a less dangerous virus to provoke immunity. But it did activate the recipient’s immune response and protected against the disease most of the time.

Mather was fascinated. He verified Onesimus’ story with that of other enslaved people, and learned that the practice had been used in Turkey and China. He became an evangelist for inoculation—also known as variolation—and spread the word throughout Massachusetts and elsewhere in the hopes it would help prevent smallpox.

But Mather hadn’t bargained on how unpopular the idea would be. The same prejudices that caused him to distrust his servant made other white colonists reluctant to undergo a medical procedure developed by or for Black people. Mather “was vilified,” historian Ted Widmer told WGBH. “A local newspaper, called The New England Courant, ridiculed him. An explosive device was thrown through his windows with an angry note. There was an ugly racial element to the anger.” Religion also contributed: Other preachers argued that it was against God’s will to expose his creatures to dangerous diseases.

But in 1721, Mather and Zabdiel Boylston, the only physician in Boston who supported the technique, got their chance to test the power of inoculation. That year, a smallpox epidemic spread from a ship to the population of Boston, sickening about half of the city’s residents. Boylston sprang into action, inoculating his son and his enslaved workers against the disease. Then, he began inoculating other Bostonians. Of the 242 people he inoculated, only six died—one in 40, as opposed to one in seven deaths among the population of Boston who didn’t undergo the procedure.

The smallpox epidemic wiped out 844 people in Boston, over 14 percent of the population. But it had yielded hope for future epidemics. It also helped set the stage for vaccination. In 1796, Edward Jenner developed an effective vaccine that used cowpox to provoke smallpox immunity. It worked. Eventually, smallpox vaccination became mandatory in Massachusetts.

Did Onesimus live to see the success of the technique he introduced to Mather? It isn’t clear. Nothing is known of his later life other than that he partially purchased his freedom. To do so, writes historian Steven J. Niven, he gave Mather money to purchase another enslaved person. What is clear is that the knowledge he passed on saved hundreds of lives—and led to the eventual eradication of smallpox.

In 1980, the World Health Organization declared smallpox entirely eradicated due to the spread of immunization worldwide. It remains the only infectious disease to have been entirely wiped out.

Source: History Channel; posted Feb 3, 2021; retrieved Feb 13, 2021 from: https://www.history.com/news/smallpox-vaccine-onesimus-slave-cotton-mather

What is the take-away?

Get inoculated or vaccinated. The human body and immune system has a way of learning, in advance, how to counteract viruses. The Ancestors conveyed this lesson to the waiting world that there is a way to build up our personal defenses by introducing a virus in a controlled manner.

This is a Big Deal now, as many descendants of those same slaves – in the Americas and the Caribbean – refuse to consider the option of vaccinations for COVID-19. See this excerpt from a previous blog-commentary from August 29, 2020:

Title: Pandemic Playbook – COVID Vaccine: To Be or Not To Be

The world is enduring the Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic crisis; it is wreaking havoc on the world’s economic engines – $250 Billion a day in losses – and Public Health deliveries. The only hope is a vaccine, of which there are a number of them in development (Phase I – Test Tubes, Phase II – Lab Mice, Phase III – Human Trials). Around $10bn is being spent on finding a vaccine for this Coronavirus.

Will you consume or ingest the eventual vaccine?

Will you allow your children to ingest? What percentage of people in the community will refuse to ingest?

What if consumption is a prerequisite for work, school, church, travel, etc.?
…
But don’t get it twisted! The Caribbean member-states boast a Service industrial economy – tourism. To participate in this industry space will require compliance. Tourists – by air for resort-based stay-overs or cruise line passengers – will not want to expose themselves to possible infections.

Lastly, individuals can simply chose to exit societal functioning – a self-imposed quarantine; think: Leper Colony. These ones will have to take a seat – with a view – and watch life pass them by.

Is this what you want for yourself, your family and your community? If you chose NO VACCINE, you have that right. But your children may choose differently. Especially those children that you invested so selflessly to get advanced education – college graduates. Already, this population have a higher than normal abandonment rate in the region.

The Caribbean region is in an epidemiological crisis. What are we to do?

We hereby urge all to listen to the Ancestors: Take the vaccine.

A lot of blood, sweat and tears have spilled to get us to this point; do not disregard those sacrifices.

Learning lessons from our Ancestors in Black History is always the motive every February of every year in the US and other countries. The movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Commentary have consistently participated in this quest to educate Caribbean communities on the merits of Black History. In fact, this commentary is our 326th submissions on a theme related to Black History and/or the African experience in the New World.

Consider this sample list from previous blog-commentaries:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16685	Ready for February – Black History Month
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=20237	Black Image – Slavery in History: Lessons from the Bible
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18152	A Lesson from America’s Slavery History – Greatest Story Never Told
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18093	400 Years of Slavery – International Day of Remembrance
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17917	What Went Wrong? ‘7 to 1’ – Quantifying Caribbean ‘Less Than’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8724	Remembering Marcus Garvey: Still Relevant Today
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4971	Authorizing Slavery – Royal Charters: Truth & Consequence
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2297	A Lesson in History: Booker T versus Du Bois

Learning lessons from the past, from Black History, would mean acting in harmony with those lessons. While we may not be able to fix the historic past, surely we should apply the wisdom from the Ancestors and fix the present and ensure a brighter future.

The Go Lean movement is here to do more than just pique our collective conscience; we are here to act! The purpose of the Go Lean book is to usher in a Caribbean regional administrations to cooperate, collaborate and coordinate technocratic Homeland Security solutions for all 30 Caribbean member-states – the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) – despite their historical legacies or governmental hierarchy.

See this synopsis here, as related in a previous Go Lean commentary from March 24, 2015:

Title: A Lesson in History – SARS in Hong Kong
The CU is not designed to just be in some advisory role when it comes to pandemic crises, but rather to possess the authority to act as a Security Apparatus for the region’s Greater Good. This is the mandate as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Page 11) related to climate change, but it applies equally to pandemics, to …

“protect the entire region 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 … challenges”.

Legally, each Caribbean member-state would ratify a Status of Forces Agreement that would authorize this role for the CU agencies (Emergency Management and Disease Control & Management) to serve as a proxy and deputy of the Public Health administrations for each member-state. This would thusly empower these CU agencies to quarantine and detain citizens with probable cause of an infectious disease. The transparency, accountability and chain-of-command would be intact with the appropriate checks-and-balances of the CU’s legislative and judicial oversight. This is a lesson learned from Hong Kong 2003 with China’s belligerence.

As concluded in that previous August 29, 2020 blog-commentary, we urge all Caribbean stakeholders – governments, citizens, doctors and patients – to participate in the global quest to eradicate this [COVID-19] pandemic. This is the roadmap for making the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work, heal and play. [The slave named Onesimus did this with Smallpox in 1721]; Jonas Salk did it with Polio … eventually; we can too. So our vision, this quest is conceivable, believable and achievable.

Let’s do our part and learn these important lessons from our Ancestors. 🙂

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

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

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

ix. Whereas the realities of healthcare and an aging population cannot be ignored and cannot be afforded without some advanced mitigation, the Federation must arrange for health plans to consolidate premiums of both healthy and sickly people across the wider base of the entire Caribbean population. The mitigation should extend further to disease management …

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

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

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

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

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

———————–

Appendix VIDEO: Life Aboard a Slave Ship | History – https://youtu.be/PmQvofAiZGA

HISTORY
Published on Feb 7, 2019 – From approximately 1525 to 1866, 12.5 million Africans were forcibly transported across the Middle Passage to serve as slaves in the New World. Life aboard slave ships was agonizing and dangerous; nearly 2 million slaves would perish on their journey across the Atlantic.

#HistoryChannel
Read More: http://po.st/slave_ship

Check out exclusive HISTORY content:

Website – http://www.history.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/History
Twitter – https://twitter.com/history

HISTORY®, now reaching more than 98 million homes, is the leading destination for award-winning original series and specials that connect viewers with history in an informative, immersive, and entertaining manner across all platforms. The network’s all-original programming slate features a roster of hit series, epic miniseries, and scripted event programming. Visit us at http://www.HISTORY.com for more info.

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Happy Lunar New Year … Again – Encore

Posted on February 12, 2021 in Ethos, Planning, Social

It’s Happy New Year … again, in China … and other Asian countries.

See this “Feature Article”:

Title: Lunar New Year’s Traditions and Superstitions, Explained
Sub-title: The holiday’s about luck, health, and reuniting with family.
By Samantha Vincenty

When people talk about the “holiday season” in the U.S., they typically refer to that period between Thanksgiving dinner and New Year’s Day. But shortly after that, another massive holiday brings friends and family together in several Asian countries, with concurrent parties that carry on the traditions stateside. The Lunar New Year, most commonly associated with the Chinese New Year or Spring Festival, typically falls sometime between January 21 and February 20 annually. Lunar New Year 2021 is on February 12, and in terms of the Chinese zodiac animal, it’s the Year of the Ox.

“Google Doodle” for February 12, 2021

It’s called the Lunar New Year because it marks the first new moon of the lunisolar calendars traditional to many east Asian countries including China, South Korea, and Vietnam, which are regulated by the cycles of the moon and sun. As the New York Times explains, “A solar year—the time it takes Earth to orbit the sun—lasts around 365 days, while a lunar year, or 12 full cycles of the Moon, is roughly 354 days.” As with the Jewish lunisolar calendar, “a month is still defined by the moon, but an extra month is added periodically to stay close to the solar year.” This is why the new year falls on a different day within that month-long window each year.

In China, the 15-day celebration kicks off on New Year’s Eve with a family feast called a reunion dinner full of traditional Lunar New Year foods, and typically ends with the Lantern Festival. “It’s really a time for new beginnings, and family gathering,” says Nancy Yao Maasbach, president of New York City’s Museum of Chinese in America. Three overarching themes, she says, are “fortune, happiness, and health.”

Here’s what to know about Lunar New Year traditions, and what more than 1.5 billion people do to celebrate it.
…
Source: Posted Feb 2, 2021 and retrieved Feb 12, 2021 from: https://www.oprahmag.com/life/a34892893/what-is-lunar-new-year-festival/

Why should we commemorate or even pay attention to this Sinophone culture? For one reason, as explained in the foregoing article: 1.5 Billion people.

Size matters…

This is so familiar for the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean; as we published a previous blog-commentary on the same topic last year, just as the Coronavirus Pandemic was blowing up round the worlds – it was hard to celebrate anything “Chinese” then. It is only apropos that we Encore that commentary again now, as we measure this milestone in the annals of Caribbean life.

The Wuhan, China-bred Coronavirus is still wreaking havoc on the world stage. But China has done better in managing this crisis.

A crisis is a terrible thing to waste …

… China has not wasted this crisis. As the world’s economy has receded, China’s had expanded. Wow!

We need more of the Chinese actuality in our Caribbean actuality. We need to invite, retain and return China’s time, talent and treasuries. See how that previous blog-commentary presented that thesis last year; consume this commentary here/now:

—————-

Go Lean Commentary – Happy Chinese New Year

Happy New Year …

No, not the January 1^st thing, but rather the January 25^th thing – the Chinese New Year.

This is a Big Deal in China and among the Chinese Diaspora – Sinophone – throughout the world. There is great importance to this observation. See this VIDEO and encyclopedic reference here:

VIDEO – Everything you need to know about the Chinese New Year – https://youtu.be/3I-R5S3czyw

TRT World
Posted January 24, 2020 – Here’s everything you need to know about the Chinese New Year – how it’s celebrated, it’s history, and what the animals represent.

#Chinese New Year #Spring Festival #metalrat

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Category: News & Politics

————————————

Title: Chinese New Year
Chinese New Year^[a], also referred to as Lunar New Year, is the Chinese festival that celebrates the beginning of a new year on the traditional Chinese calendar. The festival is usually referred to as the Spring Festival in mainland China,^[b] and is one of several Lunar New Years in Asia. Observances traditionally take place from the evening preceding the first day of the year to the Lantern Festival, held on the 15th day of the year. The first day of Chinese New Year begins on the new moon that appears between 21 January and 20 February.^[2] In 2020, the first day of the Chinese New Year will be on Saturday, 25 January, initiating the Year of the Rat.

Chinese New Year is a major holiday in China, and has strongly influenced Lunar new year celebrations of China’s neighbouring cultures, including the Korean New Year (seol), the Tết of Vietnam, and the Losar of Tibet.^[3] It is also celebrated worldwide in regions and countries with significant Overseas Chinese or Sinophone populations, including Singapore,^[4]Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar,^[5]Thailand, Cambodia, the Philippines,^[6] and Mauritius,^[7] as well as many in North America and Europe.^[8][9][10]

Chinese New Year is associated with several myths and customs. The festival was traditionally a time to honour deities as well as ancestors.^[11] Within China, regional customs and traditions concerning the celebration of the New Year vary widely,^[12] and the evening preceding Chinese New Year’s Day is frequently regarded as an occasion for Chinese families to gather for the annual reunion dinner. It is also traditional for every family to thoroughly clean their house, in order to sweep away any ill-fortune and to make way for incoming good luck. Another custom is the decoration of windows and doors with red paper-cuts and couplets. Popular themes among these paper-cuts and couplets include that of good fortune or happiness, wealth, and longevity. Other activities include lighting firecrackers and giving money in red paper envelopes. For the northern regions of China, dumplings are featured prominently in meals celebrating the festival. It often serves as the first meal of the year either at midnight or as breakfast of the first day.
…
Festivities
New Year’s Eve
The biggest event of any Chinese New Year’s Eve is the annual reunion dinner. Dishes consisting of special meats are served at the tables, as a main course for the dinner and offering for the New Year. This meal is comparable to Thanksgiving dinner in the U.S. and remotely similar to Christmas dinner in other countries with a high percentage of Christians.

In northern China, it is customary to make jiaozi, or dumplings, after dinner to eat around midnight. Dumplings symbolize wealth because their shape resembles a Chinese sycee. In contrast, in the South, it is customary to make a glutinous new year cake (niangao) and send pieces of it as gifts to relatives and friends in the coming days. Niángāo [Pinyin] literally means “new year cake” with a homophonous meaning of “increasingly prosperous year in year out”.^[44]

After dinner, some families go to local temples hours before the new year begins to pray for a prosperous new year by lighting the first incense of the year; however in modern practice, many households hold parties and even hold a countdown to the new year. Traditionally, firecrackers were lit to scare away evil spirits with the household doors sealed, not to be reopened until the new morning in a ritual called “opening the door of fortune” (开财门; 開財門; kāicáimén).^[45]

Beginning in 1982, the CCTV New Year’s Gala is broadcast in China four hours before the start of the New Year and lasts until the succeeding early morning. Watching it has gradually become a tradition in China. A tradition of going to bed late on New Year’s Eve, or even keeping awake the whole night and morning, known as shousui (守岁), is still practised as it is thought to add on to one’s parents’ longevity.

First day
The first day is for the welcoming of the deities of the heavens and earth, officially beginning at midnight. It is a traditional practice to light fireworks, burn bamboo sticks and firecrackers and to make as much of a din as possible to chase off the evil spirits as encapsulated by nian of which the term Guo Nian was derived. Many Buddhists abstain from meat consumption on the first day because it is believed to ensure longevity for them. Some consider lighting fires and using knives to be bad luck on New Year’s Day, so all food to be consumed is cooked the days before. On this day, it is considered bad luck to use the broom, as good fortune is not to be “swept away” symbolically.

Most importantly, the first day of Chinese New Year is a time to honor one’s elders and families visit the oldest and most senior members of their extended families, usually their parents, grandparents and great-grandparents.

For Buddhists, the first day is also the designated holy day of Maitreya Bodhisattva (better known as the more familiar Budai Luohan), the Buddha-to-be. People also abstain from killing animals.

Some families may invite a lion dance troupe as a symbolic ritual to usher in the Chinese New Year as well as to evict bad spirits from the premises. Members of the family who are married also give red envelopes containing cash known as lai see (Cantonese dialect) or angpow (Hokkien, Chaozhou, and Fujian dialects), or hongbao (Mandarin), a form of blessings and to suppress the aging and challenges associated with the coming year, to junior members of the family, mostly children and teenagers. Business managers also give bonuses through red packets to employees for good luck, smooth-sailing, good health and wealth.

While fireworks and firecrackers are traditionally very popular, some regions have banned them due to concerns over fire hazards. For this reason, various city governments (e.g., Kowloon, Beijing, Shanghai for a number of years) issued bans over fireworks and firecrackers in certain precincts of the city. As a substitute, large-scale fireworks display have been launched by governments in such city-states as Hong Kong and Singapore. However, it is a tradition that the indigenous peoples of the walled villages of New Territories, Hong Kong are permitted to light firecrackers and launch fireworks in a limited scale.

Source: Retrieved January 25, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_New_Year

What’s the Big Deal? Well, for starters, this relates to the 1.4 Billion people in China. That’s a market size that is bigger than North America and the European Union … combined. Consider the encyclopedic details in the Appendix below.

You see it, right? You do see why this is important; 1.5 Billion people (out of 7.7 Billion) in a world where Size Matters (as related in this previous blog-commentary from August 26, 2016):

For Hollywood – a metonym for the film-television-video industry – any access to large markets is a win-win.

Enter China…

… this country has 1.3 billion people. That’s a lot of “eye-balls”. This country, considering its history, used to be closed to western commerce and movie distributions. Now, its open … and advancing. Those 1.3 billion pairs of eye-balls are presenting a lot of opportunities and now starting to wield power.

For the Caribbean, this is a necessary discussion for the planners and stewards of a new Caribbean; this requires a consideration of the economic engines for our communities. This is the assertion of the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean – that size matters when it comes to marketing your “Export Products & Services”. For us in the Caribbean, our primary export is tourism – we sell travel experiences to consumers around the world. – we must consider the 20-percent of the population that features Sinophone culture.

We must curry their favor!

So Happy New Year to our Sinophone friends and family.

Yes, we have Sinophone family members in the Caribbean. In a previous blog-commentary, it was detailed how Chinese immigrants were “recruited” to come and impact the Caribbean eco-system. Consider this excerpt:

10 Things We Want from China and 10 Things We Do Not Want
Like it or not, the Caribbean is in competition with the rest of the world – and we are losing! …

Now we must consider other countries … that compete with us and are doing MUCH BETTER jobs of contending in this competitive environment. We must consider China and India:

China … went from “zero to hero”, emerging as an economic Super Power in short order. We can look, listen and learn from the Chinese eco-system; their mainland (the Peoples Republic of China), the special territories of Hong Kong and Taiwan (the Republic of China). We can lend-a-hand in reforming and transforming our own Caribbean region – as China has had to do – and we can eventually lead a reboot and turn-around of Caribbean society; again as China has done. …

While Caribbean people are not fleeing their homeland to relocate to China. there is a Diaspora issue associated with Caribbean-China relations: Indentured Servitude. At the end of the era of Caribbean slavery (1830’s to 1840’s), the plantation system required a replacement labor source; many Chinese nationals were thusly “recruited” as Indentured Servants to the region – British, French and Spanish lands – see here:

There were two main waves of Chinese migration to the Caribbean region. The first wave of Chinese consisted of indentured labourers who were brought to the Caribbean predominantly Trinidad, British Guiana and Cuba, to work on sugar plantations during the post-Emancipation period. The second wave was comprised of free voluntary migrants, consisting of either small groups (usually relatives) to British Guiana, Jamaica and Trinidad from the 1890’s to the 1940’s. In fact the most modern Caribbean Chinese are descended from this second group. – Caribbean-Atlas.com

Derivatives of the 18,000-plus Chinese immigrants are still here in the Caribbean today. These descendants have grown in numbers and power (economic and political) in the region. They are part of the fabric of our society. They are home in the Caribbean; and we are at home with them

So we need to embrace the Sinophone world, here and abroad – we must “curry their favor”. The liberal view is to value what they value and honor what they honor, while the conservative view is to NOT disrespect this people-culture and allow them to co-exist, survive and thrive. Doing so extends hospitality to these people and incentivizes them to trade with us – come visit as tourists – and impact our economic prospects.

This is the same thing we said about India and the Indophone Diaspora, in a previous blog-commentary from October 2017:

Making a ‘Pluralistic Democracy’ – Respecting Diwali
A “Pluralistic Democracy” … means a society where the many different ethnic groups (and religions) have respect, equal rights, equal privileges and equal protections under the law; where there are no superior rights to any majority and no special deprivations to any minority. The expectation is for anyone person to be treated like everyone else. …

We fail so miserably in respecting non-standard traditions. The truth of the matter is that while religious toleration appears to be high in the Caribbean, this is really only true of European-styled Christian faiths. Other non-White religious traditions (let’s consider Hindu) are often ignored or even ridiculed in open Caribbean society, despite the large number of adherents. Of the 30 member-states to comprise the Caribbean Single Market, 3 of them have a large Indian-Hindu ethnicity. As a result, in these communities, though lowly promoted, one of the biggest annual celebrations for those communities is Diwali or Divali

… While Diwali is a religious celebration, many aspects of this culture spills-over to general society; see the detailed plans of a previous year (2009) in Appendix A below. This celebration, in many ways, is similar to Christmas spilling-over to non-Christian people in Christian countries. So the festivities carry a heavy civic-cultural “feel” as opposed to religious Hindu adherence. Plus, these values here are positive community ethos that any stewards in any society would want to promote: “the victory of light over darkness, good over evil, knowledge over ignorance, and hope over despair”.

What about the argument that this Chinese (and Indian) toleration – like celebrating the Chinese New Year – is not Christian?

Don’t get it twisted!

Christmas – the western equivalent to the Chinese New Year tradition – is not Christian either, consider – Four reasons Christmas is not Christian:

1. Dec. 25 is the wrong day, and it’s celebrated for the wrong god. Dec. 25 is associated with many pagan birth myths—not Christ’s birth.
2. Most Christmas traditions come from pagan religions, not the Bible.
3. There is no Santa Claus. Parents shouldn’t lie to their children.
4. Christians should keep the holy days that Jesus kept, not holidays that originated in paganism.

. Source: January 25, 2020 from: https://lifehopeandtruth.com/god/blog/four-reasons-christmas-is-not-christian/

The movement behind the Go Lean book have always advocated this community ethos:

Live and let live.

Plus, we need to embrace China right now. They are one of the few groups of Direct Foreign Investors that have been showing interest in the Caribbean communities. We need all the help we can get to reform and transform our society. The heavy-lifting gets a little easier with a little help from our friends. Consider these previous blog-commentaries related to China’s investments in our region:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18301	After Hurricane Dorian, Rebuilding Partners: China Versus America
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16192	In Defense of Trade – China Realities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8799	History of China Trade: Too Big to Ignore
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8813	Why China will soon be Hollywood’s largest market
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8815	China’s Organ Transplantation: Facts and Fiction
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8817	Chinese Mobile Games Apps: The new Playground
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8819	South China Seas: Exclusive Economic Zones??
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8823	China’s WeChat: Model for Caribbean Social Media
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6231	China’s Caribbean Playbook: America’s Script

What about the argument that China is a Communist state and advocates for communism?

We have addressed this issue before – June 20, 2019:

‘Free Market’ Versus … China – Two Systems at Play
China is on the verge of overtaking the US as the Number 1 Single Market economy in the world…

Wait, isn’t China a communist state?

Hasn’t communism failed to deliver on its promises to elevate societies that abide by its principles?

Yes, and yes …

But China demonstrates that there is a difference between principles and practices. China abides by communist principles, but their practice is more aligned with Free Market concepts, especially with their doubling-down in trade, World Trade.

Do we truly consider Hong Kong as a communist state? Far from it; yet it is China; it is part of the “One country, two systems” practice.

All in all, we have nothing to fear from China – not their culture, religion, politics nor their military power. We should simply embrace them for trade in a give-and-take relationship. We must export to China as well; we need Chinese tourism.

We have to make changes, on our end, to make this Chinese tourism viable. We have to work harder to “live and let live”:

“Make happy those who are near, and those who are far will come”.

This is the charter of the Go Lean roadmap; we urge all stakeholders to lean-in to the strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to elevate our society. This is worth all the effort for us to do. This is how we make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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

—————

Appendix – Reference: Sinophone

Chinese-speaking world or Sinophone or sinophone is a neologism that fundamentally means “Chinese-speaking”, typically referring to a person who speaks at least one variety of Chinese. Academic writers use Sinophone “Chinese-speaking regions” in two ambiguous meanings: either specifically “Chinese-speaking areas where it is a minority language, excluding China and Taiwan” or generally “Chinese-speaking areas, including where it is an official language”. Many authors use the collocation Sinophone world to mean the regions of Chinese diaspora outside of Greater China, and some for the entire Chinese-speaking world. Mandarin Chinese is the most commonly spoken language today, with over one billion people, approximately 20% of the world population, speaking it. …

Statistics (for populations outside of China and Taiwan)

Region	Speakers	Percentage	Year	Reference
Anguilla	7	0.06%	2001	^[1]
Australia	877,654	3.8%	2016	^{[1][note 1]}
Austria	9,960	0.1%	2001	^[1]
Belize	2,600	0.8%	2010	^[1]
Cambodia	6,530	0.05%	2008	^[1]
Canada	1,290,095	3.7%	2016	^[1]
Cyprus	1,218	0.1%	2011	^[1]
Falkland Islands	1	0.03%	2006	^[1]
Finland	12,407	0.23%	2018	^[1]
Hong Kong	6,264,700	88.9%	2016	^{[1][note 2]}
Lithuania	64	0.002%	2011	^[1]
Macao	411,482	97.0%	2001	^[1]
Marshall Islands	79	0.2%	1999	^[1]
Mauritius	2,258	0.2%	2011	^[1]
Nepal	242	0.0009%	2011	^[1]
Northern Mariana Islands	14,862	23.4%	2000	^[1]
Palau	331	1.8%	2005	^[1]
Philippines	6,032	0.4%	2000	^[1]
Romania	2,039	0.01%	2011	^[1]
Russia	70,722	0.05%	2010	^[1]
Singapore	1,791,216	57.7%	2010	^{[1][note 3]}
South Africa	8,533	0.02%	1996	^[1]
Thailand	111,866	0.2%	2010	^[1]
Timor Leste	511	0.07%	2004	^[1]
United Kingdom	162,698	0.3%	2011	^[1]
United States	3,268,546	1.0%	2017	^[2]

Source: Retrieved January 25, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinophone

———————

In demographics, the world population is the total number of humans currently living, and was estimated to have reached 7.7 billion people as of April 2019.^[2]

Source: Retrieved January 25, 2020 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

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One Person Can Make a Difference – ENCORE

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

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

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

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

There is one more take-away:

The lesson-learned of the impact of One Person.

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

One person made a difference: Quarterback Tom Brady.

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

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

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

See that previous Encore here/now:

————————-

Go Lean Commentary – ‘Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast’

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

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

Their victory proved the validity of the business axiom:

Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

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

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

How ‘Culture Beats Scheme’ Became Eagles’ Motto

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Download the book Go Lean … Caribbean – now!

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Mineral Extraction 101 – Sovereign Wealth Fund – Not the Panacea

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

Go Lean Commentary

Let’s first establish the ground rules:

“Common Sense” is not common.

Got it? Good!

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

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

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

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

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

Title: Sovereign wealth fund

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As this asset pool continues to expand in size and importance, so does its potential impact on various asset markets.

Some countries, like the United States, which passed the Foreign Investment and National Security Act of 2007, worry that foreign investment by SWFs raises national security concerns because the purpose of the investment might be to secure control of strategically important industries for political rather than financial gain.

Former U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Lawrence Summers has argued that the U.S. could potentially lose control of assets to wealthier foreign funds whose emergence “shake[s] [the] capitalist logic”^[4] These concerns have led the European Union (EU) to reconsider whether to allow its members to use “golden shares” to block certain foreign acquisitions.^[8] This strategy has largely been excluded as a viable option by the EU, for fear it would give rise to a resurgence in international protectionism. In the United States, these concerns are addressed by the Exon–Florio Amendment to the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988, Pub. L. No. 100-418, § 5021, 102 Stat. 1107, 1426 (codified as amended at 50 U.S.C. app. § 2170 (2000)), as administered by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS).

Their inadequate transparency is a concern for investors and regulators: for example, size and source of funds, investment goals, internal checks and balances, disclosure of relationships, and holdings in private equity funds.

SWFs are not nearly as homogeneous as central banks or public pension funds.

A lack of transparency and hence an increase in risk to the financial system, perhaps becoming the “new hedge funds”.^[9]

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

Accumulation rule (what portion of revenue can be spent/saved)

Withdraw rule (when the Government can withdraw from the fund)

Investment (where revenue can be invested in foreign or domestic assets)^[10]

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

—————

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

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

#aqaeconomics
#ibeconomics
#edexceleconomics

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

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

An obvious fallacy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10 Revenue Sources … for Caribbean Administration

1	Lean-in for the treaty for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) This will allow for the unification of the region into one market, thereby expanding to an economy of 30 member-states, 42 million people and a GDP of over $800 Billion (circa 2010 figures). The Trade Federation will function as a government-owned multi-national corporation to deliver the services for an integrated Caribbean administration. The CU will generate its own revenue streams, without charging fees back to member-states, plus return profits (minus reasonable reserves) back to the member-states as shareholders. The CU will implement the eco-system to collect the revenues and remain financially solvent, without incurring any deficits.
2	E-Payments Settlement The CU will implement card-based and electronic payments for all e-Government transactions (see Appendix ZV on Page 353) and for all transactions in the monetary union. (Caribbean dollars will be mostly cashless). All settlement (MasterCard-Visa style and also ACH/Fed-Wire style) will be facilitated by the Caribbean Central Bank and interchange fees will be assessed – 1% range). This model also applies to Cruise passenger smart cards in which merchant transactions must be settled daily.
3	In-sourcing e-Government Services The CU will deploy e-Delivery enterprises for many government services (i.e. property tax assessment/collections, voter registration/polling, records, etc.) and provide these services to the member-states in an outsourcing model. Transaction and maintenance fees will be charged to member-states, but the cost-benefit win-win will always prevail.
4	Property Tax Surcharge
5	Income/Sales Tax Add-ons
6	Industry Licensing (Security, e-Learning, Health Care Monitoring, Postal)
7	Regional Services: GPO, Lottery, Spectrum Auctions, Underwater Cables, Mining/Drilling Rights Many CU services cross national borders and will garner the resultant revenues. This includes group purchasing (GPO), broadcast rights (spectrum auctions) and [a regional] lottery in conjunction with local state lotteries. The CU will petition the UN for an Exclusive Economic Zone for the waters between the islands. All economic activities in these non-state areas (underwater cables, oil/gas drilling, mines, etc.) will be regulated by the CU and the accompanying revenues garnered.
8	Prison Industrial Complex
9	Natural Disaster Insurance Fund
10	Capital Markets for Treasury Bonds

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

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

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

A Sovereign Wealth Fund is not a bad thing …

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

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

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

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

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

“This is on us”.

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

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

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

Challenge accepted!

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

Yes, we can!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Mineral Extraction 101 – Restoration after Extraction – Cool Sites

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

Go Lean Commentary

We have been known to say … repeatedly:

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

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

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

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

We can turn lemons into lemonade.

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

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

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

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

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

Zip Below Xtreme

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

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

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

Salina Turda

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

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

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

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

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

Wieliczka Salt Mine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[See the Appendix VIDEO below.]

The Eden Project

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

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

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

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

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

Bounce Below

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

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

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

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

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

MORE: Deep thrills: The crazy cave trampolines of Wales

Mega Cavern

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mining in Southern Arizona

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mining in Central Arizona

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

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

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

Mining in Northern & Western Arizona

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just Say No … to Mining.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10 Ways to Promote World Heritage Sites

1	Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market & Economy initiative: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). By embracing the Caribbean Single Market & Economy (CSME) initiative, the CU will allow for the unification of the region into one market of 42 million people, GDP over $800 Billion (based on 2010) that can instill better governance for the region’s World Heritage Sites; (see Appendix ZH on Page 330). In addition to opening a new market for intra-regional tourism, the CU effort will enhance the influx of foreign tourists; promote Art/Eco/Event tourism; enhance cultural pride and anchor the expansion of an Art/Culture eco-system (covering education, media, theater, exhibitions, and events).
2	Oversight of Natural Resources The CU will assume jurisdiction of oversight on natural resources of the common areas between the member-states. This authority will be granted with the accedence of the CU treaty and the successful petition to the United Nations for an Exclusive Economic Zone. While many of the 21 World Heritage Sites are cultural, the remaining are of natural origins, and thus proper governance is essential – the CU will collaborate and co-partner with member-states on this effort.
3	Economic Impact: Tourism The status quo for tourism in the region peaks during the peak winter season. Those tourists come to the region for the sun, sand, and surf. On the other hand, eco-tourism around the World Heritage Sites (WHS) tends not to be climate related. Therefore traffic is more consistent year round.
4	Economic Impact: Economic Zones The CU will strategize the designation of economic zones (Enterprise/Empowerment zone, Industrial Parks, Self-Governing Entities, etc.) near World Heritage Sites. These zones come under CU jurisdiction and allow the regional authority to dictate the nature of industrial activities in those neighborhoods.
5	Economic & Failed-State Crimes
6	Emergency Management
7	Multi-Language Access
8	Cultural/Educational Impact – *Essays, Scholarships and Student Loans*
9	Foundations Alignment
10	Nominate More WHS Sites There are many other sites in the Caribbean that can easily qualify for designation of World Heritage Sites. The CU will assume the functions of publicity agents to nominate, lobby and campaign UNESCO to grant the CU more WHS sites. In the past this effort was discouraged because of the attendant costs of maintaining these sites; this dynamic now changes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—————–

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

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

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Disaster, Jobs, Model, Transform

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

Posted on January 24, 2021 in Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Where were you in 1979?

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

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

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

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

NEW Mini Refinery

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

Right Here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dirt is Cheap.

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

Just how do we add the value?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Light crude oil has an API gravity higher than 31.1° (i.e., less than 870 kg/m³)

Medium crude oil has an API gravity between 22.3° and 31.1° (i.e., 870 to 920 kg/m³)

Heavy crude oil has an API gravity below 22.3° (i.e., 920 to 1000 kg/m³)

Extra heavy crude oil has an API gravity below 10.0° (i.e., greater than 1000 kg/m³)

Grades of crude oil are shown above in graphical form.

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

API gravity

Sulfur content

Products desired

Sulfur specifications on finished products

Ability to switch between different crudes

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

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

A simple topping refinery

A hydro skimming refinery with naphtha and diesel hydrotreaters

A hydro skimming refinery with naphtha and diesel hydrotreaters and naphtha reformer

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Title: 100-1000 tpd Mini Cement Plant For Sale
Introduction:
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Consider too, this related VIDEO for the Cement Milling equipment, infrastructure and process:

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

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

Ready. Set. Go …

The Future is Now!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Mineral Extraction 101 – Lessons from History: Jamaica’s Bauxite

Posted on January 23, 2021 in Economics, Government, Implementation, Industries, Locations

Go Lean Commentary

There are so many people in different Caribbean countries wanting their national government to double-down in focus, effort and investment in natural resources rather than tourism. They assert that “we” have more than just sun, sand and sea.

These ones claim that our member-states may be among the riches countries of the world due to our abundance of natural resources.

The truth is:

No, we’re not!

The Caribbean member-states are really just small nations in an archipelago.

There is a finite amount of minerals that can ever be extracted from small islands; beyond the 4 Greater Antilles islands (Cuba, Hispaniola and Puerto Rico and Jamaica) and the coastal states (Guyana and Suriname). There is a mature industry for these Raw Materials. The existing Mineral Extraction activities in these country have in turn taught us that this industry may contribute some return to our society, there are a lot of Good, Bad and Ugly lessons for us to learn from the manifestations of this industry. Let’s consider the lessons from one country, Jamaica.

Jamaica is the fifth-largest exporter of bauxite in the world, after Australia, China, Brazil and Guinea. The country also exports limestone, of which it holds large deposits. The government is currently implementing plans to increase its extraction.^[241]

Footnote 241 = “Limestone research finds richest deposits in St Elizabeth, Portland and Trelawny”. Jamaica Observer newspaper. Archived from the original on 21 February 2019. Retrieved 21 February 2019.

This island will soon be celebrating the milestone of 70 years of bauxite mining – they started in 1952. They have earned some money, yes, but they have suffered a lot as well.

Today, the Subject Matter Experts are strongly advising the country to: Diversify … away from mining / Mineral Extraction.

This is submission 2-of-6 for the January 2021 Teaching Series from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean … Caribbean. Every month we engage in this effort to message to Caribbean stakeholders about issues germane to Caribbean life and culture. We want to help reform and transform the Caribbean economic engines.

This commentary is being written in Nassau, Bahamas – one of the member-states that want to diversify away from tourism and explore / exploit more Mineral Extraction. The Jamaican experience is being presented here as a Cautionary Tale.

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

So while the Go Lean movement wants to consider other types of economic activities to the Caribbean landscape, we urgently want Caribbean people to “measure twice before cutting once” when it comes to Mineral Extraction.

This commentary posits that “all that glitters is not gold” when it comes to mining and/or Mineral Extractions. See the full series here as follows:

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

There is the need for cautions in any considerations we make regarding Mineral Extractions. As related in the first entry of this 6-part Teaching Series, our goal is to embrace the commerce of Mineral Extraction for the positives, while avoiding the negatives.

Let’s examine this history more fully. See the News Articles PART 1 and PART 2 in the Appendix below, and also this Abstract of a White Paper here, by the same writer:

Research Paper Title: The Jamaican Bauxite Industry: Glimpses Into Its Past, Present, and Future
By: Carlton E. Davis

Abstract

The commercial possibilities of Jamaican bauxite were recognized in 1943 at a time when there was great need for aluminum for the Allied war effort, and when availability was being made difficult by the harassment by German U-boats of Allied bauxite ships plying from the sources of the ore in South America to the North American mainland. For technical reasons, however, it happened that Jamaican bauxite was not required for the war effort.

After the war, because of a number of factors, including the pre-eminence of the geographically-close United States as an economic and military power, and the emergence, at the instigation of the U.S. Government, of three companies (Alcan, Reynolds, and Kaiser), each of which needed its own independent source of bauxite, the Jamaican industry was rapidly developed to the point that the island became the number one world producer in 1957. Growth continued during the economically buoyant 1960s, and at the end of the decade six transnational companies—Alcan, Reynolds, Kaiser, Alcoa, Anaconda, and Revere — were well established, mining and/or processing bauxite in the island.

The industry faced enormous difficulties during most of the 1970s and 1980s as a result, among other things, of the oil price rises in 1973 and 1979, lower economic growth all around, the decline of the United States as a major alumina and aluminum producer and severe competition from new industries in Australia, Guinea, and Brazil where taxes were, by and large, lower.

With the lowering of oil prices since late 1985, a better supply/demand balance in the industry, a weaker U.S. dollar (to which the Jamaican currency is pegged) vis-a-vis other major currencies, and a new taxation regime for the industry with which the companies profess to be happier, the industry is poised to recover some of the ground lost during the troublesome 1970s and 1980s.

Published by: Jamaica Bauxite Institute 1995; retrieved January 23, 2021 from: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-79476-6_42

We have learned a very bitter lesson from the Jamaican experience: there may be no reversing the environmental damage when it comes to Mineral Extractions. Jamaica is now reeling from the environmental damage. See this related story here:

Jamaican Deforestation and Bauxite Mining – the Role of Negotiations for Sustainable Resource Use
Source: http://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:982889/FULLTEXT01.pdf

The Deforestation threat and environmental damage is real! Explore this issue further by reviewing this VIDEO:

VIDEO – Environmental damage from Mining in Jamaica – https://youtu.be/vJa2ftQwfNY

Posted Jun 11, 2008 – Environmentalists are arguing that the bauxite mining industry in Jamaica is having a devastating impact on the environment and surrounding eco-systems. It is also posing serious health problems for local communities. The sun baked sludge contains heavy metals and other pollutants. Al Jazeera’s Anand Naidoo reports from central Jamaica.

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Jamaica had not always employed best practices when it came to Mineral Extractions. After all of the “harm and foul” of this industry, the economic benefits are only a minuscule US$700 Million, just a small fraction of the national economic output. Jamaica now recognizes all of this drama and is trying to reboot, reform and transform their Mineral Extraction ecosystem; see Appendix C below. This Cautionary Tale provides the rest of the Caribbean with Lessons-learned to help us forge our new economic engines.

Wisdom comes from experience. Experience comes from making mistakes.

The Go Lean movement have asserted that Jamaica has a lot of wisdom to share with the rest of the Caribbean; they have made a lot of mistakes over the years. They have suffered, and continue to suffer harsh consequences. Think of their atrocious societal abandonment rate; one source rates their Brain Drain at 85%. So sad!

This commentary has published many previous discussions about Lessons Learned from Jamaica; consider this sample list of previous blog-commentaries here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17232	Way Forward – Jamaica: Must reconcile the Past
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13040	Jamaican Diaspora – Not the ‘Panacea’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7866	Switching Allegiances: Sprinters move on to represent other countries
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5784	Egregious Human Rights Abuses in Jamaica – ‘Say It Ain’t So’!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=4840	Jamaican Poll: ‘Bring back the British!’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3694	“Canada” employment programme needed to pump up local economy
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2830	Jamaica’s Public Pension Under-funded
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=392	Jamaica to receive World Bank funds to help in crime fight
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=313	What’s Holding Back Jamaica’s Reforms

Learning lessons from Jamaica’s past, means acting in harmony with those lessons. While Jamaica has to reclaim and restore their damaged environment, we can benefit by avoiding the same bad decisioning. We can still have a bright future with a careful embrace of Mineral Extractions.

The Go Lean movement is here to do more in terms of exploring Mineral Extractions in the Caribbean region; we are even here to help Jamaica. The Go Lean book details a series of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies for the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to foster development, administration and protections for the Mineral Extraction industry and the neighboring communities. For example, there is the strategies of the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) for the Caribbean Seas and Self-Governing Entities (SGE) on the land. Consider this sample excerpt (headlines and quotations) from Page 195 of the book:

10 Ways to Impact Extractions

1	Lean-in for Caribbean Integration The CU treaty unifies the Caribbean region into one Single Market of 42 million people across 30 member-states, thereby empowering the economic engines in and on behalf of the region, including many public works projects and the emergence of many new industries. The new regional jurisdiction allows for mineral extraction (mines), oil/natural gas exploration in the Exclusive Economic Zone and some federal oversight for domestic mining/drilling/extraction operations, especially where systemic threats or cross-border administration are concerned. One CU mandate is to protect tourism. This is just one of the negative side-effects to be on guard for, see *Appendix ZK (Page 334)* for other concerns.
2	Oil – Mitigation Plan The concept of oil exploration is very strategic for the CU, as there are member-states that are oil producers. With energy prices so high, this is a lucrative endeavor. But there is risk, tied to the reward equation; the CU cannot endure a [2010] Deepwater Horizon-style disaster. Risk management and disaster mitigation plan must therefore be embedded into every drilling permit. The CU will oversee this governance and provide transparent oversight, accountability & reporting.
3	“Rare Earth” Rush – Minerals Priced higher than Gold (Year 2010: $1,000 a pound; $2,200 per kilogram) There is a “rush”/quest to harvest rare earth elements. These include lanthanide elements (15 metallic chemical elements with atomic numbers 57 through 71, from lanthanum through lutetium) for metals that are ferromagnetic, this means their magnetism only appear at low temperatures. Rare earth magnets are made from these compounds and are ideal in many high-tech products. The CU will foster the regional exploration & extraction of these pricey materials.
4	Pipeline Strategy/Tactical Alignment
5	Emergency Response / Trauma Center The CU accedence grants authority for federal jurisdiction on oil exploration/drilling projects. This is due to the environmental concerns, systemic threats & strategic implications for energy security. So CU Emergency (Risk, Disaster & Medical Trauma) Managers will audit and test shutdown, mitigation and emergency procedures annually.
6	Exclusive Economic Zone Oversight / Research and Exploration The CU has direct jurisdiction in the UN-granted Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ); mostly, this is the Caribbean Sea area. The CU will carefully expand exploration in the EEZ and regulate cross-border projects, for regional compliance.
7	State Regulated Mining – Peer Review The CU may not oversee member-state existing extractions, but there will be a reports-filing requirement; this provides Peer Review and Best Practice monitoring. This advocacy would be most applicable for Jamaica’s Bauxite mines, Guyana’s emerald mines and salt extraction in the Bahamas; [and other efforts in other member-states]. The CU will promote SGE’s for future extraction projects.
8	Precious Metals – Exclusive to Caribbean Dollar
9	Treasure Hunting in EEZ – CU must grant Excavation “Permits”
10	Ferries Schedule for Transport to Offshore Rigs

So yes, the Go Lean/CU roadmap calls for fostering Mineral Extractions as an industrial alternative to tourism. We have the natural resources on land and in the seas. We may also have the skills and the passionate work-force to employ. We only need the Good Governance in our stewardship.

We have learned a lot from Jamaica’s past … and present; they had not always employed what we know today to be Best Practices. Let’s now consider only the optimizations of this industry – this is the technocratic Way Forward. Our quest now is to only consider Best Practices for the future for all people in all member-states.

The Caribbean people is now ready to consider industrial diversification away from tourism. We need the empowerment that would come from Mineral Extraction; we need it now and we need it bad!

COVID-19 has demonstrated that tourism-only is not good enough – mono-industrial no more!

We must now diversify; this has always been the Best Practice; even mono-industrial Oil Exporting countries see the need to diversify. This is how we can make the Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

Who We Are
The movement behind the Go Lean book – a non-partisan, apolitical, religiously-neutral Community Development Foundation chartered for the purpose of empowering and re-booting economic engines – stresses that reforming and transforming the Caribbean societal engines must be a regional pursuit. This was an early motivation for the roadmap, as pronounced in the opening Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 – 14):

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

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

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

xxxiii. Whereas lessons can be learned and applied from the study of the recent history of other societies, the Federation must formalize statutes and organizational dimensions to avoid the pitfalls of communities … . On the other hand, the Federation must also implement the good examples learned from developments/communities … .

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

—————-

Appendix A – Title: 60 years of bauxite mining in Jamaica – Part 1
By: Carlton E. Davis, Contributor

ALTHOUGH I have written about the Jamaican bauxite and aluminium industry in three books and numerous articles, I think it is appropriate to repeat some of what I have written to mark the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the commercial mining of the ore.

On June 5, 1952, the first shipment was made by Reynolds Jamaica Mines from its port in Ocho Rios to the parent company’s alumina plant at Hurricane Creek, Arkansas.

The Daily Gleaner ‘jumped the gun’, so to speak, by announcing the impending shipment in the next day or two in its issue of May 28, 1952, with a front page headline: ‘Red Gold Going for the First Time’.

This first shipment was to mark the start of Jamaica’s largest non-service local industry for all but a few of these 60 years.

It was the culmination of a more-than-decade long process of:

(a) Discovery of the existence of large quantities of commercial reserves in the country;

(b) Contemplated use by the allies during the Second World War;

(d) Research and development activities to enable the economic processing of the ore.

Although the famous geologist, Sir Thomas de la Beche noted the existence of the red marly soil in 1827, and, later, another geologist, C. Barrington Browne, wrote of the red ferruginous (iron-containing) earth, no connection was made between these two observations with the earlier discovery of a naturally-occurring aluminous material, near the village of Les Baux, (hence the naming of the aluminous ore ‘bauxite’) Provence, France, by the French chemist, Pierre Berthier, in 1821.

Two pertinent developments in the late part of the 19th century were to make these naturally occurring aluminous materials (even if in Jamaica’s case they were more recognised for their iron content) important.

The first was the almost simultaneous discovery in 1886 (on the much grander scale, not dissimilar to the separate inventions of the calculus by the 17th century titans, Newton and Leibnitz, of the process of ‘winning’ aluminium from its oxide by electrolytic means. These inventions were by an American, Charles Martin Hall (who had some Jamaican connection, by virtue of his father serving as a congregational minister in the parish of St Mary for 10 years and returning to the United States just before his son was born), and the Frenchman, Paul Louis Heroult.

Two inventions

The second was two inventions, one in 1888 and another in 1894, respectively, of a process for extracting alumina from bauxite by the Austrian Chemist, Karl Josef Bayer. And so the technology was named the ‘Bayer’ process after him.

But it was not until about a-half-a-century after these two discoveries that there was an ‘awakening’ of the commercial possibilities of the Jamaican red, marly soil or ferruginous earth.

This awakening had its genesis in the difficulties experienced by a wealthy gentleman farmer and businessman, Sir Alfred D’Costa, who was having difficulty growing Wynne grass (Melinis minutoflora) for his cattle on his lands in St Ann.

As the saying goes, one thing led to another with the determination by the Government of Jamaica’s Agricultural Chemistry Department, supported by chemical analysis overseas, that the soils, while devoid of essential nutrients for plant growth, had relatively high concentrations of aluminium.

As mentioned above, Sir Alfred was not only a gentleman farmer, but a businessman. So, wearing the latter hat, he sought to interest first the British Empire’s companies, Alcan and British Aluminium in the commercial potential of the ore on his land, and when he found that neither company was interested in sprinting on this matter, he turned to the Dutch Company, Billiton, through whose government he had a connection by virtue of being its Honorary Consul in Jamaica.

In the event, the matter became not merely a case of ‘parson christening his pickney first’, but ‘parson christening only his pickney’ as the ‘Empire Company,’ Alcan, was given a monopoly over of the exploration of the ore. But, as we shall see later, the Second World War and its aftermath, were to usher in the era of Pax Americana and see the United States (US) emerge as the predominant power in world affairs.

Aluminium became an important material of war during the First World War and became much more so during the Second World War, particularly with the increasing role of aircraft as a weapon of war.

So, disrupting the supply chain of this material (as well as others of course) whether in the raw or finished state became of strategic significance to the combatants.

This was precisely what the Germans sought to do in the Atlantic in respect of bauxite shipped from British Guiana (now Guyana) and Dutch Guiana (now Suriname),where bauxite had been mined from the early decades of the last century, to the North American mainland.

Destroyed and harassed Allied shipping

The Germans, through their submarines (called U-boats), destroyed and harassed allied shipping in the Atlantic.

The matter was of such concern, that no less a person than the American military supremo himself, General George Marshall, was moved to write the Commander-in-Chief, United States Fleet, Admiral Ernest J. King, as follows:

…The losses by submarines off our Atlantic seaboard and in the Caribbean now threaten our entire war effort … Of the 74 ships allocated to the army by the War Shipping Administration, 17 have already been sunk. Twenty-two per cent of the bauxite fleet has already been destroyed. …We are all aware of the limited number of escort craft available, but has every conceivable means been brought to bear on the situation?

One such means contemplated was shipping bauxite from Jamaica, which was 1,000 miles closer to the North American mainland than the Guianas and would therefore reduce the risk of U-boat destruction or harassment.

However, this option was not pursued, most likely because of the ‘turning of the tide’ of the war in favour of the allies, and the difficulty of economically processing the Jamaican ore with the then-known ‘American’ Bayer technology.

Two notable developments led to the emergence of two US companies, Reynolds Metals and Kaiser Aluminium, to join Alcan in developing the Jamaican industry.

Carlton Davis is ambassador and special envoy in the Office of the Prime Minister. Please see Part 2 tomorrow.

Source: Posted June 5, 2012; retrieved January 23, 2021 from: http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120605/news/news1.html

—————-

Appendix B – Title: 60 years of Bauxite mining in Jamaica – Part II
By: Cartlon E Davis, Contributor

TWO NOTABLE developments led to the emergence of two US companies, Reynolds Metals and Kaiser Aluminium, to join Alcan in developing the Jamaican industry.

One, was the determination of the US Government and its courts to end Alcoa’s long monopoly of the US aluminium industry. The other, as I indicated earlier, was the emergence of the US as the predominant world military, economic and political power.

All three companies, Alcan, Reynolds and Kaiser, had to develop an appropriate technology to economically refine Jamaican ore into alumina; and this technology proved successful in processing the low monohydrate hematitic ore, which the companies, for the most part mined, for more than three decades.

The biggest player in the world aluminium industry, Alcoa, perhaps, because it was now divested of its relationship with Alcan entered the Jamaican industry in 1959. Thus, Jamaica was to have four of the world’s six largest aluminium companies (the two exceptions were the French firm, Pechiney, and the Swiss, Alusuisse) mining or processing ore in the country.

Thriving industry

The activities of the then- existing companies led to Jamaica, in 1957, replacing Suriname as the world’s number one bauxite producer, a position it held until 1971, when it was replaced by Guinea, (which in turn held the position until it was replaced by Australia in 1978).

Apart from bauxite mining or alumina processing, two of the companies by virtue of the large acreages of land [came] under their control; their genuine interest in farming; and their ability to make money, became two of the biggest agricultural operations in the country. Reynolds, mainly in beef cattle (mainly Santa Gertrudis) and Alcan (mixed beef, dairy and crops).

While for the most part, the relationship between the companies, on the one hand, and the Government and the community on the other, were quite cordial, there were tensions at times.

In respect of the Government, there were issues such as: (a) royalty negotiations in 1950; (b) royalty and income tax negotiations in 1957; (c) the bauxite levy negotiations in 1974; and (d) lease arrangements for the JAMALCO plant after Alcoa had closed the plant in 1985.

With the communities there have been issues over land use and environmental impacts.

But overall, the industry has had had a major positive impact on the development of Jamaica, as a whole and not least of all, towns or villages surrounding their operations, such as Mandeville, Manchester; Santa Cruz and Junction St Elizabeth; Brown’s Town, St Ann; May Pen, Clarendon and Ewarton, St Catherine.

All three of the founding companies have since left Jamaica: Reynolds, in 1984; Alcan, in 2001; and Kaiser in 2004. The parent companies did not long survive at any rate as the strong individual companies they once were: Reynolds Metals, did not long exist as an individual company as it was ‘absorbed’ in the Alcoa family in 2000; Alcan was acquired Rio Tinto, an Anglo-Australian Company in 2007; and Kaiser Aluminium is now a greatly-reduced company concentrating on relatively small downstream activities of smelting and fabrication.

Economy blasts companies

These founding companies of the Jamaican industry were eventually succeeded by the Swiss-based trading company, Glencore, which bought Alcan’s operations in Jamaica and held them as an individual entity for a few years before selling them into the now – world number one aluminium company (using certain indicators) UC RUSAL (now 70 per cent owner of alumina capacity in Jamaica): and in terms of the bauxite exporting operation, the new York City-based Apollo Global Management LLC-owned Noranda.

Of the legendary aluminium companies, only Alcoa remains in Jamaica; and one of the purposes of the meeting in New York between that company’s top officials and the prime minister of Jamaica was to try to keep its interest in the country alive.

The ‘Great Recession’; but, in particular the skyrocketing of the price of oil since the beginning of the latter part of the last decade, has shaken the Jamaican industry to the core leaving two plants representing half of the island’s alumina capacity of 4.4 million tonnes per annum idled since early 2009; and the remaining two (including the hitherto, world top-ranking, JAMALCO), barely holding on.

Yet (and perhaps this is a measure of the narrow base of the Jamaican economy) the industry still remains Jamaica’s largest non-service one, by some distance, and the number one gross merchandise earner, for the country, in the amount of over US$700 million per annum.

Our recent meetings in New York with Alcoa, and two other major players in the local industry have encouraged us to believe (to paraphrase Mark Twain) that ‘the news of the industry’s demise may be exaggerated’; and that (to paraphrase an even greater writer, John Milton) ‘All is not lost’.

This results from: (a) more open-mindedness in regard to the choice of fuel to replace oil and the willingness of the Government to work closely with the industry to effect the transformation; (b) a renewed determination by the administration to update the estimates of reserves to enable at least three of the four plants to operate for 30 years at expanded capacities; and, (c) advances (at any rate by a prominent company) to process the difficult high goethite and high phosphorus ores, indicate that the industry may be poised for resurgence.

Will the industry be around for another 60 years? I personally doubt so, having regard to competition for land, ore quality considerations and the reality of ‘environmental activism’.

For me, a half of that period (30 years) will suffice as this will, among other things, give the country more than enough time to diversify its economic base.

Carlton E Davis is ambassador and special envoy in the Office of the Prime Minister.

Source: Posted June 6, 2012; retrieved January 23, 2021 from: http://jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20120606/news/news1.html

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Appendix C – Title: Jamaica’s Bauxite mining is turning around: Approximately 20.82 million tonnes exported 2017-19

The island country Jamaica’s bauxite and alumina industry is retaking its place on the world stage and investors are showing a positive trend to explore Jamaica’s bauxite mines.

Bauxite mining is considered as the star performer of Jamaica’s economy.

The latest example of Jamaican mining is the progress of JAMALCO, a company focused on bauxite mining and alumina production that is a joint venture between global commodities trader Noble Group, which owns 55%, and Clarendon Alumina Production, which holds the other 45 % and is publicly owned.

Noranda Bauxite shipped an estimated 3.8 million wet metric tons from its bauxite operation at St. Ann, Jamaica last year, and it expects to be able to continue to ship similarly-sized amounts well into the next decade.

The country’s mining is turning around and the export of 20.82 million tonnes bauxite during 2017-19 has been accounted for. The bauxite mining for 2020 is projected at 6.70 million tonnes, when added to the previous year’s figure it reflects 27.52 million tonnes.

In the year 2017, the bauxite importation was recorded at 6.73 million tonnes and in 2018 it was spotted at 7.14 million tonnes. A growth of 6.09% has been measured.

Again in 2019, the bauxite export stood at 6.95 million tonnes, though recorded a slight downfall of 2.67%. The year 2020 has been projected with a positive trend of 6.70 million tonnes, again a growth of 3.5% from the previous year.

Source: Posted February 4, 2020; retrieved January 23, 2021 from: https://www.alcircle.com/news/jamaicas-bauxite-mining-is-turning-around-approximately-20-82-million-tonnes-exported-2017-19-50994

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Mineral Extraction 101 – Raw Materials ==> Finished Goods

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

Go Lean Commentary

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

What else do we have to offer?

How about minerals?

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

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

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

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

The cupboards are bare!

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

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

How viable is it?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1776 was a very good year…

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

… usually abbreviated as “The Wealth of Nations“, this book is considered the first modern work of economics, and [Smith] is thusly cited as the “father of modern economics”, even today, and among the most influential thinkers in the field of economics. Through reflection over the economics at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution the book touches upon broad topics as the division of labor, productivity and free markets.

Smith attacked most forms of government interference in the economic process, including tariffs, arguing that these create inefficiency and high prices in the long run. It is believed that this theory, laissez-faire economic philosophy, influenced government legislation in later years.

Smith advocated a government that was active in sectors other than the economy. He advocated public education for poor adults, a judiciary, and a standing army—institutional systems not directly profitable for private industries.

The “Invisible Hand” is a frequently referenced theme from Smith’s book. He refers to “the support of domestic industry” and contrasts that support with the importation of goods. Neoclassical economic theory has expanded the metaphor beyond the domestic/foreign manufacture argument to encompass nearly all aspects of economics. The “invisible hand” of the market is a metaphor now to describe the self-regulating behavior of the marketplace. …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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“From the back of the Bus to the White House” – No need to Imagine – Encore

Posted on January 20, 2021 in Ethos, Government, Social

We all know the history …

… yet it should still be vocalized; it should be shouted from the rooftops and from the steeples. There is a dramatic change in the administration of America today.

Congratulations Kamala Harris!

We applaud you … here and now … as we applauded you in the recent past. In fact, we had published a blog-commentary on March 7, 2019 shortly after Ms. Harris commenced her campaign for President of the United States (POTUS). Now today, she is the Vice-President.

Now is an appropriate time to Encore that previous blog-commentary; see it here-now:

——————–

Go Lean Commentary – Women Empowerment – Kamala Harris: From Caribbean Legacy to the White House?

Who is the most powerful person in the world?

No doubt, the President of the United States. But this is not just an American drama, as the holder of that office is often considered the “Leader of the Free World“.

Free World?!

Q: Are there other worlds? A: Sure, countries like North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, Yemen and others, may not consider the American Hegemony. But, most ironic, all those countries are considered Failed-States. So in summary, the President of the US is considered the Leader of all functioning societies on the planet – including our Caribbean member-states.

There is a chance, that a person of Caribbean heritage – an empowering woman: California Senator Kamala Harris – could assume that office. See the introductory news story / VIDEO here:

VIDEO – Who Is Kamala Harris? | 2020 Presidential Candidate | NYT News – https://youtu.be/cO_CZCebc5U

The New York Times
Published on Jan 21, 2019 – Senator Kamala Harris, Democrat of California, is joining the race for the White House. Ms. Harris becomes the fourth woman currently serving in Congress to announce her presidential ambitions.
Read the story here: https://nyti.ms/2FSqIHD Subscribe: http://bit.ly/U8Ys7n
More from The New York Times Video: http://nytimes.com/video

———-

Whether it’s reporting on conflicts abroad and political divisions at home, or covering the latest style trends and scientific developments, New York Times video journalists provide a revealing and unforgettable view of the world. It’s all the news that’s fit to watch.

Category: News & Politics

So can she go from Caribbean Legacy to the White House? That would be shocking and empowering, considering that “Jamaican” comes with certain stereotypes. See a related news article here, detailing the affinity and conflict “she” has with her Jamaican father/heritage:

Title: Donald Harris slams his daughter Senator Kamala Harris for fraudulently stereotyping Jamaicans and accuses her of playing Identity Politics
By: Jamaican Global

Professor Donald Harris Kamala Harris’ Jamaican father, has vigorously dissociated himself from statements made on the New York Breakfast Club radio show earlier this week attributing her support for smoking marijuana to her Jamaican heritage. Professor Harris has issued a statement to jamaicaglobalonline.com in which he declares:

“My dear departed grandmothers(whose extraordinary legacy I described in a recent essay on this website), as well as my deceased parents , must be turning in their grave right now to see their family’s name, reputation and proud Jamaican identity being connected, in any way, jokingly or not with the fraudulent stereotype of a pot-smoking joy seeker and in the pursuit of identity politics. Speaking for myself and my immediate Jamaican family, we wish to categorically dissociate ourselves from this travesty.”

This is the line – “Half my family’s from Jamaica. Are you kidding me?” – that has been repeated over by virtually every news media since Kamala Harris gave that response to the interviewer on New York’s Breakfast Club radio show when asked if she smoked marijuana.

Jamaica’s venerable Gleaner newspaper headlined:

US Presidential Candidate Kamala Harris wants Marijuana Legalized, cites Jamaican roots.

While the locally based online news source Loop reported:

Kamala Harris cites Jamaican roots in support of ganja legislation.

The Georgia based Macon Telegraph was less subtle. Its report screamed:

Kamala Harris supports legal pot. “Half my family’s from Jamaica. Are you kidding me?”

The 2020 presidential hopeful with a Jamaican heritage said she not only smoked but added “I inhale”. Perhaps said jokingly at first in the spirit of the interview, she proceeded to suggest that her Jamaican father’s side of the family would be disappointed in her if she did not support the legalization of marijuana. And that IS a serious statement. Now Harris’ father has come out vigorously dissociating himself from his daughter’s statement.

And well he might. V.G. McGee in a op ed piece published on January 12 in Urbanislandz writes “ Back in 2014 while running for re-election for California attorney general, she wasn’t in support of legalizing recreational use of the plant , but it is good that she has evolved on the issue and we can thank her Jamaican relatives for influencing her changing opinion.” So, the perception created by Ms. Harris’ statement is real and has caused some unease amongst Jamaicans at home and in the diaspora and now, it seems, her father and his Jamaican family. For some, it is more than mere unease; one Jamaican commenting on social media expressed the concern that “soon my job will be singling me out to drug test me since I am from Jamaica. What a stereotype”. Her concern is not unfounded given the experience of Jamaicans travelling to US ports having sniffer dogs around them in customs halls.

The Indian/Jamaican Marijuana connection: Did Kamala Harris deliberately and unfairly stereotype Jamaica as a nation of pot smokers?

An ironic twist in Ms. Harris’ associating marijuana smoking with her Jamaican heritage that seems to have escaped her as well as media watchers is the fact that it is also very much a part of her Indian heritage that she is so proud of claiming. Is she aware that it was India that bequeathed a marijuana culture to Jamaica? In her authoritative Encyclopedia of Jamaican Heritage (2003) Oliver Senior writes:

‘The practice of cultivating, smoking and otherwise consuming the herb (marijuana) is believed to have been popularized by Indian indentured immigrants who began to arrive from 1845. The local name ‘ganja’ is Indian. The concept of ganja as a holy herb is a Hindu one; it is widely used to enhance the religious experience in parts of India (despite government prohibition).

This seeming lack of knowledge about the connection between her Indian and Jamaican heritage provides additional ammunition for some Jamaicans who are of the view that Ms. Harris tends to downplay her Jamaican heritage when it suits her, crediting her Tamil Indian mother with the most significant influence on her life and outlook and rarely talks about her father’s influence. Her father Donald, hardly ever gets credit except when mentioned alongside her mother, but rarely as an individual. Even when asked by her host in the now famous ‘marijuana interview’ about her motivation to enter the presidential race, Ms. Harris referenced ONLY her mother whom she said, raised her and her sister Maya with many beliefs and rules – one being never to sit and complain about something, but to do something about it. Yet, anyone who has read ‘Reflections of a Jamaican Father’ Donald Harris’ heart-warming account of how he raised his two daughters, will immediately realize that there is another side to the Kamala Harris story. In that article Donald Harris writes:

“As a child growing up in Jamaica, I often heard it said by my parents and family friends ‘member whe you come fram’ (remember from where you came). To this day I continue to retain the deep social awareness and strong sense of identity which that grassroots Jamaican philosophy fed in me. As a father, I naturally sought to develop the same sensibility in my two daughters.”

Continuing, Harris says:

“My message to them was that the sky is the limit on what one can achieve with effort and determination and that in the process, it is important not to lose sight of those who get left behind by social neglect or abuse and lack of access to resources or ‘privilege’.

If Kamala Harris inherits some of ‘that deep social awareness’ and heeds the advice of her Jamaican father, she will make an excellent President of the United States of America.

Source: Posted February 15, 2019; retrieved March 7, 2018 from: https://www.jamaicaglobalonline.com/donald-harris-slams-his-daughter-senator-kamala-harris-for-fraudulently-stereotyping-jamaicans-and-accusing-her-of-playing-identity-politics/

How realistic is the notion of a Kamala Harris presidency?

History is on her side!

“Last time we knocked on the door – this time, we are going to kick the son-of-a-bitch in!”

In the last presidential election (2016) Democratic Candidate Hillary Clinton knocked-on-the-door and won the popular vote, but lost out in the Electoral College. (Today, investigations are concluding on the possibility that the eventual winner, Donald J. Trump, may have benefited from illegal campaign funding activities and collusion with the foreign government of Russia – he may have cheated). So yes, a woman can win the office.

Based on the “Blue Wave” of the 2018 General Election (Mid-terms) results, there is reason to believe that the 2020 race will have a Democratic Party winner, rather than the Republican incumbent. Plus, ex-President Barack Obama proved that a “Black” person can win the office.

Will this combination propel Kamala Harris to the Office of the Presidency?

There is still a long journey to go, with a lot of obstacles to overcome and challenges to meet. But many women have overcame obstacles and met challenges to obtain their goals to impact society. In fact, this is the very theme this month of this series of commentaries from the movement behind the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This is part 3 of 6 for Women History Month; this series addresses how one woman can make a difference in society; and how society can make a difference for women; this is because qualities like courage, problem-solving, determination and a zeal for justice flourishes with some women … as it does with some men.

Other commentaries in this series include these entries:

Women History Month 2019: Thoughts, Feelings, Speech and Actions
Women History Month 2019: Viola Desmond – The Rosa Parks of Canada
Women History Month 2019: Kamala Harris – Caribbean Legacy to the White House?
Women History Month 2019: Captain Marvel – We need “Sheroes”
Women History Month 2019: Ellevest CEO: Sallie Krawcheck
Women History Month 2019: Accepting Black Women As Is

For Kamala Harris to win the presidency, she will have to “win over” America; but first she must “win over” the Democratic Party; even before that, she must “win over” the Black community. Some people think that will be her biggest challenge; see a related news article/opinion-editorial here:

Title: Kamala Harris Can’t Count on the Black Vote in 2020
Opinion by: Luther Campbell

Kamala Harris will have trouble persuading black voters to make her president in 2020. First, the U.S. senator from California must explain why Donald Trump has a better prison-reform record than she had as the Golden State’s attorney general. Then she’ll have to overcome the perception she’ll do anything to climb to the top.

On the street, many blue-collar African-Americans, especially men, have already made up their minds not to vote for her. Between 2004 and 2016, when Harris worked as San Francisco’s district attorney and state attorney general, she supported legislation that sent kids who skipped school to jail. And she opposed federal supervision of California’s prisons after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling declared the overcrowded facilities inflicted cruel and unusual punishment on inmates.

When she appealed a court order to implement new parole programs, Harris cited the need to use prisoners as slave labor to fight wildfires and pick up highway trash.

Though black voters want politicians who’ll put away thugs and killers terrorizing the neighborhood, they don’t support those who deny defendants rehabilitation and send them to prison for crimes they didn’t commit to line private prison companies’ pockets.

Harris rose to prominence in California after an affair with married, but separated, former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, who recently wrote a column that mentioned their relationship. Brown said he influenced Harris’ career by appointing her to two state commissions when he was California Assembly speaker. He also helped her in her first race for San Francisco district attorney.

When Harris, whose mother is from India and father is from Jamaica, decided it was time to take her talents to Washington, D.C., she married Douglas Emhoff, a rich white lawyer. For better or worse, black men don’t want to vote for a black woman who married a white man or was the mistress of a powerful black man.

Like everyone else, black voters want help from one of their own. The Bushes made sure their people got oil money. Bill Clinton let the telecommunications industry gobble up small radio and TV stations. And Donald Trump is looking out for his developer buddies through a tax cut and opportunity zones that gentrify minority neighborhoods. Meanwhile, Harris has let black people know they can’t count on her.

Source: Posted February 5, 2019; retrieved March 7, 2019 from: https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/kamala-harris-cant-count-on-the-black-vote-to-win-in-2020-11068985

(This foregoing writer is not endorsed by this commentary; his editorial seems misogynistic).

Women in Politics? To the highest office in the land? This theme aligns with previous Go Lean commentaries asserting that ” Yes, they can!”; see a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14718	‘At the Table’ or ‘On the Menu’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=13063	Gender Equity without a ‘Battle of the Sexes’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12035	Fact & Fiction: Lean-in for ‘Wonder Woman Day’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8306	Women Get Ready for New Lean-In Campaign
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6937	Women in Politics – Yes, They Can!
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6836	#FatGirlsCan – Women do not have to be a ‘Ten’ to have impact

For those of us in the Caribbean, we have No Vote and No Voice in this 2020 presidential race. But we can observe-and-report. We can apply the proven “5-L” methodology: Look, Listen and Learn how to overcome orthodoxies to finally get the best person elected for the job, despite any race or gender.

We can also Lend-a-hand! (Many people of Caribbean heritage live in the US – many can vote). In fact, we – Jamaicans, Cubans, Puerto Ricans – were target demographics in the 2016 race.

Lastly, there is the opportunity to Lead – especially to define good leadership; recognizing attributes and personal qualities are bigger and of more importance than race and/or gender. We need to apply these lessons and leadership development in the Caribbean member-states.

So “Yes, we can” … learn from this American drama and learn to make our Caribbean homeland a better place to live, work and play. 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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