Tag: Jobs

Zero Sum: Fixing Inequality with Offense and Defense

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

Go Lean Commentary

Enquiring minds want to know:

How do “we” fix Inequality?

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

Yes, this is strenuous heavy-lifting …

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

>>> Offense #1 <<<

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

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

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

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

>> Defense #1 <<<

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

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

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

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

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

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

>> Offense #2 <<<

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

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

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

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

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

It will get more and more tempting!

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

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

Challenge accepted!

>>> Defense #2 <<<

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

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

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

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

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

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

>>> Offense #3 <<<

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

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

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

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

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

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

>>> Defense #3 <<<

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

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

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

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

>>> Offense #4 <<<

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

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

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

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

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

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

>>> Defense #4 <<<

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

The best offense is a good defense.

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

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

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

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

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

How can we overcome the hindrance of the Opposition?

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, we can …

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

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

Zero Sum versus Non-Zero Sum …

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

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

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

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

Yes, we can … 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile, workers have been shafted.

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

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

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

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Mineral Extraction 101 – Restoration after Extraction – Cool Sites

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

Go Lean Commentary

We have been known to say … repeatedly:

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

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

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

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

We can turn lemons into lemonade.

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

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

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

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

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

Zip Below Xtreme

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

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

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

Salina Turda

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

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

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

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

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

Wieliczka Salt Mine

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[See the Appendix VIDEO below.]

The Eden Project

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

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

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

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

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

Bounce Below

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

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

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

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

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

MORE: Deep thrills: The crazy cave trampolines of Wales

Mega Cavern

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mining in Southern Arizona

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mining in Central Arizona

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

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

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

Mining in Northern & Western Arizona

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just Say No … to Mining.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

10 Ways to Promote World Heritage Sites

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

—————–

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



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

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

Posted on January 24, 2021 in Industries, Strategy

Go Lean Commentary

Where were you in 1979?

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

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

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

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

NEW Mini Refinery

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

    Right Here.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dirt is Cheap.

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

Just how do we add the value?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Grades of crude oil are shown above in graphical form.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NEW Mini Cement Plant 

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

[See Photo here:] 

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

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

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

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

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

Ready. Set. Go …

The Future is Now!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Mineral Extraction 101 – 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:

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

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. 🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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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;

(c) Competition for control over the reserves; and

(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

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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:

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

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

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

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

1776 was a very good year…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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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.  🙂

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Toxic Environment – Ease of Doing Business

Posted on September 28, 2020 in Ethos, Government, Industries, Planning

Go Lean Commentary

Peace and Prosperity …

This is what we want – it is just that simple – to live harmoniously with our neighbors while we provide for ourselves and our loved-ones. But this is not so automatic! There must be empowerments and protections in the societal engines to allow citizens to obtain these goals. Failures in the delivery of these empowerments and protections will create chaos, dysfunctions, Toxic Environments and even:

Failed-States

If we do nothing, the end result is a Failed-State.

If we do the wrong things … Failed-State. This has been the focus of this current series on remediating Toxic Environments.

So societal stakeholders must be a part of the solution; they must help … for the sake of Peace and Prosperity.

When there is a lack of Peace and Prosperity, a Toxic Environment can easily emerge. Let’s focus now on Prosperity. That means there must be a solution for jobs (full-time and gigs), entrepreneurial and investment opportunities. This is the focus on this commentary, the means for prosperity. The same effort we put on promoting  Peace must also be put on fostering Prosperity. Without the opportunity for citizens to live prosperously, the environment becomes Toxic.

We do not want Toxic Environments … anymore.

In fact, this has been the focus of this Teaching Series from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean – which serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This roadmap asserts that Caribbean economic, security (Public Safety) and governing stakeholders must all work hand-in-hand to remediate our Toxic Environments. Every month, the movement behind the Go Lean book presents these Teaching Series to address issues germane to Caribbean life and culture. For this month of September 2020, this is entry 5-of-6, we are looking at how to improve the homeland so that our citizens can prosper where they are planted; all citizens, not just some privileged few and definitely be On Guard for any discrimination against a persecuted minority.

As alluded here, a lack of opportunities for the masses, or limitation of opportunities to a privileged few only, or blatant discrimination to persecuted minorities trying to participate in the economic eco-system describe the Toxic Environment that we currently suffer here in the Caribbean. The end result of such Toxic Environment is inexcusable human flight due to these Push and Pull dynamics:

  • “Push” refers to people who feel compelled to leave, to seek refuge in a foreign land. “Refuge” is an appropriate word; because of societal defects, many from the Caribbean must leave as refugees – think LGBT, Disability, Domestic-abuse, Medically-challenged – for their life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.
  • “Pull”, on the other hand refers to the lure of a more prosperous life abroad; many times our people are emigrating for societies that have better expressions of the rights for “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.

Toxic Environments have a direct correlation to Push and Pull dynamics. We need to always monitor these factors and societal defects. This is the purpose of this month’s Teaching Series. Consider here, the full catalog of the series this month:

  1. Toxic Environment: Ready for Football – Washington “Redskins”
  2. Toxic Environment: Homophobia – The problem is the Hate, not the Fear
  3. Toxic Environment: Opposite of Diversity & Inclusion
  4. Toxic Environment: Lessons from Yugoslavia
  5. Toxic Environment: Ease of Doing Business
  6. Toxic Environment: Make the Caribbean Great (Anew)

The subject of prosperity versus Toxic Environment is a concern for the stewards of the new Caribbean – promoters of the CU Trade Federation, and also for the United Nations-backed financial institution, the World Bank. In fact, the World Bank produces an Annual Ranking of all participating countries for the assessment of the Ease of Doing Business. This ranking measures the success-failure of National Governments to facilitate the creation of new businesses and expansion by existing businesses.

Yes, it can be measured.

Some reporting Nation-States do it better than others.

The ones that fail, create a Toxic Environment for those trying to improve prosperity in their homeland. These failures and the Toxic Environments push good people to flee and leave for “greener pastures”.

See the summary of the 2020 Ease of Doing Business Report here; (notice, New Zealand is #1):

Title: World Bank – Ease of Doing Business Ranking
Overview
Doing Business 2020, a World Bank Group flagship publication, is the 17th in a series of annual studies measuring the regulations that enhance business activity and those that constrain it. Doing Business presents quantitative indicators on business regulations and the protection of property rights that can be compared across 190 economies—from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe—and over time.

Doing Business covers 12 areas of business regulation. Ten of these areas—starting a business, dealing with construction permits, getting electricity, registering property, getting credit, protecting minority investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts, and resolving insolvency—are included in the ease of doing business score and ease of doing business ranking. Doing Business also measures regulation on employing workers and contracting with the government, which are not included in the ease of doing business score and ranking.

By documenting changes in regulation in 12 areas of business activity in 190 economies, Doing Business analyzes regulation that encourages efficiency and supports freedom to do business. The data collected by Doing Business address three questions about government. First, when do governments change regulation with a view to developing their private sector? Second, what are the characteristics of reformist governments? Third, what are the effects of regulatory change on different aspects of economic or investment activity? Answering these questions adds to our knowledge of development.

Data in Doing Business 2020 are current as of May 1, 2019.

Main findings:

  • Doing Business captures 294 regulatory reforms implemented between May 2018 and May 2019. Worldwide, 115 economies made it easier to do business.
  • The economies with the most notable improvement in Doing Business 2020 are Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Togo, Bahrain, Tajikistan, Pakistan, Kuwait, China, India and Nigeria. In 2018/19, these countries implemented one-fifth of all the reforms recorded worldwide.
  • Economies in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean continue to lag in terms of reforms. Only two Sub-Saharan African economies rank in the top 50 on the ease of doing business; no Latin American economies rank in this group.
  • Doing Business 2020 continues to show a steady convergence between developing and developed economies, especially in the area of business incorporation. Since 2003/04, 178 economies have implemented 722 reforms captured by the starting a business indicator set, either reducing or eliminating barriers to entry.
  • Those economies that score well on Doing Business tend to benefit from higher levels of entrepreneurial activity and lower levels of corruption.
  • While economic reasons are the main drivers of reform, the advancement of neighboring economies provides an additional impetus for regulatory change.
  • Twenty-six economies became less business-friendly, introducing 31 regulatory changes that stifle efficiency and quality of regulation.

Source: See the Full 149 Page Report retrieved September 26, 2020 from: https://www.doingbusiness.org/en/reports/global-reports/doing-business-2020

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Click on Photo to Enlarge

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VIDEO – Tracking the “Ease of Doing Business” Around the World – https://youtu.be/NvwOzxR2lf0

World Bank
Posted October 31, 2017 – To learn more: http://wrld.bg/29Na30genKg

It takes global entrepreneurs significantly less time to start businesses, obtain construction permits and transfer property, making many developing countries more competitive. The World Bank’s latest Doing Business report says worldwide unemployment could be eased if countries continue to cut red tape and promote business-friendly policies. #DoingBiz

Innovation comes from innovators. Every community have innovative people, but not all communities foster opportunities. Governments can streamline the business creation-expansion process with incubators and optimized regulations. Consider this Case Study of former US President Jimmy Carter’s policies that created the now hot micro-brewery industry in the United States:

In 1920, due to Prohibition, breweries across the United States were closed down or began making malt for other purposes. The Homebrewing of beer with an alcohol content higher than 0.5% remained illegal until 1978 when Congress passed a bill repealing Federal restrictions and excise taxes,[8] and President Jimmy Carter signed the bill, H.R. 1337, into law.[9] Within months of homebrewing’s full legalization, Charlie Papazian founded the Brewers Association and American Homebrewers Association. – Source: Homebrewing

In 1979, Carter deregulated the American beer industry by making it legal to sell malt, hops, and yeast to American home brewers for the first time since the effective 1920 beginning of Prohibition in the United States.[156] This Carter deregulation led to an increase in home brewing over the 1980s and 1990s that by the 2000s had developed into a strong craft microbrew culture in the United States, with 6,266 micro breweries, brewpubs, and regional craft breweries in the United States by the end of 2017.[157] – Source: Jimmy Carter

“Prosper where planted” – Yes, we can …

This idea and prospect of “prospering where planted” is important to the movement behind the Go Lean book. In fact, this subject was stressed in a previous Go Lean commentary; see this summary:

So how do we prosper where we’re planted? While this is a simple question (based on the Bible principle of Psalms 1:3), the answer is more complex. …

… the Go Lean roadmap uses cutting-edge delivery of best practices to employ strategies, tactics and implementations to impact its prime directives; identified with the following 3 statements:

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

The successful execution of these directives will allow Caribbean stakeholders to prosper, while remaining as residents in their homeland. The Go Lean book seeks to optimize the entire Caribbean economic/security/governance eco-system to reach this goal.

[There needs to be] a “Hustling” Attitude, [which the Go Lean book describes as an] Entrepreneurial Ethos (Page 28).

The Go Lean movement had previously presented more blog-commentaries on the subject of fostering prosperity. See a sample list here:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=20371 Success Looks like New Zealand
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19189 Brains are already here; now to bring in the opportunities
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17358 There could be a “Marshall Plan” for Prosperity
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16000 Better Balance of Regulations or Laissez-faire creates Economic Growth
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=10043 Integration Plan for Greater Caribbean Prosperity
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=5034 Patents and IP Protections: The Guardians of Innovation

We have good ideas … that will create jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities. Imagine the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics/Medical (STEM) fields and all those innovative ideas. Under this Go Lean roadmap, there will now be new stewards in Caribbean society to foster Research & Development. Economic activities will flourish … not just for the STEM participants (High Tech), but many down-line positions as well: Low Tech and No Tech.

The Go Lean roadmap introduces other strategies as well, like Infrastructure projects, Exclusive Economic Zones, Self-Governing Entities and Public-Private Partnerships. These strategies will reboot the industrial landscape in the region.

2.2 million new jobs is conceivable, believable and achievable.

This is what we must do: Mitigate Toxic Environments and foster prosperous homelands.

Let’s do this – let’s make our homelands better places to live, work and play.  🙂

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

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 – 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.

xiv. 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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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Hamilton – Comes to the Masses – Encore

Posted on July 15, 2020 in Ethos, Government, Industries, Social

“Not throwing away my shot … young, scrappy and hungry” – Hit song from Broadway musical Hamilton; see link here.

This expensive Broadway play ($450 for two tickets for me) has now come down in price – but only in this new medium of streaming video – the masses can now consume it for $6.99 … for the entire household.

According to a recent Forbes Magazine (June 8, 2020) article:

After opening on Broadway in 2015, competition for a seat became so hot that scalpers at one point were reportedly getting close to $11,000 in the aftermarket. In anticipation of Broadway re-opening on Sept. 8, face-value tickets start at $149 but go for as much as $2,200 a seat in the resale market.

This is the reality of the economics of Supply-and-Demand.

Despite the drop in prices, the production quality is still valued and the producers will make even more money.

Size does matter when it comes to Hollywood.

Hamilton: $1 Billion Franchise
And it did so far faster than other Broadway phenoms. The top three grossing musicals are all more than 16 years old. Hamilton, which turns 5 this year, was on track this year to surpass another smash hit, The Book of Mormon, before Covid-19 forced Broadway’s theaters to close. – Source: Forbes.June 8, 2020

Truly, the stakeholders for Hamilton have not “thrown away their shot’. See this conveyed in this related story here, about the Hamilton blockbuster movie – visualizing the stage play – that was just released to the streaming-media site DisneyPlus:

Title: Why the ‘Hamilton’ Film Works — and Joel Schumacher’s ‘Phantom’ Didn’t
By: Marina Watts

Turning a Broadway musical into a movie is no easy task. Bringing the excitement that was onstage to the silver screen is a challenge, from sets and songs to simply making sure the musical translates to the screen. West Side Story (1961), My Fair Lady (1964) and Cabaret (1972) were all successful shows that were adapted for the silver screen with similar success.

Filmed Broadway shows such as Peter Pan (1955), She Loves Me (2016) and Newsies (2017) were also massive hits which opted to shoot a staged performance. So was Hamilton (you may have heard of it).

Hamilton, which premiered on Disney+ on July 3, has been an absolute hit. Between the acting, singing, dancing and songwriting, the filmed version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Tony Award-winning show has many viewers obsessed. Disney+ even saw a 74% spike in streaming subscriptions the weekend it premiered, as per Forbes.

What also makes this film adaptation of the staged show work is how it was made. Director Thomas Kail recently revealed exactly how he filmed and edited Hamilton. He used 30 cameras to shoot the musical in three days in 2016 (June 26, 27 and 28, Sunday through Tuesday) and spent three years piecing it together. On the 26th and 28th, Kail shot straight through with an audience. On the 27, he had no audience, allowing him to focus on closer shots of the show.

“I had six cameras that were shooting on the Sunday with different operators and then three fixed cameras or nine total,” Kail explained to Inquirer.net. “Then, I changed all the positions for the fixed cameras for the Tuesday so the multiple gets high really fast, but that’s how we made it.”

This movie musical was an incredible example of converting a stage musical to screens with only three days of footage, unlike Joel Schumacher’s 2004 adaptation of Phantom of the Opera whichtook four months to film.

The big-budget adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Weber’s musical was a cinematographic mess, despite the fact that it had been in development since 1989. Schumacher’s focus on making other films and Weber’s divorce were just two events which added to the delays.

Schumaker starred Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson, Minnie Driver and Gerard Butler as the Phantom, and was nominated for three Academy Awards. But those noms didn’t translate to critical acclaim.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 33% approval rating. “The music of the night has hit something of a sour note: critics are calling the screen adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s popular musical, histrionic boring and lacking in both romance and danger,” the consensus read. Although critics didn’t like the movie, audiences loved it.

What threw critics appeared to be the movie’s…cinematography and direction. Shots failed to make the sound stages of Phantom look cinematic. The scenes felt like an overstuffed painting, and though that type of spectacle would have translated well onstage for the suspension of disbelief, it felt exhausting onscreen and lacked dimension. The sweeping camera shots and long takes didn’t add anything either, especially when showing off the mostly computer generated sets.

The film’s color schemes were also deemed dull. In the “Masquerade” scene, for example, many colors and bright images are mentioned throughout the song. However, the main colors of the costumes were black and white, a stark contrast to the lyrics.

The set of Hamilton, meanwhile, was simple yet effective. Since they were also using the costumes and the set directly from the show, nothing got lost in translation as far as spectacle went.

Weber was granted full artistic control. When it came to his intentions of adapting Phantom, he said, “We did not want to do a film version of the stage show,” as per Playbill. “We wanted to make a film in its own right.”

Kail, meanwhile, wanted to recreate the theater experience for viewers at home. “I was just interested in trying to create an experience with the film of Hamilton that would let you know what it felt like to be in the theater in June of 2016 in New York City at the Richard Rodgers Theatre. That was the intent,” he explained.

Kail explained that they way they shot the staged musical, they were able to get as close as possible to the actors for an immersive and intimate experience. These close-up shots gave viewers the best seat in the house, unlike Phantom.

“So much of our storytelling is done in the physical vocabulary,” he noted. “If I’m going to close up, it means I’m not on that dance step. It’s very hard to do both those things. So, it was a real balance of making sure that I wanted to give intimacy and proximity, which you have in cinema.”

Additionally, throughout Phantom of the Opera, many of the actors’ mouths don’t appear to match up with the music. There are also many continuity issues, from moments where the Phantom takes off his cloak, to candles being lit and unlit, and masks disappearing and reappearing during the “Masquerade” number, just to name a few errors. These tiny details made a huge difference, and audiences felt like it was sloppy.

Since Hamilton was performed and filmed live without any dubbing, these continuity issues didn’t occur.

That being said, filming the staged musical was not a simple task. “It is a little more challenging in the theater,” Kail noted, “You must also get the stage picture and make sure that the storytelling of the entire group was represented.”

Kail also mentioned how he and Miranda wanted to preserve this particular performance with the original cast of Hamilton. “Theater always disappears. It goes away as soon as the lights come down, whereas cinema, film and television can live on.”

Maybe Phantom of the Opera should be the next musical to get the Hamilton treatment.

Hamilton is available to stream on Disney+. Phantom of the Opera is available to stream on Amazon Prime.

REQUEST REPRINT & LICENSING, SUBMIT CORRECTION OR VIEW EDITORIAL GUIDELINES

Source: Posted Newsweek Magazine July 13, 2020; retrieved July 15, 2020 from: https://www.newsweek.com/why-hamilton-film-works-joel-schumachers-phantom-didnt-1517030

Yet still, this is not a commentary about Broadway or New York; no, this is about the Caribbean. Hamilton was born and raised in the Caribbean (St Croix and Nevis respectively); writer-producer-actor Lin-Manual Miranda is of Caribbean (Puerto Rico) heritage and a lot of the cast and crew hail from the Caribbean homeland. Hamilton is about more than history, culture and politics; no, it is relevant for an economic discussion as well.

This was the theme of a previous blog-commentary from the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. That submission was on January 2, 2019 and it asserted that the arts can truly empower a community – “that a community rallies around art creating a unique energy; and art ‘dynamises’ the community, in a very unique way”. Economic opportunities are the natural progression from organizing the arts and artists. While we cannot be Broadway in the Caribbean, we can better harness (and monetize) the natural talents and genius-qualifiers in our region.

This is where the money and the jobs are …

It is only apropos to Encore that previous commentary, from January 2, 2019, here and now:

—————-

Go Lean Commentary – Hamilton – “History has its eyes on you”

This is a memorable line from the hot Broadway play Hamilton:

Immigrants, we get things done!

This is what all the rave is about with this fascinating play; it tells the story of America’s founding fathers through the eyes of the immigrant experience. (This writer saw Hamilton on December 28, 2018 at the Broward Performing Arts Center in Ft Lauderdale, FL).

As was true with all these founding fathers, Alexander Hamilton was White; (“Bastard son of a Scotsman”); Aaron Burr was White; so too George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and others portrayed in this song-and-dance production. But all the participating actors – in the Broadway edition, plus all the other touring companies – are Black-and-Brown minorities – many of them immigrants themselves.

The theme of Hamilton – historic immigrants thriving in America – aligns with the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean. The book was written and published by members of the Caribbean Diaspora living and thriving in America. There is a full acceptance that Caribbean immigrants can thrive in the US, as did Hamilton in his historical context. But many more immigrants arrive everyday, and there is now less tolerance for them, especially for those of the Black-and-Brown populations from the Caribbean. In fact, the current President of the US, Donald Trump, even derisively referred to Haitians as coming from a “shit-hole” country.

So while we can thrive, the question – by the movement behind the Go Lean book – is whether we should. The Hamilton play makes this point, as was related in a previous Go Lean blog-commentary:

When the word got around, they said “this kid is insane, man”
Took up a collection just to send “him” to the mainland
“Get your education, don’t forget from whence you came”
And the world gonna know your name …

It is an established fact that any difficult topic can be more easily communicated if backed-up by a catchy melody and rhyming words. An underlying theme of Hamilton is that nobody does it alone, there must always be community help and support; its like a community investment. There should also be a return on the investment. This point was communicated brilliantly in this news-commentary by a Social Justice Advocate; she stated that “self-made men are never independent of others’ help”. See the full article here:

Title: History Has Its Eyes On Us: Lessons from Hamilton the Musical
By: Courtney Kidd LCSW
Obsession. That’s the only way to describe the feelings of Hamilton followers, and once you’ve seen the show you’d understand why. Hamilton is a punch in the face, spellbinding transport through the life of one of the least well-known founding fathers, but by far one of the most interesting. And the best part? It’s done through the lens of hip-hop music and a cast of almost exclusively non-white actors-including our own dear Alexander Hamilton. While this caused confusion for some, who began to question their 8th grade history memory, it stands as one of the most powerful examples of today’s racial divide and the movements to correct it.

I’ll admit, I was skeptical going into the play. My friend and I had gotten tickets when they first went on sale almost 9 months before opening night. We saw it in its first month on Broadway after the success off-Broadway. I remember sitting in my chair prior to the curtain rise, uncertain of whether I’d like a modern take on a history. Could it reach across the aisle of race? Could it hold attention of a subject most forget about? Would I get it? Did I really wait 9 months and spend hundreds of dollars for something that might just be weird? It took exactly 1 minute until those questions left my mind and instead I was entrapped, enamored, enthralled with this play that lives up to one of the numbers “non-stop.” It was a non-stop journey, filled with humor, and anguish, and longing. I was converted. I was in love.

I went to see it a second time a few months, later, unable to wait until the soundtrack was finally released, I bought a resale ticket at far too high of an amount for my poor social work status. But I had to go, the play had brought about a plague within me; this wasn’t just a good show, it was something far beyond. Much like its creator Lin-Manuel Miranda, I began what has still been obsessive task of reading book after book on Hamilton, and the rest of those influential individuals who shaped the country. I wake up with the music in my head, and despite my best efforts, can’t stop listening to the songs. And then it hit me. This isn’t just a great musical and it’s not just because it is new and different, it’s because despite almost 300 hundred years since this man stood with the revolution, its relevant. And not in the way you think.

Over the past few years we have seen a second wave of the civil rights movement in America. Sadly, Despite the year, minorities, immigrants, and even women are still seen and treated differently than the white male counterpoint. Feelings and reactions peak and overspill in areas like Ferguson and Baltimore. Huge movements such as Black Lives Matter rise up demanding justice in the country that fought and promised a land of freedom and equality. Hamilton isn’t just play to see, it’s a needed reminder. Alexander Hamilton was an immigrant who fought for the revolution, becoming one of Washington’s most trusted aides, rising to one of the highest positions in our military and later our government. From a remarkably young age, he was an abolitionist in a time when that word would be as shocking as to claim you’re an alien. He never allowed his birth and his circumstances to define him, and instead fought his entire life for the beliefs he had, including a strong central government and financial plan that allowed America to be self-sufficient and play with the “big boys” for trade and commerce. Hamilton saw first-hand the potential risks of weak governments while dealing with the military forces. He understood even then that we had to be the United States in order to succeed in this revolutionary experiment. And he wanted those rights for every individual who was here.

Hamilton was a true American Dream hero, but despite what a lot of modern people claim, self-made men are never independent of others’ help. Many wish to believe that they rose to where they are because only due to their remarkable abilities, and for some that is true, but much more often than not there was help along the way. Our founding father is no exception. Although known as a uniquely bright youth on the island of Nevis where he was orphaned at a young age, Hamilton might never have risen to the station he once held without the help of many. Yes, he showed himself to be a studious and adept learner when put in charge of the local trading company-and may have stayed on as a success employee had the Hurricane not hit Nevis with a colossal force. Hamilton, always a writer, penned a poem of what he witnessed, and a local man who believed Hamilton had the capacity for more forwarded it to the influential of the island. Despite the devastation they made an investment in one of their own, raising enough to send our future Secretary of Treasury and war hero to the colonies(America) to pursue a real education. To sum up, if those with means didn’t decide to put forward an investment for an orphan with potential Alexander Hamilton would have mostly likely lived his life and died having never left a small, impoverished island. For a poor, orphan of questionable birth and heritage, that would not have left many surprised, and yet the island rose together to support him.

We’re looking at a similar issue in today’s world. Do we invest in the future, on education, on sustainability for those who can go on to do greatness despite the circumstances of their birth, or do we claim that we got to where we were without assistance from anyone? Hundreds of years after Hamilton discussed the need for equality we are still in the midst of revolutions to save the ideals of our nation. Each person is shaped by those around them, and it is of no surprise that the haves are able to gain a lot more opportunity than the have-nots. For this reason, many assume it is laziness that prevent people from working their way up. Hamilton was the antithesis of lazy, but if it wasn’t for one influential patronage who connected him to the elite, our country may never have gained the footing it needed to be a competitive economy.

We have a responsibility to those around us and who come next to shape the world into a better place for us all, not just for ourselves. We saw yesterday what happens if we don’t stand against those who would spread hatred, and instead hold onto love. As Mr. Manuel so eloquently put:

“…We chase the melodies that seem to find us until they’re finished songs and start to play when senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised, not one day. This show is proof that history remembers. We live through times when hate and fear seem stronger. We rise and fall, and light from dying embers, remembrances that hope and love last longer and love is love is love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside…”

And if you need more convincing, join me in line for some tickets to Hamilton, you won’t be disappointed(seriously if you know how to get reasonable tickets you know how to contact me).

“I consider civil liberty, in a genuine unadulterated sense, as the greatest of terrestrial blessings. I am convinced, that the whole human race is intitled(entitled) to it; and, that it can be wrested from no part of them, without the blackest and most aggravated guilt.”- Alexander Hamilton

*Authors note*- Should Mr. Miranda see this, congrats on the Grammy, call me for unlimited praise and begging for interviews. Your PR man is too good at polite declines.

**Update- And your UNREAL number of Tony nominations and wins!! [See Appendix below].

Source: Social Justice Solution Online Site – posted February 23, 2016; retrieved December 30, 2018 from: http://www.socialjusticesolutions.org/2016/02/23/history-has-its-eyes-on-us-lessons-from-hamilton-the-musical/

————

VIDEO – 70th Annual Tony Awards ‘Hamilton’ History has its eyes and Yorktown – https://youtu.be/5upLudfimso



Undercover Celebs
Published on Nov 4, 2016 – 70th Annual Tony Awards ‘Hamilton’ History has its eyes and Yorktown by the cast of Hamilton at the 2016 Tony Awards where the musical won 11 awards.

The prime directive of the Go Lean book is to empower, elevate and facilitate a better Caribbean society. We want to be able to thrive right here at home – to prosper where planted – thus lowering the motivations to emigrate. In fact, the declarative statements of the prime directive are as follows:

Puerto Rican descendant Lin-Manuel Miranda, the creator, writer and original cast member as Alexander Hamilton is well-known for his advocacy for the Caribbean region in general and Puerto Rico in particular. He accomplishes his mission to effect change in the American eco-system through music/song and entertainment. The book Go Lean…Caribbean strives to accomplish its mission with the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). Lin-Manuel Miranda is hereby recognized as a role model that the Caribbean can emulate. He has provided a successful track record of forging change, overcoming incredible odds, managing crises to successful conclusions and rebooting failing institutions. See these previous blog-commentaries that detailed his accomplishments:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14101 Wait, ‘We Are The World’
In September 2017, Hurricane Maria devastated several Caribbean member-states; Puerto Rico was gravely impacted. In the mode of ‘We Are The World‘, many artists – led by Lin-Manuel Miranda – assembled and recorded a song to aid Puerto Rico, entitled ‘Almost Like Praying‘ by Artists for Puerto Rico.
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=7963 ‘Like a Good Neighbor’ – Being there for Puerto Rico
The US Territory of Puerto Rico needs a Good Neighbor right now. They do not need State Farm; they need the US Government to change the laws to allow them to re-structure their heavy debt “load”. In effect, this community is in crisis, facing financial disaster and needs a helping hand. Lin-Manuel Miranda was on a mission to help Puerto Rico by getting Congress to change Bankruptcy Laws to apply to PR again.

Mr. Miranda has now retired from performing in Hamilton …

… but atlas, he will reprise his role for the highly acclaimed Puerto Rico run in January 2019. See more on that story here:

Title: Puerto Rico Engagement of Hamilton, Starring Lin-Manuel Miranda, Will Sell $10 Tickets Through Lottery and Rush

Sub-title: Over 10,000 tickets will be released through the popular #Ham4Ham initiative, exclusively to island residents.

The upcoming Puerto Rico premiere of Hamilton, in which Tony- and Pulitzer-winning creator Lin-Manuel Miranda will reprise his performance in the title role, will offer island residents a chance to purchase tickets priced at ten dollars.

As previously reported, the blockbuster musical will play San Juan’s Teatro UPR at the University of Puerto Rico (Río Piedras Campus) January 8 through January 27, 2019, before the company (sans Miranda) embarks on a third national tour. Additional casting will be announced at a later date.

A total of 10,000 tickets will be sold at the low price in Puerto Rico as an extension of the blockbuster musical’s popular #Ham4Ham initiative, with 1,000 going to college students (with valid ID) for the January 9 matinee. All remaining tickets for that performance and two subsequent Wednesday matinees will be sold for $10 via digital lottery. Over 200 tickets will be sold to residents via lotto for all other performances.

“Bringing [Hamilton] to Puerto Rico is a dream that I’ve had since we first opened at The Public Theater in 2015,” Miranda said at the time of the initial announcement. “When I last visited the island, a few weeks before Hurricane Maria, I had made a commitment to not only bring the show to Puerto Rico, but also return again to the title role. In the aftermath of Maria we decided to expedite the announcement of the project to send a bold message that Puerto Rico will recover and be back in business, stronger than ever.”

Source: PlayBill Magazine – Posted August 28, 2018; retrieved January 2, 2018 from http://www.playbill.com/article/puerto-rico-engagement-of-hamilton-starring-lin-manuel-miranda-will-sell-10-tickets-through-lottery-and-rush

In the CU/Go Lean roadmap to change the Caribbean, music and theater gets it’s due respect. This point is detailed in the  Declaration of Interdependence at the outset of the book, pronouncing this need for regional solutions (Page 14):

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

We are looking forward to more art-based accomplishments: the arts can truly empower the community – “the community rallies around art creating a unique energy; and art ‘dynamises’ the community, in a very unique way”. What more can the stewards of the Caribbean do to effect change in the region using the arts and music? The Go Lean book provides a lot more details on Page 230 under the title “10 Ways to Improve the Arts“; see one detail here:

#1: Lean-in for the Emergence of the Caribbean Union
Embrace the advent of the CariCom Single Market Initiative and the Caribbean Union Trade Federation. This will allow for the unification of the region into a Single Market of 42 million people. This size supports the proliferation of ‘art’ (visual/fine, music, performance & film) as an industry. The CU will promote the art exhibition eco-system – allowing marketplaces for artists to congregate and monetize their talents. Structures will also be deployed for media companies to monetize film & performance art. The CU will facilitate the marketing of travelling exhibitions, and touring companies of stage productions. For the region, art can be a business enabler, and expressions for civic pride and national identity.

“History Has Its Eyes On Us” is the title of a song in the Hamilton Play – see Appendix VIDEO – and also a truism. There are lessons we must learn from the history of Alexander Hamilton. We must, like he did, fight for change and progress; as conveyed in the foregoing article:

From a remarkably young age, he was an abolitionist in a time when that word would be as shocking as to claim you’re an alien. He never allowed his birth and his circumstances to define him, and instead fought his entire life for the beliefs he had, including a strong central government and financial plan that allowed America to be self-sufficient and play with the “big boys” for trade and commerce. Hamilton saw first-hand the potential risks of weak governments …

The Go Lean roadmap accepts that the burden is too big for any one Caribbean member-state alone to effect change, thusly it advocates for a collaboration among all member-states. The strategy is to confederate all the 30 member-states of the Caribbean despite their language and legacy, into an integrated Single Market. The Go Lean/CU roadmap details all the strategies, tactics and implementation to forge the Single Market solutions. With these efforts and investments, the returns will be undeniable. We can dissuade our people from leaving in the first place – Alexander Hamilton never returned to British-controlled Nevis after leaving for college. (He did revolt against the British).

We want change in the Caribbean without a revolt. This was proclaimed from the outset of the Go Lean book:

This movement was bred from the frustrations of the Diaspora, longing to go home, to lands of opportunities. But this is not a call for a revolt against the governments, agencies or institutions of the Caribbean region, but rather a petition for a peaceful transition and optimization of the economic, security and governing engines in the region. – Go Lean book Page 8.

The Go Lean roadmap has a simple quest: make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. One man, or woman, can make a difference in this quest. Thank you for that model Hamilton. Thank you for that model Lin-Manuel Miranda. Now to foster the next generation of movers-and-shakers, whether it is politically, economically or in “song-and-dance”. We can impact our homeland with many fields of endeavor.

We urge all Caribbean stakeholders – artists and patrons alike – to lean-in to this roadmap to elevate Caribbean society. Yes, we can! Our quest is conceivable, believable and achievable. 🙂

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

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

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Appendix VIDEO – Why History Has Its Eyes On Hamilton’s Diversity | TIME – https://youtu.be/xWrRP6vRGhQ

TIME
Published on Dec 15, 2015 – In 2015, Lin-Manuel Miranda, a man once not known to many outside his circle of Broadway legions, shed light on another man once not known to many outside a circle of knowledgeable historians. But Miranda took one of America’s founding fathers and turned him “and thus, himself” into a star. The Broadway show Hamilton uses rap and hip-hop to tell the story of Alexander Hamilton’s rise to power during the American Revolution. The show broke multiple records for its cast recording and notched record-breaking sales of $32 million before it even hit Broadway. But the cast makes history in different ways, too, with men and women of color playing characters who were all white. There’s an African-American Vice President Aaron Burr, a biracial George Washington and a Chinese-American Mrs. Alexander Hamilton. Subscribe to TIME ►► http://po.st/SubscribeTIME

Category: News & Politics

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Appendix – 70th Tony Awards

The 70th Annual Tony Awards were held on June 12, 2016, to recognize achievement in Broadway productions during the 2015–16 season. The ceremony temporarily returned to the Beacon Theatre in New York City after three years at Radio City Music Hall and was broadcast live by CBS.[1] James Corden served as host.[2]

Hamilton received a record-setting 16 nominations in 13 categories, ultimately winning 11 total.[3] The revival of The Color Purple won two awards. The Humans won four awards, and the revival productions of plays Long Day’s Journey into Night and A View from the Bridge each won two awards.

…

Source: Retrieved December 31, 2018 from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/70th_Tony_Awards

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Labor Realities: Essential or Sacrificial – Encore

Posted on June 20, 2020 in Economics, Industries, Social

So you love your community, but does the community love you back?!

This is the description of everyday life for nurses at local hospitals. The Coronavirus-COVID-19 is devastating communities; there is an urgent need for good First Responders. Doctors and Nurses are among those First Responders, and yet nurses seems to be under-appreciated.

Put your money where your mouth is. This has been their continued experience:

Low wages
Deficient supply of Personal Protection Equipment (PPE)

Are these First Responders “Essential or Sacrificial”?

I am NOT a nurse; I am only able to report what the nurses themselves are advocating. Here is that reporting & a related VIDEO production:

Title: Why some nurses have quit during the coronavirus pandemic
By: Safia Samee Ali, NBC News

For weeks, Kelly Stanton wasn’t sleeping. She lay in bed gripped with the anxiety of having to go to work at a Washington, D.C.-area hospital not knowing whether she might bring home the coronavirus to her husband and their three children.

It was inevitable, she thought. She wasn’t protected.

Stanton, a nurse for 28 years, had seen federal safety protocols for health care workers begin to crumble amid the pandemic by early March.

Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention regarding personal protective equipment, or PPE, changed consistently. At Stanton’s hospital, nurses were told that they would have limited access to an already low stockpile of protective equipment and were being asked to reuse single-use masks multiple times, she said.

“Never in my time as a nurse have I seen this,” she said. “It was a position I could never have imagined I’d be in, even in my wildest dreams.”

Each time a safety regulation changed, she said, she began to feel more like “a sheep sent to slaughter” than a front-line nurse, and she started agonizing between her job and her family.

By late March, the risks weighed too heavily, and Stanton submitted her resignation.

“It was an extremely difficult decision, but as a mother and wife, the health of my family will always come first,” she said. “In the end, I could not accept that I could be responsible for causing one of my family members to become severely ill or possibly die.”

As COVID-19 has infected more than 1 million Americans, nurses working on the front lines with little protective support have made the gut-wrenching decision to step away from their jobs, saying that they were ill-equipped and unable to fight the disease and that they feared for not only their own safety but also that of their families.

Many of these nurses, who have faced backlash for quitting, said new CDC protocols have made them feel expendable and have not kept their safety in mind, leaving them no choice but to walk away from a job they loved.

‘We’re not cannon fodder. We’re human beings.’

As the nation took stock of its dwindling medical supplies in the early days of the pandemic, CDC guidance regarding personal protective equipment quickly took a back seat.

Supplies of N95 masks, which had previously been the acceptable standard of protective care for both patients and medical personnel, were depleting, so commercial grade masks, surgical masks and, in the most extreme cases, homemade masks, such as scarves and bandannas, were all sanctioned by the CDC — which didn’t return a request for comment — to counter the lack of resources.

Nurses, among other health care workers, were expected to pivot and adapt with no evidence to the view that new guidelines would provide any significant protection from a novel and contagious disease.

“Things they were telling us we had to now do, you would’ve been fired if we did that three weeks before,” Stanton said. “How is this suddenly OK?”

There had been warning that a pandemic was coming, she said. “Hospital administrators, states and the federal government should have stockpiled PPEs. All three failed.”

COVID-19 patients had only slowly started trickling in, but Stanton could see where things would head. It was almost guaranteed that nurses would be at risk under those conditions, she said.

“We’re not cannon fodder. We’re human beings,” she said.

In many respects, nurses who have had to treat COVID-19 patients with little or no protection, especially in the early days of the pandemic, have become collateral damage.

Nearly 10,000 health care workers on the front lines, including nurses, have tested positive, according to a preliminary survey the CDC conducted from February to April.

Because data collection has been slow and not comprehensive and many people with COVID-19 have been asymptomatic, actual numbers are likely much higher.

At least 79 nurses have died from the coronavirus, the American Nurses Association, which has been independently tracking reports, said Thursday.

“There are huge ethical dilemmas that nurses are now facing,” said Liz Stokes, director of the American Nurses Association Center for Ethics and Human Rights.

“Just imagine having to make decisions every day on whether you’re going to fulfill your professional obligation to care for patients versus sacrificing your personal safety or even that of your family because you’re in a situation where you don’t have adequate resources.”

Nurses have a duty to their patients, but they also have a duty to themselves under the nursing code of ethics, Stokes said. Those are equal obligations, and if you feel morally torn, you have to make the decision that’s right for you, she said.

Stokes added that it’s also important to be thankful for the nurses who have decided to step away because they recognized that they weren’t in the best situation physically or mentally to provide care.

‘No, we didn’t sign up for this’

For Rebecca, a nurse in the Albuquerque, New Mexico, area who didn’t want her full name used for fear that she won’t be rehired, the writing was on the wall when she saw a member of her hospital management collect all N95 masks from her floor and lock them in a cabinet in early March, before the country went into full-blown crisis.

“It’s really demoralizing to see someone lock them up in front of you knowing that you might need one of those,” she said. “The whole scene was very symbolic of how all this was going to go down. And it was a bad sign for what’s to come.”

Rebecca, who has been a nurse for four years, said that communication and infrastructure began to break down fairly quickly and that nurses were expected to make terrible compromises.

Masks were rationed to one per week and sometimes shared. Only nurses who dealt with patients who tested positive for COVID-19 were given an extra N95 mask, even if the patient showed symptoms.

During one 16-hour shift, Rebecca was repeatedly in close contact with a patient who later tested positive — and she wasn’t wearing a mask.

“I knew it was something I could no longer handle,” she said. “I know my limitations.”

Rebecca quit in mid-April, one week after she tested negative for COVID-19 after exposure to the patient.

Since quitting, she has been sensitive to the criticism many nurses like her have faced for stepping away during a pandemic. That’s why many of them have kept their decisions private, she said.

It’s especially hurtful when she reads comments on social media that nurses shouldn’t raise complaints because they “signed up for this.”

“We didn’t sign up to be sacrificial lambs. We didn’t sign up to fight a deadly disease without adequate resources,” she said. “We’re told we’re soldiers. Well, you don’t send soldiers to war without a gun and expect them to do their job, but you are doing that to us.”

The sentiments have been shared by thousands of other nurses who feel they are also being put in dangerous environments.

Last month, the New York State Nurses Association, representing more than 3,000 nurses, filed three lawsuits against the New York State Health Department and two hospitals over the health and safety of nurses treating COVID-19 patients.

Among other things, the lawsuits call out the state for not providing appropriate protective equipment for nurses, not properly training nurses deployed from hospital units and not providing safe enough working conditions for high-risk employees.

While the Health Department declined to comment directly on the lawsuit, it did say it was “deeply grateful for the ongoing efforts of New York’s health care workers to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by testing people who may be infected and treating those who are most in need.”

Quitting has been on the minds of many nurses, said Cara Lunsford, a nurse who founded Holliblu, an online community for nurses.

According to a survey conducted by Holliblu, 62 percent of over 1,000 respondents said they are planning to quit either their jobs or the profession altogether.

“They didn’t sign up to go into work and be unprotected from an invisible enemy, and the pressure is really starting to mount for a lot of nurses,” Lunsford said.

This is an unprecedented time, and nurses weren’t trained to be soldiers or handle biological threats with little protection and resources, she said. And if they leave for their sanity or safety, they shouldn’t be treated as defectors.

Constantly being anointed a “hero” by the public also hasn’t helped the added pressure, Rebecca said. While it’s a nice gesture, it gives the connotation that you should be risking yourself without help and that if you don’t you’re a “coward.”

She added that several colleagues reached out to her about wanting to quit after she left but that many just don’t have the option.

“I’ve realized that I’m very fortunate that I had a choice,” she said. “A lot of nurses have student loans, car loans, and they are single parents. They can’t quit, and that bothers me, because they are being taken advantage of right now.”

‘It was one of the most difficult decisions of my life’

Kate, who didn’t want her full name used for privacy, quit her job at a Virginia hospital in April after she was pulled from her floor as a post-anesthesia care unit nurse and reassigned to critical care after only four hours of training.

Throughout her hospital, protective equipment was siphoned for COVID-19-positive patients, but with testing not fully widespread, she never knew whether someone was infected, and worse she, didn’t know whether she was bringing it home.

Kate would go directly to the attic and quarantine away from her husband and children after getting home from work. But the emotional toll was high, and she could no longer be away from her 1- and 3-year-old children.

She knew she had to walk away from her job.

While putting her family first has got her through the painful decision, she still feels tremendous guilt for leaving.

“It’s not just a job, it’s a calling, and to walk away from it is extremely difficult and painful.” she said. “I wish I could have stayed with my patients. It’s not like I didn’t want to be there.”

Had masks been available and pre-pandemic precautions preserved, “without a doubt I’d still be working,” Kate said.

Stokes, of the American Nurses Association, said: “One of the issues that we are trying to emphasize is that nurses must be supported in whatever decision they make, whether they take the risk or choose not to take the risk to protect families.

“It’s a heart-wrenching decision, and many nurses have expressed that they feel sadness and sorrow that they are leaving their colleagues and patients. It’s a difficult decision, and that in itself can be emotionally traumatic.”

Stokes believes the psychological consequences of putting nurses in these dilemmas will be profound and long-lasting. She predicts high levels of post-traumatic stress disorder and secondary trauma syndrome trailing the pandemic.

“Nurses were already burned out before, and this pandemic might push many of them completely out,” she said.

The mental health toll on medical workers was put into sobering perspective after New York City emergency room doctor Lorna Breen died by suicide. A hotline created by physicians to help doctors deal with the anxiety of combating the crisis said it averages up to 20 calls a day. Another hotline, For The Frontlines, has also been set up as a 24-hour resource for other health care and essential workers.

“I would anticipate increased apprehension possibly extending into anxiety or mood problems,” said Dr. Sheetal Marri, a psychiatrist, referring not only to nurses who continued to work but also to those who stepped back. “These effects will impact the way nurses and other health care professionals will deal with workplace health hazards even after this pandemic is over.”

Stanton said she would like to return to nursing but only once guidelines are restored and she can feel safe going to work again. While she is taking this time to focus on her family, she still misses her job.

“I loved being a nurse. You do it because you care, you want to help people,” she said. ” But right now, nurses don’t feel like heroes. We feel expendable.”

If you or someone you know is in crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255, text HOME to 741741 or visit SpeakingOfSuicide.com/resources for additional resources.

Source: Posted and retrieved May 10, 2020 from: https://news.yahoo.com/why-nurses-quit-during-coronavirus-104910947.html?.tsrc=notification-brknews

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VIDEO – Doctors and Nurses Reveal the Devastating Reality of COVID-19 – https://youtu.be/OVp2U2p4lmE

The Atlantic
Posted April 4, 2020 – Chaos. Fear. Dwindling stockpiles of equipment. Impossible choices. Patients dying alone. These are some of the things that health-care professionals describe facing while fighting the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past week, we spoke with doctors, nurses, and physician assistants at some of the hardest-hit hospitals in the nation. In a new documentary from The Atlantic, they bring us into their devastating new reality.

Subscribe to The Atlantic on YouTube: http://bit.ly/subAtlanticYT

Don’t get it twisted, First Responders are dying, some have even committed suicide in this crisis.

This old adage seem apropos at this time:

Never kill yourself for people who would rather watch you die.

This commentary is manifesting a harsh reality: there are Crony-Capitalistic forces at play! Though only indirectly related, the designs of Big Pharma should not be ignored; this was conveyed in a previous commentary by the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean:

Big Pharma or the Pharmaceutical industry, dictates standards of care in the field of medicine, more so than may be a best-practice. There is [the visual] of a familiar scene where pharmaceutical salesmen slip in the backdoor to visit doctors to showcase latest product lines … there are commission kick-backs [tied] in these arrangements.

As a result, treatments like Chemo-therapy cost $20,000+/month; and the War against Cancer is imperiled due to industry profit insistence.

So there are “Big Profits” in the medical industry, right?! Enough to go around so that everyone benefits, right? Nope; not at all; it becomes obvious very quickly that underlying to Crony-Capitalism is greed – more for them; less for you. In a previous Go Lean commentary, this attribute of Big Pharma was exposed:

Book Review – ‘Thimerosal: Let The Science Speak’
The King of Pop, Michael Jackson, released a song with the title: “They don’t really care about us”; he very well could have been talking about Big Pharma. In a previous blog/commentary, the pharmaceutical industry was assailed over one cancer drug, Gleevec. The commentary clearly depicted the perils of Crony-Capitalism.

Crony-Capitalism is not for the Greater Good. It is not good economics, good security nor good governance. These activities must be monitored and mitigated. [See the Michael  Jackson VIDEO of the song “They don’t care about us” in the link here.]

Accepting the truism of Crony-Capitalism in the medical industry, is there any doubt that nurses consider themselves undervalued by their employers and the overall community?

They have been treated as sacrificial, more so than essential.

This sends a Cautionary Warning to all those medical professionals in the Caribbean that may want to emigrate to the United States.

Stay home – “they do not really care about us”.

For those already in the US, lamenting the sad state of affairs, we urge:

Time to Go! We can readily reform and transform the Caribbean homeland with the lesser Crony-Capitalistic influences.

This was the consideration summary in many previous blog-commentaries:

Consider this sample:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14114 School Shootings ‘R’ Us – 11 in 23 Days
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14087 Opioids and the FDA – ‘Fox guarding the Henhouse’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=12949 US Charities too easily exploit Caribbean Disasters
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11269 Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – An American Sickness
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11057 Managing the ‘Strong versus the Weak’ – Selling-Out American Workers
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=6819 Perils of the deficient American food standards – Easy to Do Better

Essential or sacrificial … is a serious consideration for emigrant (overseas ) workers.

If a country shows little – or no – regards for their own people, imagine how much less they would show towards you, the alien-foreigner-worker?!

(There is the documented “bad” track record of American Cruise Lines treating their alien-foreign-workers with little regard – “modern-day-slavery”).

This “inconvenient truth” is related to a strong point conveyed in another previous Go Lean commentary about the immigrant workers who went to England – after World War II – only to find an unwelcoming society and unappreciated employers – their paychecks were likened to poverty wages. It is only apropos to Encore that original July 10, 2014 blog-commentary here-now:

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Go Lean Commentary – British public sector workers strike over ‘poverty pay’

The grass is not greener on the other side.
Go from being a big fish in a small pond, to a small fish in a big pond.

These expressions are relevant in considering the fate of so many Caribbean Diaspora that had fled their Caribbean homelands over the past decades to take residence in Great Britain. Many of them sought refuge as career civil servants; (one reason [a] was the acute racism and intolerance encountered in private enterprises). These ones are faced with the harsh reality that pay scales in the public sector have not kept pace with inflation; they are now at poverty level. See the news article here:

By: Tess Little (Editing by Stephen Addison)

British strike 1LONDON (Reuters) – Hundreds of thousands of public sector workers including teachers, council workers and firefighters staged a 24-hour pay strike on Thursday in a stoppage that has prompted Prime Minister David Cameron to pledge a crackdown on union powers.

Protesters marched through the streets of many of Britain’s main cities in one of the biggest co-ordinated labour stoppages for three years.

Denouncing what they called “poverty pay,” they demanded an end to restrictions on wage rises that have been imposed by the government over the past four years in an effort to help reduce Britain’s huge budget deficit.

In London, demonstrators marched towards Trafalgar Square at midday, chanting “Low pay, no way, no slave labour” to the beat of a drum. A giant pair of inflatable scissors, carried by members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT), read “Education cuts never heal.”

Firefighter Simon Amos, 47, marched wearing his uniform behind a flashing fire engine parading members of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU). “The government [is] making us pay more for our pension for it to be worth the same, and making us work longer,” he said.

British strike 2The biggest public sector union involved, Unison, said early reports showed the strike had led to 3,225 school closures with more than 1,000 others partially closed.

Refuse collectors, school support staff, cleaners, street sweepers, care workers, nursery assistants and social workers were joining the strike, it added.

Hot spots, it said, included the North East, Wales and East Midlands where most council offices had closed, while more than 60 picket lines have closed most services in Newcastle.

“It is a massive decision by local government and school support workers to sacrifice a day’s pay by going on strike, but today they are saying enough is enough,” said Unison General Secretary, Dave Prentis in a statement.

Britain’s coalition government has enforced a policy of pay restraint for public sector workers since coming to power in 2010, imposing a pay freeze until 2012 and then a one percent pay rise cap, resulting in a fall in income in real terms [compared to inflation].

The Cabinet Office played down the impact of the strike, saying that most schools in England and Wales were open and that fire services were operating throughout the country.

British strike 3On Wednesday, Cameron told parliament he planned to limit unions’ powers to call strikes.

“How can it possibly be right for our children’s education to be disrupted by trade unions acting in this way” he said.

Tough new laws would be proposed in the Conservative manifesto for next year’s general election, he added.

These would include the introduction of a minimum threshold in the number of union members who need to take part in a strike ballot for it to be legal.

The manifesto could also back the introduction of a time limit on how long a vote in favour of industrial action would remain valid.

The NUT mandate for Thursday’s strike, for example, came from a 2012 strike ballot based on a turnout of just 27 percent, Cameron said.

The issue of minimum voting thresholds last arose three months ago when a strike by London Underground train drivers caused huge disruption in the capital, prompting Mayor Boris Johnson to demand that at least half of a union’s members should vote in favour for a strike to go ahead.
Source: Reuters News Service; retrieved 07/10/2014 from: http://news.yahoo.com/public-sector-workers-strike-over-poverty-pay-105040672.html

Frankly, the Caribbean Diaspora employed in the British public sector can now do better at home … in the Caribbean.

This is the assertion of the book Go Lean…Caribbean. That once the proposed empowerments are put in place, the Caribbean Diaspora should consider repatriating to their ancestral homelands.

Unfortunately for the Caribbean, this societal abandonment has continued, since the early days of the “Windrush Generation”[a] right up to now. In a recent blog post, this commentary related analysis by the Inter-American Development Bank that the Caribbean endures a brain drain of 70% among the college educated population; (https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1433).

Change has now come to the Caribbean.

The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the technocratic Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU). This roadmap will spearhead the elevation of Caribbean society. The prime directives of the CU are presented as the following 3 statements:

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

The book posits that the improved conditions projected over the 5 years of the roadmap will neutralize the impetus for Caribbean citizens to flee, identified as “push and pull” factors. This point is stressed early in the book (Page 13) in the following pronouncements in the opening Declaration of Interdependence:

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

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

This foregoing article highlights other issues that have been prominently addressed in the Go Lean book, namely that of the Civil Service and Labor Relations. There is the need for a professional staff in the Federal Civil Service. They require marketable benefits and compensation. There is also a role for Labor Unions to play in the elevation of Caribbean society. The Go Lean roadmap envisions an inclusionary attitude towards unions. The Go Lean community ethos is that of being partners with unions, not competitors. The book features specific tools and techniques that can enhance management-labor relationships.

These issues constitute heavy-lifting for the regional administration of the Caribbean:

  • fostering best practices for federal civil service and labor unions,
  • minimizing the brain drain, and
  • facilitating repatriation to the homeland.

These issues cannot be glossed over or handled lightly; this is why the Go Lean book contains 370 pages of finite details for managing change in the region. The book contains the following sample of community ethos, strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to impact the Caribbean homeland:

Community Ethos – Economic Systems Influence Choices & Incentives Page 21
Community Ethos – The Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future Page 21
Community Ethos – Job Multiplier Page 22
Community Ethos – Lean Operations Page 24
Community Ethos – Return on Investments Page 24
Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future Page 26
Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Negotiations Page 32
Strategy – Competition – Remain home   –vs- Emigrate Page 49
Strategy – Agents of Change – Aging Diaspora Page 57
Tactical – Separation of Powers – Versus Member-States Governments Page 71
Implementation – Year 1 / Assemble Phase – Establish Civil Service Page 96
Implementation – Ways to Deliver Page 109
Implementation – Trade Mission Objectives Page 116
Implementation – Reasons to Repatriate Page 118
Anecdote – Experiences of a Repatriated Resident Page 126
Planning  – 10 Big Ideas for the Caribbean Region Page 127
Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs Page 152
Advocacy – Ways to Impact Labor Unions Page 164
Advocacy – Ways to Manage Federal Civil Service Page 173
Anecdote – Experiences of Diaspora Member Living Abroad Page 216
Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Diaspora Page 217

The Go Lean roadmap has simple motives: fix the problems in the homeland to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work, learn and play. There should be no need to go abroad and try to foster an existence in a foreign land. So for those of Caribbean heritage working in the British Civil Service, we hear your pleas. Our response: Come home; come in from the cold.

Now is the time for all of the Caribbean, the people residing in the homeland and those of the Diaspora, to lean-in for the empowerments described in the book Go Lean … Caribbean. This Big Idea for the region is a dramatic change; one that is overdue. The policies & practices of the past have failed Caribbean society. Too many people left, yet have little to show for it.

Caribbean music icon Bob Marley advocated this same charter for the Caribbean Diaspora. He sang to “come in from the cold” in the opening song of his last album Uprisings in 1980. How “spot-on’ were his words in the following music/video:

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

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Appendix – Cited Reference
a: “There was plenty of work in post-war Britain and industries such as British Rail, the National Health Service and public transport recruited almost exclusively from Jamaica and Barbados”. Retrieved July 10, 2014 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_African-Caribbean_people#The_.22Windrush_generation.22

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Good Leadership: Next Generation of ‘Agile’ Project Delivery

Posted on May 23, 2020 in Ethos, Government, Implementation, Industries

Go Lean Commentary

Good Project Management = Good Leadership.

The Art & Science of Project Management is just one way of  improving leadership. As related in the course of this series on Good Leadership, it is possible to change the habits and practices of the leadership of any society. Start at the top or start with the head and the body will follow.

This is a discussion about “tools and techniques”. As the world advances, not only do our tools – think computer hardware, software and communication systems – become more efficient and effective, but also the techniques …

Technique – Lexico, powered by Oxford
A way of carrying out a particular task, especially the execution or performance of an artistic work or a scientific procedure.

Technological tools and techniques evolve … over time.

Speaking of technological evolution, there used to be a time that people with professional careers didn’t know how to …

Type; (think typewriter).

… lawyers, accountants, managers and other occupations would simply dictate (live or into a “Dictaphone”) or wrote freehand and someone else would do the actual typing.

That is right; the typewriter was only used by secretaries, journalists and/or authors; (think Murder She Wrote opening credits). There were jobs like “Typing Pool”, Key-Punch Operators and Data Entry Clerk. Previously, the professional staffers would simply delegate their typing duties to these clerical specialists. In fact, the job title “Clerk/Typist” still exists in the office hierarchy, popular in many government agencies, even though there may be no more typing in their duties.

Then the world changed; driven mostly by technology advances. The Personal Computer was introduced in 1981; then smartphones in the 2000’s; now everyone knows how to type, and do their own typing. The workplace adapted to the new normal.

More technological advances; more adaptation … this time with project leadership. As related, the Art & Science of Project Management is just one form of leadership; good Project Management is part-and-parcel to Good Leadership. The importance of this Art & Science is related in the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean with this quotation (Page 109):

10 Ways to Deliver – # 1: Lean-in for the Caribbean Single Market & Economy initiative: Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU).
… There are many projects that must be delivered on time, within budget and with a measurable satisfaction. These include Public Works, Information Technologies, Industrialization and others. Embracing a technocratic ethos means that these projects cannot be left to chance and hope for the best. They must be delivered. The CU envisions strict project management disciplines in the planning and executions of these regional endeavors.

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The Bottom Line on Project Management Office
A Project Management Office (PMO) is a group or department within a business, agency or enterprise that defines and maintains standards for project management within the organization. The PMO strives to standardize and introduce economies of repetition in the execution of projects. The PMO is the source of documentation, guidance and metrics on the practice of project management and execution. In some organizations this is known as the Program Management Office (sometimes abbreviated to PgMO to differentiate); the subtle difference is that program management relates to governing the management of several related projects. The Project Management Institute (PMI) Program Management Office Community of Practice (CoP), describes the PMO as a strategic driver for organizational excellence, which seeks to enhance the practices of execution management, organizational governance, & strategic change leadership.

PMOs may take other functions beyond standards and methodology, and participate in Strategic project management either as facilitator or actively as owner of the Portfolio Management process. Tasks may include monitoring and reporting on active projects and portfolios (following up project until completion), and reporting progress to top management for strategic decisions on what projects to continue or cancel. Traditional PMOs base project management principles on industry-standard methodologies such as Six Sigma, CMM, Agile and PRINCE2 – (an acronym for Projects in Controlled Environments, version 2); it is a project management methodology. It was developed by the UK government agency Office of Government Commerce (OGC) and is used extensively within the UK government as the de facto project management standard for its public projects).

As the tools and techniques evolve, Agile is the new wave in Project Management. This allows for the role of skilled project managers in societal deliveries; (or skilled project delivery even without project managers). See how this actuality was related in the Go Lean book.

10 Ways to Deliver – # 2: Agile – Lean
Agile project management is an iterative and incremental method of managing the design-and-build activities for engineering, information technology, and new product or service development projects in a highly flexible and interactive manner. Agile, linked to lean techniques, (delivering more value with less waste) is best used in small-scale projects.

There are many flavors – methodologies and frameworks – of Agile. These refer to the values and principles espoused in the Manifesto for Agile Software Development (2010).[5]  These underpin a broad range of software development frameworks, including Scrum, Kanban.[6][7] and SAFe, the most popular subset. See more details on SAFe here; (and related VIDEO’s in the Appendices below):

The Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe) is a set of organization and workflow patterns intended to guide enterprises in scaling lean and agile practices.[1][2] Along with large-scale Scrum (LeSS), disciplined agile delivery (DAD), and Nexus, SAFe is one of a growing number of frameworks that seek to address the problems encountered when scaling beyond a single team.[3][4] SAFe is made freely available by Scaled Agile, Inc., which retains the copyrights and registered trademarks.[5]

SAFe promotes alignment, collaboration, and delivery across large numbers of agile teams. It was developed by and for practitioners, by leveraging three primary bodies of knowledge: agile software development, lean product development, and systems thinking.[6]

The primary reference for the scaled agile framework was originally the development of a big picture view of how work flowed from product management (or other stakeholders), through governance, program, and development teams, out to customers.[7][8] With the collaboration of others in the agile community, this was progressively refined and then first formally described in a 2007 book.[9] The framework continues to be developed and shared publicly; with an academy and an accreditation scheme supporting those who seek to implement, support, or train others in the adoption of SAFe.

Version 4.5, was released in June 2017[10] while the latest edition, version 5.0, was released in January 2020.[11]

While SAFe continues to be recognised as the most common approach to scaling agile practices (at 30 percent and growing),[12][13][14], it also receive criticism for being too hierarchical and inflexible.[15]

But the way technology advances and evolves, the only constant to change is change itself. So now even the “new thing” of Agile is being supplanted with an even “newer thing”. See this comment here from a relevant authority, and respected co-worker:

Quotation – Suman Surabi, Scrum Master with Daimler Benz (Mercedes-Benz Financial):

Agile is getting diluted…. SAFe and Kanban methodologies are being projected/becoming more popular these days.

If you looked 10 years back, or earlier, Project Management being very popular; then after from 2011-2016/17, Agile become very popular; now after especially from last 2 years SAFe is being projected by others as the popular methodology; even I agree with this to some extent.

… if you see the trends these days, the PM role has become negligible as many projects are going without PM’s – they may only have Product Owners, Scrum Masters and Product Managers. Where as in pure Agile projects, we used to have PM’s, now we see the trend for projects to be run without PM’s.

This commentary presents some strategies, tactics and implementations for pursuing the goal of reforming and transforming the Caribbean region. This commentary, along with the whole output from the movement behind the Go Lean book, asserts that Good Leadership is within reach for the Caribbean member-states. Just a little effort by the right people in the right positions and boom: Change, elevation and progress for everybody. “We” can do more with less.

Every month, the Go Lean movement presents a Teaching Series on a subject germane to Caribbean life. For this May 2020, our focus is on Good Leadership, positing that we need Good Leadership now more than ever, as the world battles the Coronavirus pandemic. This is entry 3 of 6 for this series, which details how to employ the tools and techniques of Agile to deliver projects on time, on budget and with a measurable satisfaction. The full catalog for this month’s series is listed as follows:

  1. Good Leadership – Inaction could be deadly
  2. Good Leadership – Caring builds trust; trust builds caring
  3. Good Leadership – Agile: Next Generation of leadership and project delivery
  4. Good Leadership – Hypocrisy cancels out Law-and-Order
  5. Good Leadership – Example – “Leader of the Free World”?
  6. Good Leadership – Example – For mitigating crime

There are no Ands, Ifs or Buts; we need Good Leadership – among our political, corporate, religious and civic stakeholders – to survive and thrive as a society. We needed this before this COVID-19 pandemic, and we will need it afterwards.

This theme, “effective leadership tools and techniques”, shows the positive consequences of leadership attempting to get better in their deliveries. The points of better deliveries, using lean-agile methodologies in a corporate setting (i.e. CitiGroup) was elaborated in a previous blog-commentary from August 9, 2018:

‘Lean Is’ as ‘Lean Does’ – Good Project Management

“It is good to be lean”.

But lean does not just happen, it takes real effort to be lean.

This is the awakening, right now at the Wall Street Big Bank CitiGroup. They are making an all-out effort to “do more with less” and they are thusly investing in “process and people” or “people and process” to be lean. They have launched an all-encompassing program branded CitiLean – a continuous improvement program with tangible and measurable benefits to Citi and its customers. This features “process and people” in every sphere of Citi’s operations: employees, contractors, suppliers and vendors. In fact, they even present an annual Lean Partner Award to recognize the supplier that most embodies the spirit of CitiLean.

The Go Lean book … asserts that any Caribbean super-national governance must be a lean operation, embracing the best-practices of the Art & Science of lean methodologies. The book opens with this introduction of lean (Page 4):

The CU will also be lean (adjective), in that it will not feature a “fat” bureaucracy. To the contrary, the institutions of the CU Trade Federation will embrace lean, agile, efficient organization structures – more virtual, less physical, more systems, less payroll. This will result in less of a tax burden for the people of the Caribbean.

Also, consider this sample of previous submissions of Good Leadership in corporate settings:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=19669 Keep the Change of “Working From Home”
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=18749 Learning from Another ‘Great Place to Work’: Mercedes-Benz
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16002 Good Governance: Good Corporate Compliance
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16000 Good Governance: Facilitating Local Economic Empowerment
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15543 Fostering Caribbean Unity – Learning from the Ross University Saga
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14191 Scheduling and Lean Workforce Management in the ‘Gig Economy’
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=11184 JPMorganChase investing $10 billion in Lean ‘Fintech’ for just 1 year
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=8966 For-Profit Education Companies – Plenty of Profit; Little Education
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2126 Where the Jobs Are – Computers Reshaping Global Job Market

In summary, there is a formula for Good Leadership in organization structures; this could be corporate entities or government agencies. The goal is to deliver on behalf of the stakeholders: shareholders or citizens. We need to double-down on this formula. Agile project management has proven that it can ensure on-time, on-budget deliveries. See the related VIDEO’s in the Appendices below.

There is a pandemic crisis – Coronavirus-COVID-19 – we need effective deliveries right now. The scientific best-practice is to:

  • Test
  • Trace
  • Isolate

A culture of Good Leadership, good administration and good delivery will help our society endure this crisis. Let’s all do more, with less – this is the mantra of agile, lean project management.

Yes, elevating Caribbean leadership will actually elevate Caribbean society.

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders – corporate and government – to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap. This is how we will 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 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.

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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Appendix VIDEO 1 – What is Agile – https://youtu.be/Z9QbYZh1YXY  

Mark Shead
Posted May 31, 2016 – This short cartoon answers the question “What Is Agile?” and will give you the background to understand the Agile principles and values and how they can help you and your team work together more efficiently.

If you’d like a free book on this topic, please see below… https://mailchi.mp/326ba47ba2e8/agile…

I’ve published a book called “Starting Agile” that is designed to help you start your team’s Agile journey outright. You can buy a copy from Amazon, but I’m giving free copies away to my subscribers from YouTube.

You can signup for a copy at the link above.

You can subscribe to my channel with this link: https://www.youtube.com/markshead?sub…

If you’d like to connect with me on LinkedIn you can find me at the link below. Just send me a message saying hello and that you found me from one of my videos: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markshead

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Appendix VIDEO 2 – What is Agile Methodology? – https://youtu.be/ZZ_vnqvW4DQ

Mark Shead
Posted Aug 22, 2018 – Agile is a collection of values and principles. So what is this “Agile Methodology” you keep hearing people talk about? If you’d like a free book on this topic, please see below…

I’ve published a book called “Starting Agile” that is designed to help you start your team’s Agile journey outright. You can buy a copy from Amazon, but I’m giving free copies away to my subscribers from YouTube.

You can signup for a copy at this link:

https://mailchi.mp/326ba47ba2e8/agile…

—————-

Appendix VIDEO 3 – Scrum vs Kanban – Two Agile Teams Go Head-to-Head – https://youtu.be/HNd1_irOL5k  

Posted Sep 27, 2017 –
Development That Pays

This is the tale of two Agile teams. It wasn’t just an organisational separation: it was an AGILE separation.

Download your FREE CHEAT SHEET: http://bit.ly/scrum-vs-kanban-cheatsheet

This is a story of Two Agile Teams. More correctly, it’s the tale of one Agile Team that split into two Agile Teams.

What makes the story interesting is that it was more than just an organisational separation.

It was an Agile separation:

– One team continued as before – with *Scrum*

– The other team dropped Scrum in favour of *Kanban*

Will it all end in tears?

→ SUBSCRIBE for a NEW EPISODE every WEDNESDAY: http://www.DevelopmentThatPays.com/-/…

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Good Leadership: Caring builds trust; trust builds caring

Posted on May 22, 2020 in Economics, Ethos, Government, Implementation

Lean Commentary

Do you want greatness?

Of course, every sane person desires to be around great friends, great family and maybe even work for a great company. In fact, then Presidential Candidate Donald Trump got support in the United States in 2015/2016 with the promise of “Making America Great Again”.

One of the most important ingredients for all great entities is great leadership. (Let’s scale it down to just Good Leadership). This is more than just a fantasy; families, companies and even countries can foster Good Leadership. There is a certain quality that makes this goal possible:

Trust.

Trust is very important for forging Good Leadership. Subjects must feel that they can trust their leaders, that the leaders care and would only have their best interest at heart. So actions of caring and trust are inter-related.

In a previous blog-commentary on “Fostering A Great Place to Work”, this main point was summarized:

There is a ‘Great Place to Work’ Institute that spent 25 years researching the best companies to work for around the world; they found that high levels of trust between employees and managers is the main element found in great workplaces.

Caring builds trust; trust builds caring …

While it is near impossible to change all the citizens of a country or all the employees of a company in “one fell swoop”, it is possible to change the habits and practices of its leadership team; (or maybe change the team). Start at the top – start with the head and the body will follow – within the organization structure and all stakeholders will experience the benefits of Good Leadership in due time.

Companies and countries … there are differences; there are similarities. While a company’s prime directive make be to maximize shareholder value, the country will be more concerned with optimally executing the Social Contract between citizens and the State; (where citizens surrender some of their freedoms and submit to the authority of the State in exchange for protection of remaining natural and legal rights).

Accountability is still the same. The need for trust is still the same.

In a previous blog-commentary, this Executive Summary of the book Good to Great was provided, where it depicted the important role of leadership to make a great organization:

Book: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap … and Others Don’t
By: Jim Collins; one of the most influential management consultants

Chapter Summaries

Chapter 1: Good is the Enemy of Great

Chapter 2: Level 5 Leadership

    1. In this chapter, Collins begins the process of identifying and further explicating the unique factors and variables that differentiate good and great companies. One of the most significant differences, he asserts, is the quality and nature of leadership in the firm. Collins goes on to identify “Level 5 leadership” as a common characteristic of the great companies assessed in the study. This type of leadership forms the top level of a 5-level hierarchy that ranges from merely competent supervision to strategic executive decision-making.
    2. By further studying the behaviors and attitudes of so-called Level 5 leaders, Collins found that many of those classified in this group displayed an unusual mix of intense determination and profound humility. These leaders often have a long-term personal sense of investment in the company and its success, often cultivated through a career-spanning climb up the company’s ranks. The personal ego and individual financial gain are not as important as the long-term benefit of the team and the company to true Level 5 leaders. As such, Collins asserts that the much-touted trend of bringing in a celebrity CEO to turn around a flailing firm is usually not conducive to fostering the transition from Good to Great.

Chapter 3: First Who, Then What

Chapter 4: Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith)

Chapter 5: The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity Within the Three Circles)

Chapter 6: A Culture of Discipline

Chapter 7: Technology Accelerators

Chapter 8: The Flywheel and the Doom Loop

Chapter 9: From Good to Great to Built to Last

How can Good Leaders build trust with their stakeholders (citizens, employees, etc.)? Quite simply: Care for your subjects; do not just say it, do it; walk the walk not just talk to talk. Caring should be “action”. See a great example in these VIDEO’s here:

VIDEO 1 – [Gravity Payments] CEO Cut Salary To Pay Employees $70k – https://youtu.be/4ygSJwzJ1tM

TYT’s The Conversation
Posted Oct 7, 2019 – Dan Price set a $70k minimum wage for his employees and cut down his own pay. Cenk Uygur, host of The Conversation, breaks it down. MORE TYT: https://tyt.com/trial https://gravitypayments.com/ Hosts: Cenk Uygur, Cast: Cenk Uygur.

***

The Largest Online News Show in the World. Hosted by Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian. LIVE STREAMING weekdays 6-8pm ET. http://tyt.com/live

Subscribe to The Young Turks on YouTube: http://youtube.com/subscription_cente…
TYT on Facebook: http://facebook.com/theyoungturks
TYT on Twitter: http://twitter.com/theyoungturks
TYT on Instagram: http://instagram.com/theyoungturks

Merch: http://www.shoptyt.com

…

Producer, Senior Producer and Executive Producer membership: http://go.tyt.com/producer

Young Turk (n), 1. Young progressive or insurgent member of an institution, movement, or political party. 2. A young person who rebels against authority or societal expectations. (American Heritage Dictionary)

#TYT #TheYoungTurks #TheConversation

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VIDEO 2  – Gravity Payments Team Surprises CEO, Dan Price, With A Tesla! – https://youtu.be/kgF9ohgylWY

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There is no doubt that the company CEO in these VIDEO’s reflect caring for his subjects; and in turn the subjects – his employees – trust him. The goal of Good Leadership is fully manifested in this case.

(Source: https://www.bloomberg.com/profile/company/9897253Z:US)

Don’t get it twisted, a person does not have to give up a million dollar salary to be considered a Good Leader; it was the caring for the needs of his stakeholders that made Dan Price effective. His employees had real concerns affording housing in the expensive city of Seattle, Washington – their headquarters. See the article excerpt in the Appendix below. (Such a topic is also important for Caribbean Public Servants, as they have poverty wages).

Other leaders have had to express similar concern and consideration for their subjects; think workplace safety, health insurance, disaster recovery-response, and today: pandemic threats. But this benevolence is not standard or common. For example, there are hospitals that are on the opposite end of the spectrum when it comes to Good Leadership; they have:

The presence of Good Leadership is just as obvious as the opposite extreme: the dread of Bad Leadership.

  • Who would you rather work for?
  • Or serve under?
  • Or practice good citizenship towards?

This commentary presents some strategies, tactics and implementations for pursuing the goal of reforming and transforming the Caribbean region. It starts with Good Leadership.  But the Art & Science of Leadership is not always something that is taught in school; sometimes it is taught … in Church; remember the Golden Rule … here:

Bible Reference – 6 Bible Verses about the ‘Golden Rule’

  • Matthew 7:12 – “In everything, therefore, treat people the same way you want them to treat you, for this is the Law and the Prophets.
  • Luke 6:31 – Treat others the same way you want them to treat you.
  • Matthew 22:39-40 – The second is like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets.”
  • Mark 12:31 – The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
  • Romans 13:8-9 – Owe nothing to anyone except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law. For this, “You shall not commit adultery, You shall not murder, You shall not steal, You shall not covet,” and if there is any other commandment, it is summed up in this saying, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”

Source: Retrieved May 27, 2020 from: https://bible.knowing-jesus.com/topics/Golden-Rule

Every month, the movement behind the 2013 book Go Lean…Caribbean presents a Teaching Series on a subject germane to Caribbean life. For this May 2020, our focus is on Good Leadership. We need Good Leadership now more than ever, as the world battles the Coronavirus pandemic. This is entry 2 of 6 for this series, which details that “caring builds trust”. The full catalog for this month’s series is listed as follows:

  1. Good Leadership – Inaction could be deadly
  2. Good Leadership – Caring builds trust; trust builds caring
  3. Good Leadership – Agile: Next Generation of leadership and project delivery
  4. Good Leadership – Hypocrisy cancels out Law-and-Order
  5. Good Leadership – Example – “Leader of the Free World”?
  6. Good Leadership – Example – For mitigating crime

There are no Ands, Ifs or Buts; we need Good Leadership – among our political, corporate, religious and civic stakeholders – to survive this COVID-19 pandemic. Over 300,000 people have died; this is not a hoax.

This theme “Caring builds trust and trust builds caring” shows the positive consequences of benevolent leadership. Benevolence in government has many positive benefits, like dissuading people from fleeing the homeland in search of refuge.  The points of benevolent governance, management and administration – a subset of Good Leadership – were elaborated in many other blog-commentaries; consider this sample of previous submissions:

https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17697 Good Administration of Common Pool Resources
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17358 Marshall Plan – A Lesson in History of a Good Solution
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=17697 Good Governance: The Kind of Society We Want
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=16002 Good Governance: Good Corporate Compliance
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15996 Good Governance: Stepping Up in an Emergency
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=15479 ‘Lean Is’ as ‘Lean Does’ – Good Project Management
https://goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=14174 Canada: “Follow My Good Example” on ‘Climate Change’ Action

In summary, there is a formula for Good Leadership; leaders should care for their subjects and the subjects will then naturally trust them. So in effect, trust can be built using this formula. We need the caring; we need the trust; especially now during this Coronavirus-COVID-19 crisis and in everyday life: before, during and after this pandemic disaster.

So Good Leadership , Good Administration and Good Governance is just the expectation of good people in society. Most people do not know how to forge Good Leadership, but they know “it” when they see it. This realization is important for the movement behind the Go Lean book and roadmap. We need to reach and reform the Caribbean leaders and the Caribbean subjects.

Yes, we can elevate Caribbean leadership. We want our leaders to care; we want to trust that they are acting with our best interest in mind.

We hereby urge all Caribbean stakeholders – leaders and followers – to lean-in to this Go Lean roadmap … and subscribe to this vision. We specifically urge all leaders to care about their subjects and we urge all subjects to trust their leaders. While this is easy to say – and hard to do – the manifestation of this vision, is how we will 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 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.

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: Here’s What Really Happened at That Company That Set a $70,000 Minimum Wage
Sub-title: Dan Price decided to pay all 120 employees at least $70,000. Grown men cried. Profits soared. Then things got really crazy.
By: Paul Keegan, Contributing Editor, INC Monthly Magazine

Before Dan Price caused a media firestorm by establishing a $70,000 minimum wage at his Seattle company, Gravity Payments… before Hollywood agents, reality-show producers, and book publishers began throwing elbows for a piece of the hip, 31-year-old entrepreneur with the shoulder-length hair and Brad Pitt looks… before Rush Limbaugh called him a socialist and Harvard Business School professors asked to study his radical experiment in paying workers… an entry-level Gravity employee named Jason Haley got really pissed off at him.

It was late 2011. Haley was a 32-year-old phone tech earning about $35,000 a year, and he was in a sour mood. Price had noticed it, and when he spotted Haley outside on a smoking break, he approached. “Seems like something’s bothering you,” he said. “What’s on your mind?”
…

Finally, he realized why: Haley was right — not only about being underpaid, but also about Price’s intentions. “I was so scarred by the recession that I was proactively, and proudly, hurting my staff,” he says. Thus began Price’s transformation from classic entrepreneur to crusader against income inequality, set on fundamentally changing the way America does business. For three years after his face-off with Haley, Price handed out 20 percent annual raises. Profit growth continued to substantially outpace wage growth. This spring, he spent two weeks running the numbers and battling insomnia before making a dramatic announcement to his 120-member staff on April 13, inviting NBC News and The New York Times to cover it: Over the next three years, he will phase in a minimum wage of $70,000 at Gravity and immediately cut his own salary from $1.1 million to $70,000 to help fund it.
…

The 20 percent raises Price implemented in 2012 were supposed to be a one-time deal. Then something strange happened: Profits rose just as much as the previous year, fueled by a surprising productivity jump — of 30 to 40 percent. He figured it was a fluke, but he piled on 20 percent raises again the following year. Again, profits rose by a like amount. Baffled, he did the same in 2014 and profits continued to rise, though not quite as much as before, because Gravity had to do more hiring.
…
“I began wondering what my friend would have to make so she wouldn’t have to worry about a $200 rent hike,” says Price. He recalled a 2010 study by Princeton behavioral economist Daniel Kahneman finding that, while people did not feel happier on a daily basis as their income rose above $75,000, they were decidedly unhappier the less they earned below $75,000. At Gravity, new hires made $35,000 a year.

By any measure, Gravity was doing relatively well. Revenue hit $150 million in 2014 and was growing 15 percent per year on $7 billion in customer transactions. Profits hit $2.2 million — actually a so-so 1.46 percent net margin, below the industry average. About 40 percent of the profits went to Dan and Lucas as dividends …
…
Is there a magic number that keeps workers focused while still generating a profit? Price calculated a figure but never imagined the publicity he’s gotten would boost new customer inquiries from 30 per month to 2,000 within two weeks. Customer acquisition costs are typically high, so in that sense, the strategy has paid off. And in this business, customer retention is key. Gravity’s 91 percent retention rate over the past three years — far above the industry average of about 68 percent — has been crucial to its success.
…
Six months after Price’s announcement, Gravity has defied doubters. Revenue is growing at double the previous rate. Profits have also doubled. Gravity did lose a few customers: Some objected to what seemed like a political statement that put pressure on them to raise their own wages; others feared price hikes or service cutbacks. But media reports suggesting that panicked customers were fleeing have proved false. In fact, Gravity’s customer retention rate rose from 91 to 95 percent in the second quarter.
…
Price says establishing a $70,000 minimum wage is a moral imperative, not a business strategy. And yet he must prove the business wisdom behind it, not only to keep Gravity from sinking — and going down with the ship himself–but also to achieve his long-term goal of transforming the business world. “I want the scorecard we have as business leaders to be not about money, but about purpose, impact, and service,” he says. “I want those to be the things that we judge ourselves on.”

See the full article here – Source: INC Monthly Magazine Posted May 2015; retrieved May 27, 2020 from: https://www.inc.com/magazine/201511/paul-keegan/does-more-pay-mean-more-growth.html

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