Skip to main content

A new world order

The more you read about global economic chaos it becomes clear that all of it is rooted in basic human greed. Since it is very hard to create excessive return on investment from nothing (something akin to E=mc2) there has to be a flaw in the system somewhere. Recent admission by a large US bank that it lost over $2 Billion in a bad trade underscores the core issue. There is no such thing as Impressive Market Valuation. Its a fallacy created by marketers of various commodities to lure dumb people to part with their money. This impacts the people that are the most susceptible without their active participation. It can happen when a common man's pension fund invests in a derivatives market and the trade goes south. The derivative of this transaction is that the common man gets buried while the make believe world of high finance makes a killing. What is required then is a basic safety net. Governments of the world need to invest in the five core industries and guarantee their respective citizens access to those services at a inflation controlled price. Those would include - 1. Food - Fresh produce including grains that would yield nutrition to the most lower echelons of society. Some writers are bringing attention to this issue through their work - an example is food activist and auhtor Raj Patel. People with excess cash can choose to go and spend their disposable income on McDonald's or a high end meal in some luxury digs on their own volition. 2. Schooling - basic elementary schooling needs to be provided to every child. In fact it should be mandated like some countries mandate participation in their military after age 18. The model for that can be certain Charter Schools in the US that employ high caliber teachers and can fire them for poor performance. Molding a child early with the right tools like math, science and language can ensure long term sustained growth of the civilization. 3. Medicine - Access to all manners of health care for all citizens should also be a priority with all private enterprise involved with research in this field having to mandatorily share their profits to fund medication and hospitalization for anyone that cannot afford it. This can be an area to form private and public sector partnerships. 4. Sanitation - Again basic santitation should be a birth right. Governments need to do what ever is necessary to meet this demand. If that also means curtailing population growth in countries like India and China where the economics of supply and demand are skewed then so be it. China to some extent (based on published media reporting - to be taken with a grain of salt) has been able to accomplish this since it does not hide behind the foolish curtain of democratic thought when it comes to an obvious suicidal cliff of population explosion. 5. Lastly to enable all of the above will require a lot of energy. Creation and distribution of the same should also be a public private partnership ensuring the other four industries succeed. All other businesses including those that produce cars to idevices to software to clothing to exotic financial derivatives and others are luxuries and can extract full advantage from the capitalist model to further profit making.

Comments

  1. The scary part is that people who should know better (the professionals-MBAs, doctors, Chartered accountants etc) are perpetrating the major frauds on mankind.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

But What If We're Wrong?

I attempted to read this book by author Chuck Klosterman backward to forward but it started hurting my brain so I decided to stop and do it like any other publication in the English language.  Start from page 1 and move to the right. Witty, caustic and thought provoking this is a book you want to read if you believe that the status quo might, just might be wrong. At times bordering on being contrarian about most things around us it tries to zero in on the notion of what makes anything believable and certain in our minds.  The fact that there is a fact itself is ironic.  Something analogous to the idea that you can never predict the future because there is no future. Many books and movies have tried to play on this concept - best that I recollect (I think I am) was 'The Truman Show'.  This book by Klosterman attempts to provoke the reader to at least contemplate that what they think they know may be wrong. He uses examples like concept of gravity, and how it ...

Peru, South America - Week well spent

Growing up in India the only Peru I knew of was a tropical fruit (Guava for those whose lingua is English).   Not until high school did I discover that it was also a country in the South American continent. So it was this early April week that we decided to hit up Peru - the land of the once glorious Inca people that lived 500 years ago.  Today Peru is the third largest country on that continent with a diverse geography that stretches from the drier Pacific coast plains to the high mountains of the Andes and the Amazon river valley to its east. Our trip was primarily a pilgrimage of sorts to visit the last remaining, lost (now found and documented), large scale, mostly undamaged, city of the Inca nobility, called Machu Picchu (MP).  The Inca were great architects and builders.  MP is a UNESCO world heritage site affording it high visibility to the tourism trade and therefore crowded year round.  Our timing was not quite high season allowing us...

You are important to us

Followed by piano music.   Followed by 'we are experiencing heavier than usual call volume'.  Sounds macabre like bleeding during menstruation or after a ghastly attack with a weapon on a hemophiliac.  Sorry Mrs. Johnson but it appears little Gertrude here has been bleeding heavier than usual what with her night time activities competing with the woodchucks in your neighborhood. Some services even go as far as to pick a random day to say - 'if you were to call us during the Chinese lunar month when the moon is axiomatically hugging the polar star with Jupiter intravenous when call volume is light'.  Well I will be damned.  I thought  I had checked with my astrologer before I placed this well focused call but  I guess this is what you get for listening to a quack. Umph! I am not sure which marketing genius came up with this personal touch concept of informing the caller that you are really a jackass for actually calling the customer serv...