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.
Here is another essay on the subject of first names. As in birth names. Or names provided to an offspring at birth. While the developed world tends to shy away from the exotic like Refrigerator or Coca Cola for their new production there is a plethora of Jims and Johns and Bobs or Robs. Speaking of which I do not think there is a categoric decision point at the time of birth if a child will be hereafter called as Bob. I mean have not yet met a toddler called Bob or Rob for that matter. At some point though the parental instinct to mouth out multiple syllables runs out and they switch from calling the crawler Robert to simply Robbie to Rob. Now speaking of - it is strange that the name sounds like something you would not want Rob to do - i.e. Rob anyone. Then why call someone that? After all Rob Peter to Pay Paul is not exactly a maxim to live a young life? Is it? Perhaps Peter or Paul might want to have a say in it? Then there is this matter of going to the John. Why degrad...
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