Читать книгу Cast Away : For These Reasons - Lambert Timothy James - Страница 12

What is the standard antidote injected into a nation once deemed as a "failed state?" Let's look at Haiti after Hurricane Sandy blasted through this voodoo nation that was already socio-politico-economically wobbling for a century. First, it was quarantined and put under the supervision of spooky eyes of international trusteeship. After what powerful nations imposed via douceur (democratic elections) to millions of illiterates, a charismatic buffoon whose brightest idea was to organize carnival celebrations all over the smaller portion of the island of Hispaniola, while serious decisions were taken solely by the World Bank and International Monetary Fund emissaries. The social, commerce and trade, and political crimes committed in Haiti are far from being an isolated case; international assistance funds have been used by predator nations to extract that sort of concessions from the crippled nations, which often are not willing to offer in healthy times.

What we have seen in Haiti and in other black holes where those same approaches were taken is that remedies produced a worse net result than the problem itself ever did. Primarily because these nations' kleptomaniacs and technical "partners" often implement contradictory dogmas and reforms that cause poor countries to fall further behind. I should not be the first one to tell you that John Maynard Keynes and Harry Dexter White offsprings and other international financial institutions act at the whim of their backers and backers' backers' interests. This, in turn, leads to another round of despicable resource waste and mismanagement. If you are craving to get a sense of the magnitude of this mess, please take a tour of Cite' Jalousie, Port au Prince, Haiti, and compare it to villas rented by United Nations "peacemakers" a few miles away.

It matters little, socialism, or capitalism, greed is greed, avarice is contagious with power and the political pathway to the ability to have it makes little difference. The end result is the glorification of heroes’ feet be they in the athletic shoes of Nike or the Wingtips of a politician. The result is the continued suffering under a disparate economic system that consistently shells out to the privileged few and discriminates against the disadvantaged many. What to say about humankind when, time and time again, national leaders turn a blind eye to the continuance of inhumane practices. Slavery still exists. It isn’t as open, there are no ships full of black or brown retched incarcerated humanity, now days they are transported in containers aboard ships freely traveling the high seas finding homes in the most fashionable cities of the world.

"I preached as never sure to preach again, and as a dying man to dying men."– Richard Baxter

Nowadays, economists claim that a theory can't be developed except in a purely numb way; any phenomenon that can't be reconstructed in a mathematical model is deemed illogical and trashed. If in a sense, nothing is explained unless everything is stated in a mind-bending equation frame, this book is read as a suicidal letter. I am not depressed enough either to jump in front of a subway train or to make a journey to a Buddhist monk temple. I have to thank the classical and prodigal political economists who were not inclined to this constraint and who aesthetically birthed essential principles and, unfortunately in most cases, robust diabolic treatises.

In third world countries, the contrast between the misery and despair of the many and the level of opulence and waste of the few is not a complex abstract, but rather an observable reality on an insane scale amounting to a moral abomination.

Western revered revisionists under the umbrella of international organizations such as UNDP (United Nations Development Program) are suggesting that third world countries nightmares have nothing to do with colonization. The pathetic excuse is held as the truth even when we see post-colonial social layers mirroring the caste system inherited from colonization’s ruthless exploitive social construct. Little has it done, other than imposing a maniac head of state, to help the marginalized evade a bleak future. Social, commerce and trade, and political anthropophagy (Capitalism) is an exogenous concept proven not fitting for developing countries' realities and potentials.

In the global Capitalism arena, a nation’s ability to race against others of at least the same size predetermines its prospect for growth and development. The Republic of Burundi and the Kingdom of Belgium, two countries of roughly the same size and population, cannot be further apart economically. Burundi’s GDP is half of one percent that of Belgium. Other than racking debt higher than the tiny Kingdom’s GDP, how else did Belgium achieve this prowess?

The historians tell the story of Belgium’s comparative advantage over Burundi beginning in the 19th century. Belgium’s King Leopold II² applied the well-traveled path of, “if you don’t have resources, go grab some.” Through this, just like The Netherlands, Britain, France, Italy and Germany they were able to amass personal and national wealth. Colonization was not a self-defeating drain on the domestic economy. Quite the opposite.

While Germans were decimating Burundi’s socio-cultural structures, from 1887 to 1965, King Leopold II of Belgium, and subsequently Belgium as a nation, was quietly plundering the natural resources from a territory eighty times its size, known today as the Democratic Republic of Congo. After World War II, Burundi was wrenched from Germany’s grip and given to Belgium by the League of Nations for enduring the temporary hardships of war by their big neighbor.

Developing countries are not the sole sources of evidence of the global malfeasance by politicos and their economist stooges. On the one hand, centralized economies have failed by imposing a uniform basket of needs for the ninety-nine percent of the population at the bottom. The defunct Soviet Union implemented Communism by plundering the wealth of the ruling class and then ate the middle class when the wealthy were extinguished. The intelligentsia filled Gulags who knew how to run a nation and economy no matter how poorly, or who quickly deserted the nation of their birth for France, England, Germany and America. This left the Soviet Union with management at every level with no knowledge of how to run a nation let alone a war-torn bankrupt economy.

Whereas on the other hand, the free market is failing us with a morally bankrupt rules of survival of the fittest, catering to the new investor classes of fractional class elite. The defunct Soviet Union implemented Communism correctly until it hit a wall, literally. Whereas on the other hand, the free market is failing us with an unethical rule of the survival of the fittest, catering to a small group of the one percent at the top. The only time, in recent memories, The United States Congress came together in bipartisan fashion was to bail out numerous "too big to fail" U.S. banks and insurance companies. In contrast, in 2013, the same Congress slashed billions of dollars from the food stamp program that had kept a chunk of The United States population noses above the poverty level³.

When you pay attention to the global financial transactions’ postcard, you should be able to see how the Capitalism model has confined lucrative international financial flows within the same economies. Other countries are reduced to mere providers of raw material and cheaper labor. However, the fat lady is about to stop singing very soon; she is getting too plump to stand on her feet. In 2010, General Motors shut down their plant in Antwerp, Belgium, because of the excess capacity in the European car industry. Subsequently, other plants across different industries in Europe and North America have since closed their doors.

"Koketsu ni irazunba koji wo ezu."– Japanese Wisdom

Although by respective economic doctrine, the Republic of Cuba and England are recklessly doing right. At the assessment of the two existing economic lines of attacks (poverty, pollution, war, etc.) suggests to our sense of humanity that neither approaches are the right thing to do. I had a glimmer of hope when the former Soviet Union and China decided to go cold turkey, breaking out from the communist penitentiary institution, until they ran straight into the psychiatric Capitalism facility, which is a pure form of insanity!

Currently, the world lacks full-bodied alternatives and, after multiple frantic financial crises, acknowledging Capitalism's barbarism and flaws should not be a mortal sin. In the light of recurrent facts, financial cataclysms' austerity and spending have shown not to be sustainable solutions, but rather a lampooning of the struggling class. I allow myself here to say in the most simplistic way, new markets need to be promoted to rejuvenate the global economic system, but in doing so, new trends need to be developed to avoid the final cataclysm. This change requires applying the appropriate social, commerce and trade, and political form that will not only move "poor" countries into the international trade system, as to say from exploited bystanders to active producers and buyers but also break current markets' affairs from the old order and the New World Order.

Creative as humans are, I used to wait on the side for a superwoman to save us all. Then I learned that in 1945 when American and British battleships and aircraft carriers were getting close to the Japanese mainland, ordinary young people were asked to make the ultimate sacrifice to save the empire of the rising sun - their lives. The pitch of victimhood built on the atomic attacks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki romanticized these young men's fearlessness. I took an offense when called a kamikaze for my attacks on Capitalism only after I learned about the Nanjing Massacre, and women forced into sex slavery for the Japanese military.

Tired of waiting for a whistle that will halt our deliberate destruction, I am not going to bore you with the same crybaby wailing that you have come to associate with critics of Capitalism or social, commerce and trade, and political injustices. To burst your bubble, the solution is neither increasing the minimum wage, give a dog a bone, nor building up tax barracks, Nezumi kozo. These two are nothing more than economic palliative remedies. To your delight or indignation, I am going to expose your few remaining neurons to a new social, commerce and trade, and political form that potentially transposes general notions by propelling the ninety-nine percent to the top and take care of the one percent less fortunate at the bottom. And Caesar, ahem, you the reader, would have to decide my fate!