News on the dawn of 2011 that the Inter-American Development Bank wants to work with enterprising entrepreneurs comes with a huge sigh of relief.
International banks and donors pour money into the State. And while the State grabs money from the aid donors and world banks, families fighting for survival depend on handouts from overseas relatives. Foreign aid funds everything except legitimate business ideas.
After 1992, then President Cheddi Jagan had to spend his energies erasing the mammoth debt the previous government accumulated. All that debt with nothing to show for it, after 28 years. Now the debt load climbs again, slow but sure.
So what a relief that a commercial bank could source that US$5 million from an international development bank to pump capital into the ideas of enterprising private initiatives.
We ought to applaud the Development Bank for this move, as it by-passes the gross corruption of State funds that goes by so blithely in this country.
This country desperately demands an economic bailout strategy. But to depend too heavily on one sector as the “engine of growth” or “fuel of the economic engine” – to use those old clichés – would be a huge mistake.
Just as we witness the grave failure of the State to accelerate development, we cannot put all our faith solely in the private sector.
For one, the nouveau riche make up a big percentage of the local business scene, and much of that wealth is suspect as narco-funded, not to mention other illegal ways of the “business” world such as the backtrack trade, smuggling and so on.
More importantly, as the 21st century advances with knowledge emerging about inhumane behaviours of the world’s corporate powerhouses, a new perspective takes shape about matters economic.
The US film-maker Michael Moore dealt with this in his documentary ‘Corporation’, likening multinational corporations to schizophrenic personalities.
Also, studies show that the profit motives of multinational corporations deform society. No society suffers more than the US, where profit motives drive even State policies such as health care. Even the US’ national elections stand in the danger zone, and so strict lobbyist rules set up sturdy boundaries to keep out profits from politics.
In fact, more people per capita wake up every morning locked up in prison in the US, precisely because the profit motive drives some aspects of the justice system there.
One report shows that a corporation got the contract to laundry the clothes and bedding of prisoners. This company’s profits directly relates to how many people populate the US prisons. The US government funds housing, food and living structures for three millions prisoners. These are virtually the ‘customers’ of the laundry company, with guaranteed State funds. The company’s profit motives grant them a vested interest in seeing laws becoming more and more draconian, thus causing more and more people to be jailed.
The profit motive should not be the sole motivating force in a business. That’s one of the big lessons we are learning in this new century.
So as the commercial bank in Georgetown funds these small enterprises with international money, we as a society must learn the lessons of the world’s history in this Age of Knowledge, and develop a sound economic strategy to empower ourselves as true wealth generators.
We would be well served to incorporate the Co-operative Sector into our national economic strategy. As the world’s only Co-operative Republic, we could claim a distinct economic strategy that would work wonders as a new model of national development.
In the developed world – in North America, Europe and Asia – a new thinking takes shape. Calling themselves social entrepreneurs, and even conscientious entrepreneurs, these new business tycoons design their businesses not only for profit generation, but to make a big social impact, to shape society for every citizen’s benefit.
In fact, some of the world’s richest people now do business this way. Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and many more pump their wealth back into society.
The concept is not all that new, for this is what the then richest man in the world, Andrew Carnegie, did with his wealth: he built public libraries all over the world. The public library in Georgetown stands there because one businessman became a social entrepreneur.
The Co-operative Sector here could contribute and generate that social conscience aspect of our economic life, if businesses would partner with Co-ops.
Today, the concept of social entrepreneurs excites business leaders in the developed world.
The Guyana Bank for Trade and Industry, the commercial bank that oversees the US$5 million, would do well to think along these lines in evaluating business ideas for funding. We must care about the social impact of our behaviour, especially in economic matters.
In the year 2000, Stan Davis and Christopher Meyer of the US wrote a ground-breaking book, called ‘Future Wealth’, published by Harvard Business School Press.
The authors mapped out a 21st century global economic future where knowledge, talent and personal skills would become real assets, where intellectual smarts would be as commoditized as land, houses and commercial buildings today. In fact, they see knowledge as assets that could be packaged and traded on global markets as intellectual assets.
They mentioned Michael Jordan as one example of what that future would look like, where the individual accumulates real value, as a person. Tiger Woods, Serena and Venus Williams, and our own Shivnarine Chanderpaul and Ramnaresh Sarwan all live in this future, being pre-paid handsome sums in anticipation of their performance, through long-term contracts.
This, in fact, has already happened all over the entertainment world of music and movies, where a person becomes a brand that is tradable globally.
The author Stephen King receives millions of dollars for books he would write ten years from now. Insurance companies underwrite the risks involved in such transactions.
This is the kind of creative vision we must incorporate into our business DNA. We must build an environment that breathes an atmosphere of individual empowerment. We must encourage thinking, observation and curiosity. We must love innovation and research, and fund new, original ideas.
In other words, as Stan and Meyer say, we need to build “human capital”, especially given that the State is developing the structure for a Knowledge Economy with an Internet backbone.
The world has shifted into the Information Age, with Google’s idea to transform global information flow well on the way to becoming the way of the world.
“The business world is finding out how to look at your human assets, your intellectual capital, in a whole new way,” Stan and Meyer said in their book.
And thus must our commercial banks find a new way to look and feel towards those entrepreneurs who with a nurtured social conscience work hard to generate ground-breaking, innovative, original, new ideas.
2011 grants us a fresh new opportunity to build a society of dynamic creative energy, and the Inter-American Development Bank gave us the Christmas gift of a great start.
This writer can be reached by email at [email protected]
