This is a quick oversimplification of a whole myriad of very complicated business, economic and political problems...
However, like everything else, if you want to understand and/or do something better and better, you have to start at the beginning -- and/or the bottom -- and work your way up 'The Abstraction Knowledge, Skill and Performance Ladder', until you are -- metaphorically speaking -- 'swimming with the sharks'.
Although my 'knowledge expertise' is not geared specifically to business, economics, and politics, still the narcissistic, epistemological, and ethical principles that I have learned from studying philosophy and psychology in significantly more detail, are just as applicable to the study of business, economics, and politics -- indeed, any and every aspect of human culture and human living -- as where these principles came from in the study of philosophy, science, medicine, and psychology.
Let us start with the concept of a 'free market'.
Now this is an extremely complicated -- and 'ideal' (among 'free market capitalist' advocates) -- concept that has another complicated myriad of intertwining co-factors and forces attached to it that are impossible to explain or understand in one sitting.
However, I think that most of my readers will agree that there is a significant difference between an 'ethical free market' and an 'unethical free market', and also that in today's North American and International economy, there are a whole host of overt and covert, regulated and unregulated, controlled and uncontrolled, manipulated and unmanipulated, forces at work that make this market far from 'free' -- and far from 'fair', the latter concept of which is an 'adjective' that is often contrasted against 'free', implying that 'free' -- whatever your definition of 'free' is -- is not neccessarily anywhere in the same ballpark as the concept of 'fair'.
President Obama was right when he first was campaigning and put his 'accusing finger' on 'NAFTA' as one very important 'cause' of the 'very high unemployment levels' in both America and Canada -- and connected with this -- the 'abandonment' of North American 'manufacturing plants' and other 'goods and services' businesses from North America.
In a nutshell, why make goods in Canada or America if you can make them 10 times cheaper in Mexico -- or any other 'underdevloped, poor country' in the world -- that has no 'exporting tariffs' to deal with when businesses in these countries sell their goods and/or services to Canada or America? That line of thinking is not rocket science.
Then you go back to see who put their signatures on NAFTA and you find out that from America it was Bush and from Canada it was Mulroney -- Big Business and Corporation men -- and you start to understand why when you realize that 'more and more powerful Unions in North America' were making labour costs more and more expensive here -- and gave large (and medium size) Corporations an 'escape route' away from high labour costs and unions in North America by allowing them to 'freely set up shop' iin some of the 'poorest countries in the world' with the cheapest labour forces.
However, what was good for the largest Corporations in North America -- the ones who gave the largest 'support donations' to 'Conservative' and 'Republican' Political Parties (indeed, to ANY Political Party that is likely to be in power including the Liberals here in Canada and the Democrats in America) -- was obviously not good for North American workers, the middle class, and the lower class. Thus, 'Global Capitalism and Free International Trade Agreements' have set up the current 'Class Warfare' between the 'Richest Business Owners and Polticians in North America' -- and the middle and lower classes in North America who are finding less and less businesses to work in, because of the 'evacuation' of these businesses to 'third world countries' since the signing of NAFTA.
In effect, as what used to be the 'poorest and/or third world countries' in the world are becoming wealthier and more powerful -- to the point where both Canada and America are becoming 'financially enslaved' to these countries because they now own most of North America and/or are becoming larger and larger 'loan creditors' to Canadian and/or American governments and/or businesses -- essentially buying up North America because we can't -- or won't -- properly take care of our own businesses dometic business practices.
In essence, both America and Canada have given North America businesses more than enough sufficient motivation to simply abandon North America and take their good and/or services businesses to the 'cheapest labour -- and most pro-favorable corporate countries' -- in the world.
Welcome to the 21st Century and Global Capitalism. While the largest North American Corporations and Businesses are still finding ways of getting richer and richer from goods and services businesses that have been re-established elsewhere in the world, many, many North American workers -- and worded otherwise, the North American Middle and Lower Classes which have been under siege since the signing of NAFTA -- become poorer and poorer.
Add into this equation, the amount of government money going to international wars, and massive immigration policies that simply exasperate the 'work problem' here in North America -- and you have a bad problem for a very significant portion of The North American workforce and middle and lower classes.
Get rid of these 'international free trade agreements' with the 'poorest countries and workforces in the world', start putting 'export-import tariffs' back on goods and services coming from these same countries, and let's see how long it takes for our internationally based North American businesses and corporations to 'come back home' again.
Now, let me make one more clear statement before I leave this little presentation.
I do not like to see, or want to see, any good business, with good business ethics, destroyed by overly high workers' wages, as may be arrived at in some cases by an overly 'narcissistic, aggressive, powerful Union'.
The same goes for any one-sided 'Collective Bargaining Agreement' that may be destroying a sports industry and/or franchise -- based again, on overly high player wages.
I was brought up by an 'Adam Smith/Ayn Rand idealistic business owner' for a dad, so I know all about the 'anti-union' argument'. Unions -- and Labour Boards -- are there for a reason: to make sure that 'powerful owners don't exploit powerless individual workers'.
However, I know that Big, Bad Unions can be just as bad as Big Bad Corporate Owners -- and Big, Bad Bankers, and Big Bad Wall Street Investors, and Big, Bad Politicians... The Automobile Industry in North America seems to be in much better shape since the Automobile Unions were battled down to a seemingly much, more reasonable power size... Now that editorial comment is being made from a spectator's distance without any deep internal insight into the history and evolution of the industry, and each company, as a whole...
Any economic agreement has to work both ways -- for the individual worker and for the Corporation as a whole that should be entitled to a 'reasonable floating and self-sustaining profit margin' -- however, we 'reasonably' arrive at 'what a reasonable profit' it. That of course, is likely to be a continual source of theoretical and practical disagreement...and dialectic debate...
How do you ever arrive at what imight be deemed 'reasonable' when the subject matter is -- money? The 'free market' capitalists, of course, would forever advocate that 'the market determine what is deemed reasonable' based on the principle of 'econonomic equillibrium' but again, the problem here, is that both the idea of the 'free market' and the idea of a 'fair market' are forever 'ideal concepts' that will never happen in reality.
Markets can be -- and are - 'manipulated', left, right, and centre. Coming from CCNN, unethical Wall Street investors sell 'bad stocks' to 'naive, unknowing investment customers' -- then, the same unethical Wall Street investors 'bet against' the 'bad stock' they have just sold. How can that type of behavior ever move us toward a 'free -- and/or a fair -- market'?
If I were grasping at economic straws, I would pick 15% to 35% net profit margin off the top of my head for most products and/or services...but again, that is a 'shot in the dark', a largely to totally 'generic and unresearched, uninformed range of percentage numbers'...But it came from somewhere deep in my mmemory banks, maybe from working for my dad's company. More research needed...I am writing above my head right now...
The high-rolling Wall Street investors would probably be laughing at this range of percentage figures...but then again...some of them should probably be in jail right now...I shake my head that American politicians 'bailed them out' -- and more than once -- through two different administrations and political parties...So much for protecting the middle and lower classes...
A working 'economic equillibrium' (EE) -- or in my philosophy-psychology words, a working 'Homeostatic-Dialectic-Democratic Balance' (HDDB) -- needs to be successfully arrived at between employer/owner and worker/employee/player.
If either side is being 'financially exploited', and perhaps, in the case of an owner or group of owners -- financially destroyed -- then it is time to either close down the business and/or the franchise, or work out a new EE/HDDB labour agreement.
-- dgb, April 14th-16th, 2011,
-- David Gordon Bain
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