Our world begin with the domination of “Might is right”. In the beginning, might was mostly physical power. When men built tools and weapons, the best users of these weapons and tools became mighty. With the evolution of wealth and money, these became even more powerful means of greatness, mainly because wealth and money could buy men power. Then with the advent of media, popularity became a very important factor in determination of ones power. In spite of the fact that physical and defense power. wealth and money, and popularity (celebrity status) are the three pillars of power in contemporary world, money by far remains the most important factor. It is because money can buy or hire men power, including celebrities (famous and popular people).
When people realized the value and power of wealth and money, they started devising different method to accumulate it. These methods were not always appreciable and acceptable. So, societies, tribes, countries, ideologies and religions started to differentiate between right and wrong methods of acquiring and acquisition of wealth and money. Hence, the concepts of business and crime evolved. The right ways to acquire wealth and money were called as business and wrong ways were called as crimes. Different ideologies, cultures, geographic regions, religions and sets of ethics have extremely different views about what is right and what is wrong when it comes to acquisition of wealth and money. There range is as extreme as everything must be owned by state and government and nothing by individual, to everything must be owned by individuals, and governments and states must remain out of ownership business.
In practical world none of the extreme views have survived. Without any exception, every country in the world now has a hybrid of these two extremes. Some leaning towards state or collective ownership, while others lean toward individual ownership. The argument mostly is what works better, with different people having different perceptions of what works?
Almost all countries in the world agree that things like currency, national security and defense, and foreign relations must be controlled by central government of country. These matters cannot be left in the hands of individuals. Communications, highways and transportation are largely controlled by states or provinces, as may be the case. Real estate, business licenses, high school education and zoning are mostly controlled by counties and cities.
Biggest controversy, in contemporary world, arises when it comes to higher education, healthcare and start-up financing. In countries like, Canada, U.K., France, Germany, Holland and all the other developed countries, except United States, healthcare is owned collectively, that is it is run by government. The argument for this is that healthcare is a right not a privilege. Because healthcare is a right, it is the responsibility of governments to provide equal access to healthcare for all citizens.
In contrast to this, United States considers healthcare a privilege not a right. People do not have equal access to healthcare and rich people get better healthcare. The results are shorter life expectancies and higher cost due to increased incidence of morbidity and mortality because of preventable causes like obesity, diabetes, hypertension and psychiatric and dental disorders and diseases. Results are so disastrous that United States’ healthcare cost is almost twice as much as the healthcare cost in second costliest country, Luxembourg.
Most developed and developing, civilized countries have adopted the idea that every citizen must be provided with equal opportunities and plain fields to compete, regardless of anything. This is the reason why civilized countries, particularly the fastest growing like, China and India have a nationalized education system, in which students can enter and compete purely based on merit, regardless of their ability to pay. The result is that almost no talent is getting wasted and idiots from rich families do not get unnecessary advantage, based on their ability to pay for expensive private educational institutions. Extremely talented and gifted graduates from these nationalized institutions are turning their economies into winning horses and impossible to compete with. Not only this, they are also a great source of qualified professionals for other countries and multi national corporations, generating huge revenues for their home economies. On the other hand, in privatized educational systems, a large proportion of talented and smart people is unable to make it to educational institutions, just because their inability to pay. The results are that the businesses in these countries are losing their competitiveness, due to shortage of qualified and talented professionals.
Many countries have created hybrid advanced educational systems, with both private and public institutions present. But, these hybrids still do create unequal fields. The reason for it is that the students from rich, powerful and influential families go to expensive educational institutions and these people have no interests vested in public institutions. Hence, public institutions face serious neglect. Public institutions helplessly watch their funding sources drying out and nobody paying attention to it, while expensive and posh private institutes flourish with grants from taxpayer’s money and fees paid by “public servants” getting paid by tax payer’s money.
Banks, private and corporate financing companies give money only to those who already have money. There were times when United States was the land of entrepreneurs. Highly ambitious entrepreneurs used to gather in United States and do miracles, because entrepreneurs would get enormous encouragement and easy start-up financing. That is why United States did revolutionary and world-changing inventions and discoveries like, airplanes, commercial manufacturing of automobiles, light bulbs, large number of unparalleled defence equipment and weapons, and Internet. But, gradually venture financing was taken over by savvy MBAs instead of highly ambitious investors and business persons. This has totally dried up the start-up money pool. Most start-ups in United States now die even before taking-off. Other important reasons for these failures are corporate monopolies and cartels and a congress that is a puppet in the hands of corporate lobbies. These corporations and cartels of big corporations, successfully strangulate their competition with the help of their multi-billion dollar lobbies and their pimps in congress. The latest example was current financial crises. When these crooks in the large financial institutions failed the whole world’s economy, their pimps came to the rescue, right away. They were bailed out and “rescued” with trillions of dollars of tax payers money, which they used brutally to kill their smaller, fair playing and honest competition. So, with the help of these pimps in congress, crooks prevailed, again, and the honest and fair small businesses were killed with the help of tax payer’s money.
Contrary to this, in India and China, the start-up financing is provided by public sector, and you don’t have to have money to get start-up financing. The result is that while most of our businesses are dying even before taking first breath and the land of entrepreneurs is becoming the graveyard of entrepreneurs, small and start-up businesses in China and India are spreading like wildfire and they are killing their western competitors like chickens in slaughter houses.
Small Business Administration, SBA in United States is another joke. It distributes tax payer’s money through private banks, that charge interest on distributed tax payer’s money and give it to only those who already have money. I do not understand, how this is “start-up financing”, if it is given to those who have already started, long time ago.
Government in United States has recently taken away the distribution of student loans from banks. It looks like a first step towards doing the right thing. But, this is not the complete solution. The solution is the nationalization of education. The licenses to private educational institution should be issued only if they guarantee that they will admit students regardless of their ability to pay. And the education of these poor students should be financed by public funds. Investment in education is far better than trillions of dollars in bailouts.
To solve these rapidly growing serious problems we must understand the delicate, right balance between individual and social rights. It is totally incomprehensible for me, why it is ok for government to control critically important things like social security, medicare, Medicaid, VA and high school education but not healthcare, higher education and start-up financing.
I believe that in the perspective of rapidly changing global economic and financial scenario, providing opportunities and play fields that are really fair, plain and equal for everyone and not just for the rich, powerful, wealthy, influential and famous people, is not an option anymore. It is an unavoidable necessity of our time and era, if we want to remain competitive and at the top. I hope and wish that we all do want our country to remain at the top, regardless of our affiliations, pre-occupations and propaganda from corporate media and their pimps in congress.
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