Green the Economy

I have talked about this before and I tend to repeat myself, but nothing has changed, therefore I speak about it again.

Money Mining.  

Multinational Corporations minimize local and manufacturing costs at a minimum and sell product for the maximum they can but lower than any local competition, therefore they maximize profits and create local poverty.

It is a simple concept, corporations set up a business in a town and export as much money as they can out of the town.  Lately, this has been about large multi national corporations mining even more money and exporting money out of country.  All money mining is bad, the later version is worse.  

The process of mining money creates a number of positive feedback loops.  Positive feedback refers to greater effects and are not generally good effects.  

Multinational comes to a town and sets up a business.  They typically set up in a low tax area or they negotiate lower tax rates, because they are big and represent short term positive employment.  Next they bring in inexpensive solid non perishable goods.  These goods are typically made outside the country and most likely made in impoverished countries for a pittance.  This does a good thing, it potentially gives wages to poorer people than anyone in the wealthy countries could imagine, but most often the manufacture of these goods does the opposite by relying on the large pool of labour in these countries, they pay lower wages than average and then ship the product to the wealthy country; the price of shipping the product to the shelf is the majority of the cost of the item.  

Then the item is sold for less than any comparable item in the town, but because of the extremely low cost of the production and shipping of the item, this represents a large profit.  Wages of the staff members of the stores are kept low which keeps expenses low and profits high and guarantees that employees MUST shop there, because they can't afford to buy locally.  Low wages mean more money gets mined and sent outside the country.  Alternate local businesses can't compete with the lower prices and local businesses fail, which increases the local labour force meaning they can afford to pay less to all employees because jobs now are scarce.  More unemployment locally means more people that shop at the inexpensive store, increasing profits which are removed from the town and the country.  

Additionally, perishable goods must be bought more locally, but very little store infrastructure is invested in the maintenance of the perishable goods, increasing profits and to lower costs of the manufacturer, the only buy on consignment; all unsold product is not purchased and is thrown away.

Essentially, the opening of a large multinational store front represents a future of poverty. 

The ideal local economy should be as efficient as possible, meaning that the wages and the profits from local businesses should drive the economy with very little outside enrichment.  Local businesses would pay higher wages, local businesses are smaller and more specialized, meaning there are more of them and that means they employ more people than one multinational business and that means more people with higher wages.  Local business profits tend to be lower, but more of the money that is generated is spent in the local economy, in those other local businesses.  

An exclusive local economy has almost never worked.  A local area can rarely produce all the goods that the area needs or desires and that was why trade developed thousands of years ago and still does today.  The most efficient economy would be a series of local economies that supply all products in a artisan style of industry.  Each local economy producing basic and a few specialty goods that they can trade for other specialty goods from other local economies.  This is the heart of Communism, a group of communal localities that is 100% efficient in producing its own needs.

Where Communism fails is that not everyone works as well as others and there needs to be an incentive of rewards for working harder that is rarely present in this type of system.  Oh, and when I say Communism, I am not referring to communism with autocratic leaders, but a democracy with a communist like economy.  Big products cost more, but more people are involved in its production, so the the wealth is spread around more too, but under this ideal, money mining is the antithesis.  

Capmunism?  Comiptalism?  The Green Economy.  The pursuit of wealth, is allowed, but not through exploitation of people or the environment.  Exploitation is when you use a resource without giving much of anything back:  people, animals, soil, waters and minerals.  Local economies produce as much as they can locally, export surplus and import the rest, but so that resource accumulation does not readily occur, unless you work hard.  For example, if you like to go on trips, the harder you work, the better the trip you can take, if you like cars, the harder you work the better the car you can get.  I f you like to learn, work hard and you can take time off and go to school and learn more.

Oh, how I have diverged, such are the dangers of writing on an idea over two days!