[GJM] Lessons we can learn from poor

[Dr.Muhammad Mukhtar Alam]

Barak Obama and all need to work on the following:
 
-reforming finance sector through creating interest free loans
-transforming leisure use pattern through adoption of faith based measures such as prayer and meditation and replacing GHG emitting energy intensive leisure
-land reforms for ensuring distributive justice for renewable resource based livelihoods
-promoting ecologically sustainable buildings and villages, habitats
-using ecological audit for all consumption and production patterns


--- On Wed, 11/6/08, robert searle <dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk> wrote:

From: robert searle <dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk>
Subject: Re: [GJM] Lessons we can learn from poor
To: discussion at globaljusticemovement.net
Date: Wednesday, 11 June, 2008, 5:49 PM

--- On Wed, 11/6/08, Thompson Ayodele <thompson at ippanigeria.org> wrote:

> From: Thompson Ayodele <thompson at ippanigeria.org>
> Subject: Lessons we can learn from poor
> To: dharao4 at yahoo.co.uk
> Date: Wednesday, 11 June, 2008, 10:31 AM
> Cal Thomas, a well-known syndicated columnist in the U.S,
> whose column is
> published by 400 papers mentions IPPA Nigeria work in his
> review of
> "Lessons from the Poor: Triumph of the Entrepreneurial
> Spirit."
> 
> ...In Nigeria, a clothing design industry has been created
> to produce and
> sell adire attire, traditional in the Yoruba culture. There
> are thousands
> of adire workers, most of them women with little or no
> education, but they
> have "an entrepreneurial drive to make a living and
> create wealth where
> there was previously only misery," writes Thompson
> Ayodele in his essay.
> "These entrepreneurs receive no government aid. In
> fact, through action or
> omission, the government has placed and continues to place
> many obstacles
> in their way. Yet they have been able to combat poverty
> much more
> effectively than foreign aid and official poverty-reduction
> programs."
> 
> 
> Cal Thomas | Tribune Media Services
>      June 9, 2008
> 
> 
> Listening to Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton repeat
> stories they claim to
> have been told by the poor and the unemployed, who are
> unable to pay for
> food and medicine and feel miserable about it, is enough to
> make one think
> we are living in a Third World dictatorship and not the
> United States of
> America. But victimhood and a "can't do"
> spirit is what the Democratic
> Party has mostly been about since the Great Depression.
> 
> A more positive narrative comes from a new book,
> "Lessons from the Poor:
> Triumph of the Entrepreneurial Spirit," edited by
> Alvaro Vargas Llosa and
> published by the Independent Institute. The book is an
> optimistic triumph
> and a lesson about the unlimited capacity of the human
> spirit, properly
> inspired and unencumbered.
> 
> In the introduction, Llosa writes, "Entrepreneurial
> ability and energy are
> present almost everywhere. But in those countries that
> still languish in
> backwardness, the labyrinth intervention of the state and
> the absence of
> adequate institutions have kept that ability and energy
> from translating
> into full development." He writes of nations that used
> to be poor but are
> no longer, detailing how their people climbed out of
> poverty. He blames
> political, legal (and I would add in some cases, religious)
> systems for
> stifling prosperity.
> 
> Llosa is about creating wealth and his inspirational
> stories about real
> people and how they did it ought to be read in every school
> and in every
> home that has accepted inevitable failure.
> 
> In 1988, the Ananos family of Ayacucho, Peru -- the cradle
> of the Maoist
> terrorist organization known as Shining Path -- founded the
> Kola Real
> Company. Coca Cola and Pepsi had pulled out due to the
> unstable political
> situation. In just 20 years the Ananos family has
> transformed a mom and pop
> operation into the biggest transnational manufacturer of
> nonalcoholic
> beverages in Latin America. They now have subsidiaries in
> Mexico,
> Venezuela, Ecuador, four Central American countries and
> Thailand. By 2005,
> they had more than 8 million customers and employed 8,000
> workers. Their
> sales totaled US$1 billion.
> 
> The Ananos family overcame years of socialist and populist
> experiments that
> hurt Peru's economy. They demonstrate what can be done
> when obstacles are
> overcome by the power of optimism.
> 
> Aquilino Flores is another Peruvian who started out washing
> cars 40 years
> ago. He had no capital. Today, Flores is the most important
> textile
> businessman in Peru, heading a company called Topy Top with
> annual sales of
> more than US$100 million. As Daniel Cordova writes in his
> contribution to
> the book, "...the story of the Flores family and Topy
> Top is one of
> tenacity, determination and intuition." Didn't we
> used to teach such things
> in American schools before class warfare, envy and
> penalizing the
> successful?
> 
> The story behind Nakumatt, Kenya's largest supermarket
> chain, could have
> been written in America. Google Nakumatt for details.
> 
> In Nigeria, a clothing design industry has been created to
> produce and sell
> adire attire, traditional in the Yoruba culture. There are
> thousands of
> adire workers, most of them women with little or no
> education, but they
> have "an entrepreneurial drive to make a living and
> create wealth where
> there was previously only misery," writes Thompson
> Ayodele in his essay.
> "These entrepreneurs receive no government aid. In
> fact, through action or
> omission, the government has placed and continues to place
> many obstacles
> in their way. Yet they have been able to combat poverty
> much more
> effectively than foreign aid and official poverty-reduction
> programs."
> 
> Please re-read that last sentence. Government aid impedes
> success and
> creates dependence, while entrepreneurs create success and
> independence. In
> countries with far less capital and opportunity than
> America, people
> haven't sung songs about overcoming. They have overcome
> through tenacity,
> risk-taking and self-reliance.
> 
> During the presidential campaign, each time Barack Obama
> focuses on misery
> and the need for more government spending, John McCain
> should trot-out
> American stories of the formerly poor and let them tell how
> they made it so
> that others can too.
> 
> Llosa says Spain is "particularly interesting and
> instructive for those who
> think that certain nations are doomed forever by virtue of
> their culture.
> In the past two decades, Spain, whose culture was once
> inimical to notions
> such as self-reliance and individual initiative, has
> experienced an
> economic and social transformation."
> 
> If Spain and the poor in Peru and Africa can do it,
> what's stopping America
> and poor Americans?
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Thompson Ayodele
> Director
> Initiative for Public Policy Analysis
> P.O.Box 6434
> Shomolu,Lagos
> Nigeria
> Email:thompson at ippanigeria.org
> Backup: thompsondele at onebox.com
> Website: www.ippanigeria.org
> *****Good Public Policy is Sound Politics**********
> 
> Tel:01-791-0959
> Cell:080 2302 5079


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