Thursday, February 12, 2009

Recessions Can Lead to Poverty Solutions

What lessons does the current long recession present to us grassroots sufferers? One: a few thousand US lending and investment managers handling over $100 trillion in capital can commit trillion-dollar mistakes. In 2005 such finance managers had been lending $600 billion in housing loans to US employees. Apparently most of them knew that the borrowers were already nose-deep in credit card and other debts, or had incomes that could not afford additional loan installments. The lending confidence was created by computer-generated formulas that supposedly could spread out risk if the loans were ‘sold’ to investment companies as triple A bonds. Another confidence builder was the $3 trillion worth of ‘good’ home loans that seemed solid enough to absorb the high risks.

Another mistake: the home lenders used their high-risk loans as collateral to sell $750 billion worth of bonds to investment companies. The buyers at the time had already lent out $525 billion to companies buying other companies (corporate takeovers). By 2007 the risky $600 billion home loan borrowers had proven their inability to pay. The $750 billion worth of ‘triple A’ bonds supposedly backed up by solid real estate suddenly became high-risk and could be sold to other buyers only at great loss to the sellers. The resultant panic froze bond sales and created large herds of stock market offers at increasingly depressed prices. Some $2 trillion in paper wealth disappeared, including those of debt-financed takeovers. Deepening panic stopped most bank lending. Loan-dependent US companies collapsed. Some 14 million US employees lost their jobs. Job losses shrunk consumer markets, which meant more companies closing shop from loss of sales. The contagion spread throughout 1st World Europe, whose markets were just as saturated and whose companies and publics just as neck-deep in debt. Export-dependent developing economies similarly suffered as their 1st World markets dried up. These days the recession lingers, and world economies are barely crawling towards positive growth. China and India are still growing but hardly at rates that will redeem their remaining 1.5 billion poor at ideal rates.

So how may world economies hasten the upward crawl? Expanding world markets is apparently the determinant. For some fifty years, the industrial and developing world’s companies had been selling to the 1st World with its less than a billion consumers. By 2005 such buying masses could buy no more even at near-giveaway credit. For over fifty years, very few 1st World entrepreneurs thought that there exists five billion 3rd World poor who form a planet-size potential market in producer and consumer goods, services and loans. Yet the process of converting the poor into huge markets had started with Japan since 1860s when the Japanese government imported entire industries from the West. In the 1960s-80s, Japan popularized factory sub-contracting and joint ventures in the Pacific Rim, in the process building large middle class markets within the region. In the 1990s, joint venture fever spread to China, creating some 200,000 factories that built a 500 million-strong middle class. Concurrently, 1st World companies were creating millions more middle classes in India, the Philippines and Eastern Europe thru outsourcing of office computer functions. Continent-scale poor were becoming huge markets for consumer goods.

The lessons must not be lost. Joint ventures, sub-contracting, franchising, licensing and outsourcing are effective builders of huge markets. However the rate of build-up has not been fast enough. The business world has to go turbo, for five billion poor still await redemption into middle class buyers. How? Involving the entire 3rd World’s employee masses appears to be the supercharged way. Reason: employees know how to build and run businesses, and there are two billion or so of them in the 3rd World. As large groups that partner with 1st World companies, they can create millions of jobs yearly. As half-owners of joint venture corporations, they may acquire fortunes in stock shares and dividends. In short, they become huge consumer markets together with the new employee hordes they create. Additionally, the joint ventures they set up become mammoth markets for producer goods (factory machines, transports, chemicals, processed materials), exactly what currently anemic 1st World factories produce.

Great, but how exactly can it be done? Incredibly, just two laws will perform the magic. First is a 3rd World law that dedicates a major portion of yearly state budgets towards lending to thousand-employee groups that set up joint ventures with 1st World companies. Second is an Expand World Markets (EWM) law passed by all 1st World governments. The EWM law channels 5-10% of yearly state budgets towards lending to the 3rd World joint ventures described. The twin laws should create thousands of world-scale companies and millions of jobs for 3rd World poor each year. Since good laws are forever, corporate formation, job creation and market expansion planet-scale goes on for all time. Eventually all the world’s poor get employed and trillions of dollars in stock shares and dividends flood 3rd World masses. Markets for all manner of producer and consumer goods become planet-size instead of mere 1st World scale. Increasingly larger portions of the 1st World’s over $150 trillion in investment assets gradually end the unimaginable miseries that 3rd World peoples have been enduring over centuries.

Now for the grand question: who are the heroes who will sell the scheme to world politicians and fund managers? Only one ‘army of redeemers’ qualifies: blogging nets. The initial campaigns don’t even cost much: bloggers popularizing the 'earn good sideline income' scheme to two billion employees worldwide, blogger or not.

Friday, December 19, 2008

Ending the Current Recession: New Business Lines (Part 1 of 5)

Many 1st World thinkers believe that the current recession will degenerate into a depression which is not as severe as the 1930s US version but nevertheless will create much misery among billions of people worldwide.

What should humanity do? Most 1st World recommendations focus on aiding selected 1st World companies and industries, usually the biggest ones. The largest companies employ so many and operate worldwide. Abandoning them to their fate is simply not an option. The talk so far is $700 billion to several trillion dollars in state loans to selected USA companies alone. More trillions of dollars in spending to stimulate businesses are planned by political leaders in Europe and Asia.

But what’s really the point of aiding companies when the markets are the problem? Observers note that 1st World publics will not be in buying mode for a long time. First World peoples fear a long recession so are holding on to their purses. Millions of employees all over the world also lost their jobs so world purchasing power and productivity are at bottom levels. Much of the world’s mega ships are in dock awaiting shipments that do not come.

So what should our grassroots cyber army do? The most logical solution is to create new markets in the 3rd World. Here’s the vision:

To end the current recession, every 1st World government passes an ‘Expand World Markets’ law. The EWM law buys billion-dollar 20-year bonds issued by 3rd World governments. An EWM agency in each 1st world government manages the issues.
The EWM bond purchases are conditional to 3rd World government borrowers’ passage of a Loans for Mass Entrepreneurship law. The LME law lends several hundred billion in local currency each year to employees that form thousand-member investment unions, each intent on forming a group of joint venture companies with 1st World corporations.

Why lend to investment unions? The scheme is the most effective way to create massive markets. When the masses become entrepreneurs, wealth from new employment (salaries), from dividends and rises in value of stock shares’ held by ordinary people create world-scale purchasing power for all manner of producer and consumer goods. If the loans financed elite companies as before, wealth bottles up among the elite few and markets get severely limited to luxury items. Wealth gaps grow even wider, political tensions worsen, and the recession lasts for years.

To facilitate matters, the EWM agencies may lend to 1st World companies partnering with thousand-member employee unions in the 3rd World. Since the 3rd World severely lacks such necessities as roads and bridges, telecoms, inter-island vessels, cheap fuel (such as ethanol), mini-hydropower plants, commercial farms, processing factories, metal works, foundries and such, the new joint ventures will tend to build such basics.

Machinery, construction materials and equipment for such basic business lines are exactly what 1st World companies produce in quantity. The 3rd World comprises five-sixths of mankind. The markets for machinery and equipment will thereby become so huge that 1st World industries can’t help but rise relatively quickly out of the recession.

How long will the resultant expansion or ‘coasting in prosperity’ take? Probably forever. The EWM and LME laws are laws, which means they will keep channeling trillions of dollars in capital and loans to 3rd World masses and their joint venture companies unless repealed. The said laws will also ‘force’ a culture of mass entrepreneurship among billions of people, which means perpetual birth of job-creating corporations.

Governments may further ‘force’ 3rd World elementary level new hires in their billions to study innovation-oriented courses to College and even PhD level. Pressure may come within new hires’ employment contracts. The scheme should build a permanent innovation culture among five billion former poor. Innovation-oriented courses have to teach student teams to invent at least five products and technologies, thence sell (license) them to scores of joint venture companies. This is another way of raising the poor to the middle and upper classes on permanent basis.

Inventions and commercialization of inventions perpetuated by billions of new skills will present unceasing arrays of new business lines to all companies whenever they experience sales declines in certain product lines due to stiff competition. Result: the natural up-down cycles of every company’s scores of product lines will create a combined ‘prosperity’ line that just won’t go down. Humanity will finally see the end of grave recessions and depressions and the great miseries that they cause.

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Ending the Current Recession (Part 2 of 5): Joint Venture Terms

What business arrangements are possible for thousand-employee investment unions in the 3rd World and their 1st World corporate joint venture partners? Here are examples:

1. Build-operate-transfer. BOT terms are ideal for such million-dollar projects as mini-dam and hydropower plant chains, ethanol distilleries, toll roads, ports and docks, marinas, waterworks, light rail, waste treatment plants, telecoms and other infrastructures. The foreign partner finances and builds the entire facility and operates it until construction costs and world-rate profit has been recovered. Thereafter, ownership transfers to a local partner consortium of ten or so investment unions. The 1st World EWM agency may lend the funds. At transfer time, the local consortium and/or its employee-entrepreneurs borrow from local LME funds for capitalization, maintenance and expansion purposes. As starter, 1st World companies with good BOT ideas may advertise in this blog. So may Philippine employee groups planning to set up BOT projects. Link-ups thru the ads may form profitable business ideas for Philippine application. Our scheme however requires passage of EWM and LME laws to finance such huge projects. Consequently, the potential partners will have to ‘force’ themselves to engage in political action as part of our anti-poverty cyber army.

2. Licensing for parts manufacture and assembly. There are over six million technologies on file in the US Patent Office alone. Some 300,000 more US applications get filed each year. Only 6% or so get commercialized. 1st World companies that operate billion-dollar labs and generate hundreds of technologies yearly simply file away most of the inventions due to lack of appropriate markets. Millions of the inventions on file can be potential profit makers in the 3rd World. 1st World and 3rd World state agencies have to organize and popularize technology database searches by 3rd World investment unions and 1st World companies. The result: perpetual creation of job-making, world-selling, recession-ending 3rd World companies. As starter, all 1st World companies wanting to license their technologies for good profit may advertise in this blog. All Philippine employee groups may similarly post their ads here. Resultant linkages will create a strong desire to form profitable Philippine businesses based on license arrangements. However such will hardly be possible without EWM and LME laws. The potential partners should therefore engage in political propaganda as part of our anti-poverty cyber army.

3. Franchising business methods and technologies. Franchising is popular in the 3rd World because local franchisees don’t need to start from scratch. Another benefit: franchisees receive continuing technology and advertising support from the mother company. A lot of 3rd World millionaires are franchisers. If the few can do it, why not an investment union of a thousand minds aided by state loans? Franchising ideas come by the million, a great match for millions of 3rd World employee unions setting up corporate groups. As starter, potential franchisers and franchisees may advertise in this blog so they may quickly generate good business ideas. Since our scheme requires EWM and LME laws, the future partners will thereby be ‘forced’ to engage in political action as part of our anti-poverty cyber army.

4. Factory turnkey with training. 3rd World light industries generally grew out of local entrepreneurs’ purchase of entire factories from the West. The seller provides trainers and sometimes continuing technology updates. In 1960s Philippines the state lent hundreds of millions of dollars to local entrepreneurs to set up such turnkey factories. The locals tried to stretch their loan proceeds by buying low-priced second hand factories using outdated technologies from the West. Result: ‘local’ came to be equated with low quality as leading edge Western technologies raised the quality of imports. Future Philippine investment unions have to learn from the lesson. One way: post their ads in this blog describing their desired product lines. 1st World producers of factory machineries may post counterpart ads. Linkages will tend to develop business plans that target quality production and Asia-wide markets thru latest technologies. However financing can come only thru EWM and LME laws. The potential partners should thereby require themselves to engage in political action as part of our anti-poverty, anti-recession cyber army.

5. Capital sharing. In the 1970s to 80s, then Philippine dictator Marcos and leading Japanese companies managed to set up thousands of factories in the Philippines thru joint venture arrangements. The terms: 60-40 capital sharing, the locals contributing more but in pesos. Japanese partner companies contributed factory machines and equipment, thereby selling Japanese production at maximum price. Maximum pricing reduced interest on loans (provided by Japanese government banks) to rates way below Western bank rates. Low interest on loans became Japanese partners’ main selling point for joint venture offers, a sure winner against Western competition. The durability of Japanese machinery (they lasted for scores of years) made the arrangements feasible even over the long term. Our future investment unions may consider such arrangements provided their planned markets are world-scale. As starter, all 1st World manufacturers of industrial goods that seek new markets may advertise in this blog. The same with large Philippine employee groups. Linkages will generate highly profitable business ideas which however will require EWM and LME financing. The need will ‘force’ the potential partners to participate in our cyber army’s political campaigns for passage of the needed laws.

6. Joint stock. Ten or so small Philippine companies competing in the same industry may merge with several investment unions and get a 1st World joint venture partner that possesses new technologies and world markets. This scheme should address the Philippine problem of almost a million large to micro businesses altogether selling less than what one leading US or Japanese company sells. As starter, 1st World companies in any business line may advertise in this blog to encourage small Philippine companies and investment unions to merge and set up a million-dollar joint venture with the aid of EWM and LME loans. Feasibility studies will have to target continent-wide marketing. Of course the million-dollar schemes will require the potential partners’ participation in our cyber army’s political campaigns for passage of EWM and LME laws.

7. Capital and marketing partnership. This arrangement is ideal for corporate multi-crop farms and marine aquacultures. Example: A local investment union partners with a Japanese seafood restaurant chain operator at 50-50% capital. The joint venture leases 3,000 hectares of Philippine seas, installs artificial reefs, and operates breeding facilities in a coastal land lease. A percentage of harvest is sold to the Japanese partner company, the rest exported to restaurant chains in wealthy Pacific Rim cities. Harvests are sold live so they command premium prices. The scheme applies to multi-crop farming and livestock raising whereby partner restaurant chains order specially grown and processed livestock, fruits and vegetables. As starter, food-based 1st World Pacific Rim companies may advertise in this blog to attract local employee groups with ability to lease thousand hectare Philippine marine waters and denuded uplands. Similarly, local employee unions may advertise in this blog indicating their local capabilities and technical/social linkages. Link-ups will certainly generate great profit-making ideas, all dependent on largesse from the EWM and LME laws. The need for largesse will 'force' the potential partners to join our cyber army in international political action for passage of EWM and LME laws.

8. Contract growing and processing. This arrangement assures constant supply of agribusiness products according to contractor specifications. Contractor may or may not invest capital but specifies how crops or livestock should be raised and processed. Examples: sausages, smoked meats and hams, flavored meats and jerkies, fruit juices and purees, seaweed-based gels, furniture and paper products, food supplements and medicines. The local investment union’s thousand-hectare farm may engage in contracting for several companies. As starter, Pacific Rim companies engaged in restaurant chain operations may advertise in this blog to look for Philippine investment union companies able to lease thousand-hectare denuded uplands for conversion into multi-crop farms and managed forests. Local unions may similarly advertise to attract potential partners. The resultant linkages will conjure high-profit projects that will however require financing assistance from EWM and LME laws. The potential partners will hence be 'forced' to participate in our cyber army’s political action towards passage of such laws in both 1st and 3rd Worlds.

What are the advantages for the business partners? Locals multiply their production assets twice or even thrice thru foreign investments and loans. The joint venture company acquires new technologies, credit worthiness and sure markets. The foreign partner acquires a sure source of supply while making good local profit over the long term.

What are the social advantages? In the Philippines, 30 million employees and managers as thousand-member investment unions may create thousands of such joint ventures each year. Result: millions of local poor get employed in good-paying jobs. The new hires acquire marketable skills and afford innovation-oriented education, both becoming tickets to permanent middle class incomes.

Perpetuation of the schemes thru the LME and EWM laws will ultimately raise all 68 million Filipino poor to the middle classes. In time the local joint ventures will begin to create new joint ventures in other 3rd World countries. Repeated millions of times all over the 3rd World, the schemes shall create a culture of mutual help for all humanity. Poverty thereby ends, and the earth ceases to become a ‘vale of tears.’

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

Ending the Current Recession (Part 3 of 5): Product Lines for Joint Venture Partners

The 1st World has to take the lead in ending the current recession by financing its Expand World Markets (EWM) program thru trillion-dollar bond issues over scores of years. The 3rd World has to make sure local consumer markets expand at geometric rates by lending joint venture capital to thousand-employee investment unions thru its Loans for Mass Entrepreneurship law.

The 1st World has an excess of industry while the 3rd World lacks almost all types of industries. The EWM-LME scheme bridges the demand-supply gap, thereby enabling 1st World companies to acquire huge 3rd World markets, the sure way to climb out of the recession. As the new joint ventures create billions of new employees, 3rd World consumer purchasing power makes sure all production and service companies worldwide enjoy perpetual world-scale markets. What exactly may be the product lines that 1st World companies may sell to the 3rd World thru the EWM-LME schemes? Here’s a list of some necessities for Philippine joint venture schemes:

1. For ethanol distilleries: compressors, milling equipment, electric motors, transport equipment, industrial level vats, mixers, fermentation tanks, boilers, burners, stills, bio-waste furnaces, lab equipment and instruments, plant housing, construction materials and equipment, etc.

2. For multi-crop farms, ranches and managed forests: hand tractors, 3-wheel tractors, irrigation pumps, pipes and sprinklers, mini-harvesters, electric motors, transformers, electrical lines, milking equipment, meat cutters and grinders, freezers and coolers, canning equipment, fruit juice and purees processing equipment, portable juicers for sorghum stalks, trucks, brush cutters, grain and feeds mills, silos and grain elevators, livestock feed mixers, hand tools, brush cutters, construction materials, furniture making equipment, portable sawmills, consumer appliances, lab equipment, etc.

3. For mini-dam and hydropower plant chains: cement, steel bars and beams, roofing, paints, mini-turbines, 25-100 kw alternators, copper and aluminum cables, dynamite, transformers, rock grinders, concrete mixers, back hoes, etc.

4. For thousand-hectare reforested eco-resorts: construction materials for ‘flowery cliff’’ hotels, condos, office and school buildings: materials for mini-dam hydropower chain and water supply, mountaintop windmill generators, emergency thermal generators, office and school equipment and supplies, swimming pools and sports courts; stainless steel kitchen equipment, tableware, electric dish washers; building maintenance and cleaning equipment; hospital and health care equipment and supplies, furniture, interior décor, kiddie playgrounds, amusement park equipment, sanitary equipment, electrical equipment, electronic games, consumer appliances, school and office equipment and supplies, telecom and computer facilities, personal computers, etc.

5. For resort transport and sports equipment: island-hopping airports; small and medium airplanes, flying boats, motorized gliders, rescue and touring helicopters, medical trauma facilities, motorized yachts, commuter boats, multi-passenger tour boats, roll-on roll-off ships, work boats, liveaboards, recreational trawlers, sports fishing boats, boat tenders, bay sailers, cargo boats, navigation equipment, Coast Guard rescue boats and equipment, kayaks, jet skis, scuba gear and oxygen supply, surfboards, wakeboards, touring coasters and motor homes, etc.

6. For boat building and maintenance: marinas, resort town’s ports, port equipment, dry docks, fiberglass, travel lifts, electric winches, boatyard rails, boat repair equipment, sailmaking equipment, hand tools, epoxy and paints, foam, boat furniture carpentry equipment, marine engines (diesel, gas, E75 fueled), chandlery supplies, outboard engines, boat parts supply, etc.

7. For marine aquacultures: construction materials for artificial reefs, concrete breeding tanks and buildings; work boats, tugboats and barges, air compressors, metal diving suits, scuba gear, nets and floats for cages, fish traps, materials for bivalve culture, lab equipment, seaweed growing and processing equipment, freezers and coolers, fish fillet and marine products processing equipment, emergency generators, windmill generators, etc.

8. For distance study schools and universities: construction materials, school and office equipment and supply, consumer appliances and electronics, personal computers, internet servers and routers, radio and microwave transmitters and receivers, fiber optic equipment, lab and shop equipment, motorcycles for roving teachers, construction materials for rural weekend campuses, etc.

9. For parts supply, all industries: mini-mills for converting imported carbon steel and local nickel and chromate into stainless and alloy steels; foundries and machine shops for making spare parts; parts assembly equipment; steel rolling mills; sheet metal forming presses, machine tools, copper wire and electric motor factory machinery; equipment for making plastic and synthetic parts, etc.

10. For ethanol fuel distribution and transport services: stainless holding tanks, ethanol transport trucks, ships, tugboats and barges, E75 mixing facilities, fueling stations (land and sea), maintenance and safety equipment, engine conversion kits, E75 engine and gas turbine production equipment, ethanol-fueled cooking burners and stoves, parts for E75 fueled cars, buses, trucks, boats and ships, etc.

For myriads of other product and service lines: all manner of manufactures that 30 million Filipino employees and managers plus their multi-racial business partners can think of.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

Ending the Current Recession (Part 4 of 5): Phil. Joint Venture Markets

Who will buy the joint venture products and services previously described? Here are possible billion-dollar markets for Philippine joint ventures:

1. Food production is one priority for our anti-poverty army’s Philippine campaign. Reason: statistics reveal that 60% of Filipino incomes go to food. If massive local food production halves the rate, the savings will enable Filipino families to afford consumer goods, better housing, and more services. This means more sales for factories and service companies. Rising business sales will form a tightening noose over the current recession.

Initially, 30 million Filipino employees earning $270 monthly on average may gain P7.5 billion monthly in food savings, equivalent to P80 billion ($1.8 billion) in new purchasing power each year. Much of food produced by the joint ventures should be exported to Japan and Pacific Rim nations, especially seafoods, fruits and processed meats. Prices of such items in wealthy East Asian nations are 3-6 times Philippine prices, especially seafoods. Philippine exports will be facilitated by such nation’s food businesses, which according to our schemes should set up joint ventures in the Philippines.

Since acquisition cost is low, retail prices of Philippine food exports will be low, translating to Pacific Rim consumer savings at perhaps eight times Philippine rates (salaries in 1st World Pacific Asia are 5-10 times Philippine salaries). As Philippine agribusiness expands all over Southeast Asia, Pacific Rim food savings may balloon to $100 billion-up annually. Again most of the savings may be spent to consumer goods purchases. Billions of dollars in new sales will enable 1st World manufacturers to haul themselves out of the recession and stay hauled out for good.

As millions of Philippine joint venture agribusinesses (especially thousand-hectare marine aquaculture farms) and their 3rd World copycats expand all over the tropics, world-scale food savings translating to purchase of manufactures will assure near-permanent shackling of severe recessions worldwide.

2. Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Coastal China have exceedingly crowded and polluted cities. Companies, schools, extended families, retirees, employee groups from these wealthy regions may buy entire floors of ‘flowery cliff’’ buildings in our army’s thousand-hectare reforested Philippine resort chains. Copycats may extend the forested resorts all over Southeast Asia.

Clean air, wide spaces, island-hopping tours, building space prices 40% cheaper, low-priced foods and services (especially health and senior care), low living costs for retirees, are very powerful magnets for our resort chain businesses. Internet and telecoms facilities, and multi-racial business prospects (millions of 1st World tourists) add to the attraction. Employee union copycats will create trillion-dollar tourism industries all over the tropics.

3. Local and export sale of E75 fuel (75% ethanol, 25% gasoline) will enable the Philippines to earn perpetual ‘OPEC volume’ incomes, especially when Philippine ethanol producing joint ventures expand throughout the tropics. According to Brazilian experience, ethanol refineries make a profit at an astounding 80% of sales.

Our schemes enable employee masses to own both sweet sorghum farms and ethanol distilleries. Trillion-dollar consumer markets will thereby form in the Philippines and wherever Philippine ethanol industries expand. E75-fueled bus, taxi and cargo service companies will likely crop up wherever there are ethanol distilleries. The same for boat fleets and ship transports.

Again our anti-poverty army should lead the way up to tropics-level, all at excellent profit for us all, courtesy of the EWM and LME laws. E75 fuel will help conserve the world’s limited stocks of hydrocarbon fuels so the oil cartel should be thankful. Petrodollar magnates should invest in 3rd World biofuel production instead of viewing the industry as a rival.

Monday, December 15, 2008

Ending the Current Recession (Part 5 of 5): Phil. Joint Venture Markets

Here’s more on how Philippine investment union joint ventures may sell their hundred billion-dollars’ worth of products and services:

4. Complete tourist facilities plus 1st World tourist agency nets run by Filipino communities worldwide (with friends numbering millions) will create a huge Philippine tourist flood. The Japanese public alone has some $12 trillion or so in savings and financial assets circulating in banks and as stocks and bonds. For Japanese, staying in Philippine island resorts for extended periods costs much less than staying in Japan for the same period. This is especially true for Japanese retirees.

A Japanese retirement nest can last ten times longer and actually multiply in the Philippines if invested in our types of tourism and ethanol-related schemes. Tour boat fleets and multi-racial friendships make extended Philippine vacations very enjoyable for both retirees and vacationing yuppies.

Japanese companies may also set up satellite offices in Philippine forest resort condos for such functions as product design, internet-based services, sales and business expansion thru friendships with tourist-entrepreneurs of all races.

Some ten million Filipino contract workers and migrants work in 1st World countries. Most come home on occasion for long visits. Their multi-racial friends will likely tag along when Philippine tourist facilities become world-class. Filipino communities’ tour agency nets may popularize sports and activity club linkages worldwide with view to joint friendship tours with Philippine clubs, student associations and employee unions.

Friendship tours are much more enjoyable and less costly for all tourists. Activities may include bird cataloguing and breeding, discovery of new marine and forest species (only around 1% have been described and named), creation of the club’s own patch of forest and coral reef, formulating ecology-rebuilding business ideas, and other meaningful activities. Learning tours may be interspersed with exploration thru motorbike caravan, kayaking, surfing, inter-island sailing, etc.

To keep tourism costs low while earning on tour, the club may invest in their own forest camps and study facilities, and set up such special courses as aquarium and terrarium construction and sale, Asian massage, yoga and anti-stress systems, martial arts, healthy Asian menus, wood and stone carving, ceramic arts, and whatever special skills tourists have. Friendship and activity tours create the bonding that keeps multi-racial tourists coming back for more. Our anti-poverty cyber army should form the corporate and club models for all these fun and profitable activities.

5. Around 850 million tourists roamed the world each year in early 2000s. Fifty million came from China alone. Only 2-3 million of the hordes visited the Philippines. Reason: inadequate tourism facilities plus kidnappings, petty crimes and political instability played up by world media. Joint venture construction of complete tourism facilities (airports, roads, hotels, inns, telecoms, international services, etc.) plus tour boat fleets should address the first problem. Political instability and crime should peter out once mass unemployment dries up thru joint venture prevalence. The resultant massive purchasing power will help end the recession. Expansion of Philippine tourism companies all over the tropics should help sustain the prosperity. Again our cyber army should lead in all these.

6. Seafood and snack food nets set up by investment union joint ventures with Asian and Western restaurant chains in 1st World cities should sell at hundred-billion dollar levels yearly. Lion’s share of sales may come from Philippine multi-crop farms, managed forests, fruit plantations, and marine aquacultures. High-earning rural masses thereby become massive new markets for all manner of consumer goods. Joint venture expansion throughout the tropics multiplies corporate purchasing power a thousand fold. 1st World makers of producer goods will lead in hauling the world out of recession.

7. Philippine managed forests (with cattle, goat and sheep feedlots), reforested mini-dam hydropower chains, forest resorts, marine aquacultures and other giant eco-rebuilding joint ventures should become models for 3rd World peoples to follow. Copycats will create billions of new jobs for rural poor. The 3rd World can become a trillion-dollar market for consumer and producer goods. Of course our cyber army should form the profitable vanguard companies that will create investment courage worldwide.

All these job-creating, recession-slaying potentials come from just one mind (the author’s). One can only imagine what five billion 3rd World minds can generate together with their 1st World joint venture partners. The ultimate result can only be a ‘1st World’ of employee-entrepreneurs composed of all adult humans. Not one will suffer poverty if his social and economic linkages count in hundreds of powerful organizations all caught in a habit of mutual help for all time.

How exactly do we start the link-ups? 1st World and 3rd World companies may post their business opportunity offers and URL links in this blog. Philippine companies, co-ops, employee unions, associations, investment union organizers, entrepreneurial and employee groups, and Filipino communities abroad may post their own versions here. Postings in this blog for business and entrepreneurship purposes as described herein require a fee. Fees will be used to defray Povertyslayers propaganda expenses in the Philippines, including hopefully the building of model businesses for employee groups to copy.

Link ups thru your ads should devise feasible business plans with multi-racial partner groups. The common desire for lifetime profit while redeeming the poor shall thence drive the budding joint venture groups to initiate political action towards passage of EWM and LME laws as described herein. The powerful vanguard of our anti-poverty army thereby forms. You and your linkages should hence fight a good fight, with great friendships, much wealth, and a fulfilled spirit as your rewards on earth and thereafter.

Thursday, December 4, 2008

Mass Productivity Will End Mass Poverty!

Why are 3rd World people so poor? One indicator is mass productivity, which is measured thru gross national production (GNP). Let’s take 3rd World Philippines as example. Comparative statistics indicate a sad fact: each leading US or Japanese company sells more than the production equivalent of all Philippine businesses combined!

Example: In early 2000s, General Motors, Toyota, Mitsubishi, Wal Mart and other corporate giants each sold over $100 billion worth of goods and services each year. Yearly Philippine GNP at the time was just around $85 billion.

Of course billion-dollar companies can afford to pay salaries at five to ten times the pay rates of 3rd World businesses. That’s one major reason why 3rd World masses are so poor as compared to 1st World peoples.

What’s the conclusion? The statistics indicate an imperative: Filipinos and their anti-poverty allies just have to start thinking big. Our anti-poverty cyber army has to build world-scale joint venture companies in the Philippines. Scores of Philippine companies within the same industry line have to merge in order to share resources for accessing world markets and leading-edge technologies.

The Philippine government must begin financing a ‘go big time’ corporate program. However, everything must be done in a democratic way. Our cyber army should propagandize to attain this end. The objective: avoid the large wealth disparities typical of both 1st World and 3rd World societies while raising Philippine GNP by ten to twenty times.

How do we build our democratic business sector in the Philippines? Here’s the vision:

1. The Philippines’ 30 million-strong employee and managerial masses form thousand-member ‘investment unions.’

2. Each union strives to set up a world class joint venture company with a 1st World corporation every two to three years.

3. The Philippine Congress passes a ‘Loans for Mass Entrepreneurship’ law. The LME law lends around P200 billion each year to the unions for capitalizing joint venture companies. P200 billion is just about half of the amount lost to corruption each year in the Philippines.

4. Joint ventures quadruple local capital thru foreign investment and machinery loans. In effect, the state’s P200 billion yearly in mass entrepreneurship loans create thousands of companies all worth P800 billion each year.

The logical results? Philippine GNP, salary and profit rates gradually rise to First World levels. Millions of high-paying jobs get created yearly for the teeming Philippine poor, on perpetual basis. High productivity brings down prices of goods and services, thereby raising mass purchasing power (a form of salary increase).

The Philippine employee masses as shareholders earn fortunes in joint venture dividends and rises in their stock shares’ market values. Foreign investors getting good return on investments get motivated to pour more capital into more union joint ventures.

How do we begin to build up our cyber army that will start it all? First step: popularize a slogan among all bloggers and all our contacts: There’s good profit in winning the anti-poverty war, and it starts in the Philippines!

Wednesday, December 3, 2008

Why Is Our Blog's URL 'Povertyslayers'?

This blog is our cyber War Room where e-Generals (people who post comments) make and discuss plans. Field warriors are organizers, managers, and employees of 3rd World joint venture companies that arise out of our plans.

What do we plan for? Let’s review our targets:

1) slay poverty monsters that create billions of exploited street kids, aged beggars, slum dwellers, rural destitute, and hunger-stalked families worldwide;

2) end world poverty one country at a time at a profit, so weapons for more anti-poverty battles get perpetually created, and warriors are always in high spirits;

3) tame world-scale recessions by converting five billion poor into employee-consumers;

4) rebuild denuded ecologies at good profit to all participants.

Our anti-poverty cyber army being composed purely of volunteers does not follow top-to-bottom line commands. Our army’s Commander-in-chief comes in the form of the action options we decide on in this blog. The long initial musings posted by the author (your Propaganda Officer in our Philippine theater of operations) compose just the framework of possible action options.

Comments sent in by Cyber Generals may refine the options and even reshape parts of the framework. The result can look like a camel, which is a ‘horse designed by a committee’ but is nevertheless the best means of survival in the harsh desert. This blog therefore becomes the mind of all Generals (commentators) and participants (all others who agree and take action) in our anti-poverty war. Hence our address ‘povertyslayers.’

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Here's How 1st World Companies May Expand to the 3rd World

Here are the facts, potentials and imperatives:

1. The 3rd World is not exactly a bastion of new business ideas and technologies. Proof: there are hardly any 3rd World originated products and technologies in world markets. 3rd World Research and Development as culture and institution are minimal if not zero. The logical imperative: 1st World companies must partner with large 3rd World employee groups to set up new businesses in the 3rd World. The joint ventures should access over six million US invention patents on file, plus 145,000 US patents approved yearly. The new companies may start with whatever technologies will make money in world markets.

2. The 3rd World has millions of potential business partners. These come in the form of employee and managerial groups large and small. 3rd World managers and employees are business skills. They know local conditions, have connections and privileges for accessing land leases, marine waters leases, franchises for exploitation of natural resources, permits and licenses, local suppliers, local markets and even some international markets.

3. 1st World companies have to help in a world-girdling campaign for formation of 3rd World investment unions. An investment union is composed of several thousand managers and employees in ten or more companies. The union plans on building one joint venture company every 2-3 years. The large numbers are required because most 3rd World salaries range from just $200 to $700 monthly. It will take nine-month salary loans before the large groups can form at least half of capital for a million-dollar joint venture company.

4. Investments must be made in one 1st World country at a time. It’s best for 1st World companies to ‘gang up’ on one 3rd World entrepreneurial mass at a time. The chances for success are highest where there are the most number of brains and resources. The country with the most number of investment unions should become the first target. There is no substitute to business partners who are well-prepared.

5. First investment target must be the Philippines. The Philippines has a 30 million-strong employee and managerial mass, plus around ten million Filipino contract workers and migrants in the 1st World. These business skills can more easily be organized because they are all looking for additional income due to their low salaries. Filipino employees abroad also want to help relatives back home and the home country in general. The best way for them to do so is to invest in new joint venture companies forming back home. The Filipino diaspora remits around $15 billion yearly to relatives back home. Most of the money goes to mall purchases of imported goods and construction of houses. Persuading the diaspora to invest even 20% of remittances will help capitalize thousands of new companies in the Philippines. Persuading overseas Filipinos to invest at least ten percent of their monthly salaries will multiply the number of companies created. A most persuasive tack is joint venture schemes between Philippine investment unions and 1st World corporate 'names.'

6. 1st and 3rd World companies and peoples must lobby their governments to pressure the Philippine Congress into passing a Loans for Mass Entrepreneurship law. An LME law allocates 10% of tax take and bond proceeds towards nine-month salary loans to thousand employee investment unions setting up joint venture companies with foreign corporations. Foreign governments may offer to buy 20-year Philippine bonds provided an LME law is passed and most bond proceeds get retailed into salary loans for investment union entrepreneurship.

7. 1st and 3rd World companies and publics must campaign among Philippine employee masses to set up joint venture companies. A joint venture quadruples local capital thru foreign investment and machinery loans. Thus a Philippine consortium of investment unions may build say a $10 million ethanol distillery by investing just $2.5 million. The joint venture partner invests $2.5 million. 1st World manufacturers and their banks lend $5 million worth of machines and equipment. An ethanol distillery may profit at an incredible 80% of sales (according to Brazilian experience) so all participants earn good money out of the adventure. 1st World industrial companies may sell their production much more easily by partnering with 3rd World investment unions and throwing in their credit worthiness into the partnership.

8. A propaganda campaign conducted by our cyber army’s physical ‘regiment’ in Philippine malls may help speed up formation of Philippine investment unions. All major Philippine cities have several malls. A booth in each may be equipped with TV and CD player, pamphlets and leaflets that describe the new joint venture schemes. A 2’x6’ tarpaulin display chart of the concepts serves as attractor. Practically all Filipino employees frequent the nearest malls. Overseas Filipinos on vacation bring their families to the malls. Mall booth personnel may sell the joint venture schemes herein described to all booth viewers. Funds for the mall campaigns may come from warrior contributions and fees from advertisers in this blog.

9. 1st World companies and employee masses must campaign within their societies for Congresional passage of an Expand World Markets law. The EWM law allocates five percent or more of state taxes and bond proceeds towards loans to 3rd World governments that have passed a Loans for Mass Entrepreneurship law. The LME law lends ten percent of state taxes and bond proceeds to members of thousand-employee investment unions that plan on setting up joint venture companies with 1st World corporations. The EWM-LME partnership is intended to convert five billion 3rd World poor into new employees, therefore new consumer markets. The target: end the current world-scale recession thru creation of new markets for 1st World companies whose 1st World markets are already saturated. Since laws have perpetual effect unless repealed, the EWM-LME tandem shall channel and revolve trillions of dollars towards 3rd World joint venture entrepreneurship on perpetual basis. Perpetual creation of good-paying jobs will gradually strangle all poverty monsters worldwide.

Why investment unions as joint venture partners? If investments and corporate profits flow among employee masses, huge consumer markets get created. If thousands of 3rd World entrepreneurial groups form joint venture companies each year, 1st World companies will sell a lot of machines, equipment and factory inputs. Concurrently, 1st World financing companies earn interest income and 1st World joint venture partners earn good dividend income. Rising shares’ values also enrich all stockholders. The degree of prosperity depends uoon the interest and action of all concerned.

But most importantly, thousands of joint ventures formed yearly shall create millions of high-paying jobs for the poor. The new employees qualify for mass entrepreneurship loans. Creation of jobs, markets and mass wealth shift to overdrive. If from the outset the EWM-LME programs pour hundreds of billions of dollars in investment funds into Philippine investment union joint ventures, our cyber army’s first theater of operations shall declare quick victory within a matter of decades or less. Thereafter, our cyber army confronts other poverty monsters inflicting terrible miseries among the masses of another 3rd World society.

Monday, December 1, 2008

Only a World Army of Business Skills Will Win the Anti-poverty War!

Why are so few people interested in redeeming the poor? One reason: the poor are just too many. Out of six billion people worldwide, five billion are poor if First World standards (such as access to good College education) are used as bases. Among the 3rd World unfortunates are around a billion bottom poor who earn just a dollar or less a day. One can only imagine what terrible miseries such families have to endure on daily basis.

To redeem this huge mass, we cannot rely solely upon anti-poverty organizations that are too few in number and too limited in resources. History shows that we cannot also rely on governments, especially those of 3rd World countries. Out of a hundred or so Third World countries in early 1900s, only five made it to the First World, and it took them over 20 to 30 years to do it.

How do we fast track the redemption process? Again let’s make the Philippines our anti-poverty laboratory. On First World standards, 80% of Filipinos (68 million individuals) are poor, and 56 million of them are Elementary level. Fortunately the country also has 30 million employees and managers, some ten million of them being College level employees, professionals, and micro-entrepreneurs. Another ten million or so are employed in 1st World companies, and they remit some $15 billion yearly to relatives back home.

Wealth generally comes from business. Since employee masses are business skills, they are the most qualified to wage an anti-poverty war. Employees worldwide may number several billion, a good match for saving five billion poor, especially since most 3rd World employees are themselves poor. Additionally, employee masses as new corporate entrepreneurs will ‘force’ corporate profits to flow among the masses. Wealth will not bottle up all the more among the elite few as what traditionally happens. Finally, thousands of new companies set up by employee masses each year will create millions of jobs for bottom families earning $2 or less a day.

As vanguard, how may the Filipino salvation army of employees attain the dream? Here’s one vision: Thirty million Filipino employees motivated by high-profit business schemes form themselves into thousand member ‘investment unions.’ Mass voting potential pressures the state to lend P200 billion each year to the unions. The loans capitalize world-scale local-foreign joint venture companies. Joint ventures quadruple local capital thru foreign investment and machinery loans. In effect, the state’s P200 billion in ‘mass entrepreneurship’ loans create thousands of world-class companies all worth P800 billion each year!

Perpetual recycling of mass entrepreneurship loans raises the state’s yearly tax take. Risen tax collections repay old state debts. Enhanced state credit worthiness brings in new billion-dollar loans from world funding institutions. Most of the loans get channeled to our Philippine salvation army’s mass entrepreneurship program as described.

What high-profit business schemes can draw large employee groups and their foreign joint venture partners into the battles? Here are examples:

(1) Sweet sorghum plantations and ethanol distilleries. Ethanol distilleries make a profit at an incredible 80% of sales. A 40,000-liters/day distillery costs $10 million, which means just $2.5 million in entrepreneurship loans to investment union members. Foreign partners and banks or machinery lenders supply the rest. Sweet sorghum may be grown even by small employee groups' farms that raise a mix of corn, upland rice, leguminous trees and shrubs, range chicken, pigs, ducks, goats and some cattle. Plant harvests as home-grown livestock feed can yield six-figure incomes for the employee group.

(2) Thousand-hectare marine aquacultures. Live fishes, shrimps, prawns, and crabs are priced 3-6 times in weatlhy World Pacific Rim countries. Artificial reefs expand harvests while conserving marine animal populations at perpetual-breeding levels.

(3) Thousand-hectare managed forests with mini-hydropower chains and eco-resorts, Southeast Asia. The project earns from forest products, fruits, cattle feedlots that use leguminous forest trees as fodder, and sale of electricity to local grids.

(4) Tour boat fleets and motor home touring caravans, SEA. Joint ventures between Philippine investment unions, US yachting groups and motor home manufacturers may end up expanding all over the tropics over the long term.

(5) Asian snack food booth chains, Western cities. Innumerable types of tasty snacks and fruit juice mixes recycled for perpetuity ensures that Western palates never tire of snack food offers.

(6) Thousands of other world class joint ventures dreamt up by 30,000 ‘investment unions’ on perpetual basis.

The logical consequences? Millions of high-paying jobs get created each year, on perpetual basis. The teeming elementary-level poor find jobs and afford innovation-oriented education. Innovation-focused education is the ticket to job promotion, high incomes, entrepreneurial loans, royalty income out of inventions, stock dividends, and rises in the value of stock shares held by the employee. Gradually, the Filipino masses follow the example of US employee masses who now own over half of US companies thru stock shares and corporate bonds.

How may First World anti-poverty warriors participate in the fray? Their manufacturing and service corporations may set up joint ventures with Philippine investment unions. Their investment companies may buy Philippine joint venture stocks and bonds. Their governments may buy billion-dollar bonds sold by the Philippine government, to be lent out to Filipino employees setting up world-class joint ventures thru investment unions. Mutual help for mutual profit thereby becomes a world culture that raises all 68 million Filipino poor to the middle classes. Next target: the rest of the Third World, one country at a time.

(Please click dates 12/14/08-12/21/08 below for next related topics)