Dear Friends,
It seems to me that if a small percent of vacationers went on “Capitalist Holiday” the lot of man would be greatly improved.
A capitalist holiday would be a person going to some impoverished country. Bringing with them some tool or implement. So instead of spending $10,000.00 on some hedonistic spa we would take a cement mixer to Haiti and give it to some poor person. We would spend a day interviewing people for the gift. Then when someone suitable is found we give the recipient 50% ownership of the tool or implement. Preventing the gift from being sold. They then use it to make money. If their net profit is greater than $5,000.00, or some other agreed upon figure, the recipient pays the gifter 10% of the net profits above the figure.
This could be done with land, different crops, tractors, or anything else that would conceivably be of use to impoverished people. This would not only give people in impoverished countries a means to better their lot but would create an entrepreneurial ethos in the countries that received the largess.
If the gifter wants he or she could supply raw materials for the enterprise. Buying Portland cement for the mixer for example. Or gasoline for a pickup truck mounted back hoe. These things that are cheap in the US would help people, in impoverished countries, build infrastructure. When things are happening around us we all want to be a part. When people in a destitute village in Haiti see sewers being dug for people with a tiny bit money on one side and people having the holes patched in the walls of their homes, keeping out malarial mosquitoes on the other, they will want to improve the place they live as well. The productive movement will garner momentum….
Every time a tool or implement is gifted the GDP of the country that receives the gift will go up. Not only for the day the gift is given but as long as the gift is used. If a tool has a 5 year lifespan it will increase GDP for 5 years or more. Where people are living on less than a dollar a day an increase of a few cents is huge!
Issues of permits and indigenous corruption would need to be addressed by national governments. Countries that want to be involved in the program would have to sign an agreement to the effect that they would stamp out corruption that extorts money or otherwise hinders the bilateral enterprises. Permit and regulations should be clear and universal as possible. This would encourage international cooperation and improve the standard of living in those countries, that would, in turn, lower the tensions that lead to war.
I believe that many people in the developed world would do this. Because even if the governments in those nations are not civilized… some of the people are. Helping others is a sign of civilized people. The want, and in fact need, of civilized people to help those less fortunate is presupposed. If only a small percent of people who vacation would indulge, every few years, in a capitalist holiday, they might not only find themselves with a bigger heart but in time bigger pocketbooks… All around.
In time, this program would necessarily get infrastructure, to people that need it. The people in towns that had a great deal of interaction with the program would become tinkerers and entrepreneurs. They would be the seeds that would sprout into a healthy capitalist system. One that would raise the standard of living bar for the people in those nascent nations, much higher, much quicker, than any socialistic redistribution of an ever shrinking pie…
