Lifting oneself by one's bootstraps

Self-reliance is a nice word. It is a good word and can go a long way towards making something of yourself. Computers do it all the time. A small program to give it a push and it's off and running doing wonderful things. They say a caged bird will not fly away when its cage doors are opened. So with people. Constant brow-beating and belittling and exploiting can deprive a man of a sense of being capable of changing his life. He becomes a burden on the government and a big bother to society. Having a lot of time in his hands and with nothing productive to occupy himself with, his mind turns to all kinds of stupid nonsense which only gets him in trouble.

He does nothing and accomplishes nothing so he over-compensates by talking. Drinking and getting drunk helps him along in his plight to escape from his own skin. This leads to more trouble for him. Multiply him with the multitudes like him and it becomes a big social problem. While the achievers and go-getters are getting ahead and becoming more and more wealthy and important, they leave behind a great many who would tend to become parasites and sycophants, hangers-on who do nothing but gravitate towards those who can buy them a beer or a hamburger.

The achievers in their never-ending quest for heights to climb eventually become so important they must lead the people; so they get nominated to political positions which makes them even more powerful and great. This feeds the destructive cycle of Patronage and Parasitism. ------

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Erap para sa mahirap

The slogan that propelled President Joseph Estrada to the top political position in the Philippines can be translated as "Estrada for the poor". Not only was Estrada a shccessful and popular movie actor, he was also a political overlord of his city, from which position he laumched a staggering juggernaut which no one could oppose or block. He parlayed this drawing power to a seat in the Philippine Senate, the Vice-presidency and ultimately the Presidency of the Republic of the Philippines. He is percieved to be not just a champion but also a member of the masses, a mystique he cultivated by speaking broken English in his movies and shrewdly exploited by his Promotion handlers. Couple this with the fact that he dropped out of school to pursue his career as an actor, never mind that the school he left was the premier elite school of the country and the as Champion of the Masses is complete.

He sported a wristand and always wore his signature jacket as befitting a tough guy and not a politician. He looked more a hoodlum with a heart for the poor than a statesman with a plan to lead his country to prosperity. That he was swept into power with an unprecedented majority is beyond question or scrutiny. That he was ousted from power so soon after his electon is also without question when his chief cohort Chavit Singson accused him of being more a crime boss running organized gambling than a President tending to the welfare of his people.A multifaceted personality, Erap as he is fondly called by his friends and admirers also has a Casanova reputation which enhances his Macho image.

Multinational corporations

Business enterprises usually get their start from the industry and inventiveness of one man, and his drive and energy propels his business to a measure of success. With each success comes a powerful resource: capital. A businessman is usually an intelligent man with a special kind of hunger: a desire to accumulate surplus. This might be the reason why most of them are called Fat Cats. When he accumulates enough surplus he then embarks on a program of expansion and acquisition. The first thing that he acquires is land which he knows to be scarce and he doesn't want to be paying rent. In so doing he takes possession of three of the four fundamental factors of production namely:

1. Land
   
2. Capital
   
3. Enterprise

The fourth factor of production is Labor and it is something that he can buy but not control completely and is often a constant source of problem and irritation to him, the businessman. Labor is something that he cannot really take possession of since it consists of individual people like himself. So he dreams of minimizing his need for labor by inventing automated systems and robot arms and computers and other technological gadgets and gizmos. Even with all the technology at his command he still needs people to operate the machines and equipment.

Having Land, Capital added to his Enterprise, he becomes all-powerful. He begins to grow more and more and soon he joins up with other Enterprisers to form a bigger and more efficient unit of production. The corporation was invented to ensure the growth of business according it with unprecedented power and leeway in conducting its business. Laws are enacted to grant corporations tax breaks and myriad incentives to keep it growing more and more. Profits have to grow or the very existence of the corporation is threatened which is a threat so powerful that cities and communities and even countries bow down to the whims and caprices of corporations. Every community woos corporations to set up plants and offices in their areas because it means jobs and prosperity for all.

Raw materials in abundant quanities are often widely dispersed geographically hence the need to establish different corporate entities in various countries.This technique allows the corporation to minimize expenses while achieving tax incentives. This is a natural necessity in the evolution of the corporation into a global phenomenon.

Jobs.....more jobs

Philippine President Gloria Arroyo has also declared war on Poverty and her rallying cry is "Improve the Economy". She says that luriing foreign investors into the Philippines will result in the creation of more jobs and make a dent on the poverty situation. She is an economist educated in the United States. She boasts former United States President Bill Clinton as her classmate in the university. She must know what she is talking about. At a glance, one could see how it would be logical for wealth to trickle down to the poorer rection of society if more jobs were available. This was the mantra of the Republicans who were roundly trounced by the Democrats when the economy started slowing down. "Trickle-down economics" they called it. It favors big business, giving all sorts of tax breaks in order to make them more profitable and somehow in some magical way, some of the wealth would trickle down to thte general population.

No one has been able to solve the problem of Poverty notwithstanding the number of brilliant minds there are in the world today. Six billion people and counting and each one is trying to keep himself in the forefront of wealth accumulation or to keep himself from sliding into the dark, unnumbered mass of poor people. The Filipino is derided as having a crab mentality when he exhibits the tendency to climb over others to better himself that is, at the expense of those he has stepped on. I think this is a slur on the crab which probably has a much better plan of survival otherwise, there wouldn't be so many crabs today. The world has produced a Bill Gates who at the height of his wealth had an estimated personal value of almost 100 Billion dollars And we have homeless people even in America. Imagine that.

Why this preoccupation with poverty?

Why indeed? I am certain that it has something to do with my life now. I am one of the useless people that I wrote about in my previous post. There is not much reason for God to keep me hanging around if one is to consider economic viability as the major reason for being. Very simply I am talking of survival. The most basic instinct there is in any creature is Self-preservation. Even the most miserabnle and abject of creatures has a strong sense of Wanting-to-stay alive. Why is it difficult to survive in a Technologically advanced world? I am not talking about corporate survival but keeping body and soul together survival. Can blogging help? He he he.

One only has to open the TV to see poverty and disease pervading the earth. There is no dearth of highly-evolved sensibilities which agonize about this and do their utmost best to alleviate it. But there is also apathy and a feeling of "what can I do? I am just one person", of helplessness and impotence in the face of insurmountable odds. On the other side of the spectrum there are the politicians (who in third-world countries invariably are corrupt and calloused which is not to say developed nations do not have their share of these too) and the large multinational corporations who make daily worship to their idol of Profits.

Is there an inverse relationshiop between Profits and Poverty?

Useless People

They are the ones who have no economic reasons for being. Today's world is all about money and youth and beauty and power and excellence. You see banner headlines screaming: The year's most beautiful women, The most eligible bachelor, Oscar award-winning actors and producers as if these were the only things that this world is made of. Everyone wants to be a god or a goddess of beauty, sports, achievement. Great wealth awaits those who climb above the rest and be better than the best of them. The promise of extreme pleasure and gratification beckons to all who would desire the dream.

What about being ordinary? Or being less than ordinary? What of those who have tasted the fruit of success and who got kicked in the gut by vice and weakness? We have TV series about them too. "Where are they now?" Fame and fortune are hard taskmasters. No on lives forever. Even Charlton Heston who in his prime cut a more than heroic figure, a man sent by God himself . Look at him now in the twilight of his life and I see a mere caricature of a gun-toting Moses. I am sure he thinks of himself as making a difference in this world and that his point of view is a shoulder above the rest. He holds a rifle like he held a staff to part the Red Sea. It's a hollow, pathetic figure that I see even though I am sure there are many who believe he would lead them to the promised land of gun-ownership.

Does man have an intrinsic value? Or does he have to be rich and famous to have a meaningful life? What of those who have nothing to claim as their legacy? I remember the Poem Ozymandiaz which speaks of a gigantic foot in the desert proclaiming his power and glory to all who would see. Nothing remains of his monument except a foot which crows: "look upon me and tremble". The sands of the desert has obliterated his greatness and all he has left are hollow words which could not prevent the inexorable march of entropy.

Do useless people have intrinsic value? Those who have no econimic reasons for being? Are they to be kicked aside like dogs in the streets? Does Mother Teresa see something which I cannot see?

War on Poverty

Woody Allen once wrote that having been moved by the stirring words of a politician declaring "war on poverty", he threw a had grenade at a homeless person. He is a comic genius and his sense of humanity perhaps let slip a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness in ever being able to do anything about poverty aside from killing poor people in one big explosion That was a few decades ago and the absurdity of it all still causes me to smile confusedly. A few months ago. I saw Bono on television with President Clinton and it appeared to me that they were spearheadin the United Nations drive to eradicate poverty by the year 2012. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines has made a big fuss about poverty. So what is all the big buzz about poverty?

Didn't Jesus himself considered the hopelessness of the question when He said "the poor you have with you always" when He was in the last hours of his life. One reads of bountiful harvest in the United States being plowed under in order to protect market prices while in many parts of the globe have nothing to eat. One sees the faces of emaciated children in Somalia tugging at the heartstrings of Audrey Hepburn. It is a profoundly powerful image that caused President Clinton to send humanitarian aid which eventually led to the massacre of American troops in the hands of Somali gunmen at the instigation of warlords.

So what is the war on poverty really all about? I see beggars on thte streets eveyday and I remember what my classmate said to me once, echoing the wisdom that a Jesuit education gave us: Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life. I was pitching to him my program of feeding some children that day. He said that I was merely just gratifying myself emotionally and that I wasn't really doing anything to make a dent in the situation.

I remember telling him that I was not really interested in the big, deep questions but rather I was more interested in seeing children smile. I called it "manufacturing happiness". He was right in describing the exercise as merely emotional gratification. Anyway, I did not accept his money. The feeding program didn't really cost that much and I was kind of pissed at his reaction. He he he.