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| JO M. SEKIMONYO |
Facebook https://www.facebook.com/jo.m.sekimonyo
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Goodreads https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8616615.Jo_M_Sekimonyo?ref=nav_profile_l |
Tell your readers a little about yourself, where you grew up, where you
live now, where you went to school etc. Let them get to know the personal you.
I am a theorist, human rights activist, political economist, and social philosopher. I am a Congolese-born, American fermented, and globally bottled Merchant of Ideas.
As the gap between rich and poor continues to widen, why
does the world seem stuck on what needs to be done to fix it?
In the 21st century, the developed world has
gotten superb at creating prosperity, but really sucks at sharing it. In the
United States alone, it has been reported that the top 5% hold 65% of the
country’s total wealth, while the bottom 50% hold only 2.8% of the total
wealth.
The difference between these two groups is in how people are
remunerated; the lower group, the working class, receives the nominal wage, not
even the real wage, and the upper group, the “capitalists,” receives a percentage
of the profit.
The rest of the world is quickly learning to catch up, but
still in the phase of creating and accumulating wealth by individuals. However,
it will face the same dilemma at the end of the tunnel.
The psychological contract with an old arrangement based on
an argument that has long since lost its validity prevents us from realizing
the paradigm shift of the 21st century on which something new should be built.
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Is this the cause of these recurring booms, bubbles, and
busts?
Well, it’s part of a combination of several factors.
The working class has become highly efficient through
technology and sophisticated individual means of participating in business or
commerce. This led to overproduction and the cheapening of our needs and wants.
And as the nation has become addicted to growth, economies, especially the
developed ones, have come to depend on oxycodone on the people which is credit,
or people’s ability to spend the rewards or potential future earnings of a
business today, to keep it going. It turned consumers into ridiculous shoppers.
In the global economic circus where clowns and fools ride
unicycles while stacking baskets of eggs, it’s no wonder that every once in a
while, people or nations run into each other, stumble, and create a scary mess.
Alas, this unsustainable folly only benefits one side of the world, but once
something goes wrong, everyone pays the price.
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You’ve written about how to erase more than half of the
world’s debt while making the gain of triumph inclusive. Explain to us?
It is certain that the trillion-dollar indebted group will
abruptly and completely stop using such the simple trick of accumulating debt. Cutting
social programs and raising taxes on their citizens is too risky for
politicians. Instead, there are even indications that they will continue to
rack up the national debt and let their citizens go further into their future
to spend it now to keep the ball rolling and the party going.
The recent and largest International Monetary Fund Special
Drawing Rights (SDR) allocation of 456 billion, which equivalent to US$650
billion, approved in 2021 was made pro rata to each member country’s IMF
quotas. In this approach, the UK and
France allocation was the same amount as the entire African continent, 54
countries. Which is clearly not fair.
The best way is to create a special ledger that could be
monitored by the IMF. A Heavily Indebted Countries (HIN) debt relief program
would see each national account credited with $1 trillion. Assuming the balance
is positive, 25% should be spent on infrastructure, 25% on social programs, and
the rest to subsidize raising the universal minimum wage to $2 an hour.
We can predict that the leaders of the poor countries will squander
all the financial windfall on shady deals and projects with the help of
financial vultures from the developed nation. However, in addition to creating
opportunities for the individuals of the most indebted nation because they are
the ones who have the skills and knowledge to execute large infrastructure
projects, the overall standard of living of their citizens will be less
atrocious. Humanity would ameliorate the state of universal poverty, which is
currently horrible and primitive. By doing so, it would stop the migration of
the poor to what is considered the land of milk and honey.
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Now, what is Ethosism?
Bertrand Russell’s solution to economic equity expressed in
the 1930s was: “If we wish to diminish the love of money which, we are told, is
the root of all evil, the first step must be the creation of a system in which
everyone has enough, and no one has too much.” His intuition was correct, but
could be misinterpreted as an orientation towards socialism or communism.
Capitalism is rooted in the notion of primitive
representation of the working class and the scarcity of resources.
In the 19th century, during the western wave of industrial
revolution, you had to invest your money to build a shoe’s factory and train
the workforce. Today, the most important aspect of the paradigm shift is that
people pay and acquire their means of participation or engagement in the
business or enterprise.
In terms of resources, the most critical but least
acknowledge is human creativity. Creative of the mother of innovation which in
turn, is the key to prosperity in the 21st century. Thus, knowledge, skills,
and brawn are as valuable as gold and money. On this basis, Ethosism states
that just as the pirate shared the loot, everyone else should be rewarded as a
percentage of the surplus a business or an enterprise generates.
In doing so, it will remove the middleman, the state, from
the equation and curb the proliferation of billionaires while expanding and
improving the quality of the middle class in any country that embraces it.
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The world wonders why your country of origin is so rich
while the Congolese live in conditions of extreme poverty?
The way the question is posed makes sense only from the
point of view of a colonizer. The DRC is not that rich when you look at it,
natural resources are estimated at 14 trillion dollars and how much it will
take to extract them, plus the environmental disasters that may result. The US
debt alone is around $17 trillion.
To help a country like the DRC help itself, the issue needs
to be reframed appropriately and modernly; why the Congolese in the DRC are
poor?? The answer is simple; because they live in a low-income country. Thus,
the nation can focus on modernizing the quality of its citizens means of
participation that lead to high individual incomes. It would certainly put them
on the path to decolonizing their mindset and phantasms.
