Go Lean Commentary
The book Go Lean … Caribbean introduces the terminology of Self-Governing Entities (SGE), but the concept already exists within the Caribbean. According to the following news article, these sites can be very impactful. In this case it is an industrial park in Haiti, but other versions exists:
Free Trade Zones
Technology Bases
Education and Research Campuses
Foreign Military Bases – i.e. Guantanamo Bay in Cuba; AUTEC in Andros, Bahamas
Aerotropolis – Airport Cities – like the ones with US Pre-Clearance Facilities in Aruba, Bahamas and Bermuda
The book Go Lean…Caribbean serves as a roadmap for the introduction and implementation of the Caribbean Union Trade Federation (CU) to provide a structure for multiple versions of SGE’s throughout the region. The book describes how these bordered site-zone-park-base-campus locales can function as economic engines for their host communities by transcending local limitations and administration.
This approach (strategy, tactic and implementation) represents the basis for change in the region, similar to how the Caracol Industrial Park has impacted change in Cap Haitien (Northern Haiti). The story here speaks to expansions of the Caracol site:
By: The Caribbean Journal staff
Haiti will be receiving $70 million in grant funding to expand its business facilities at the Caracol Industrial Park in the north of the country.
The funding is coming in the amount of $55 million from the Inter-American Development Bank, co-financed by the US government to the tune of $15 million.
The aim of the funding is to expand facilities and “create above-board jobs” in northern Haiti.
The programme aims to create 6,800 jobs by 2018 in companies operating out of the industrial park, according to the IDB, with 65 percent held by women.
The focus of the financing will be on the construction of buildings and factories for industrial activities, the IDB said, along with the expansion of roads and public services.
Caribbean Journal Regional News Service (Posted 12-12-2014; retrieved 12-18-2014) –
http://www.caribjournal.com/2014/12/12/haiti-to-receive-70-million-grant-to-expand-caracol-industrial-park/#
This Caracol project initiated with no help from the CU/Go Lean promoters, but the actuality of this project provided a lot of lessons learned … and a new commitment for best practices in these types of endeavors in the future; see “Highs and Lows of Caracol” experiences in the Appendix below.
The economic impacts of SGE’s are undeniable. A previous Go Lean blog related how one SGE in Orlando Florida contributes $18.2 billion in annual economic activity to that State. The Go Lean roadmap seeks to now emulate the strategic, tacticals and implementation successes of SGE’s of other countries in the 30 Caribbean member-states. (The CU may have no jurisdictions of existing SGE-like facilities except for marshalling economic crimes for the region). The roadmap seeks to elevate the region with economic engines (direct and indirect spin-off activities), by assuming jurisdiction for new Self-Governing Entities in the region and the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of the 1,063,000 square miles of the Caribbean Sea. This approach allows for initiation, cooperation and coordination of SGE’s and the EEZ to effectuate change in the region, allowing these 3 prime directives:
- Optimization of the economic engines in order to grow the regional economy to $800 Billion GDP and create 2.2 million new jobs.
- Establishment of a security apparatus to protect the resultant economic engines, specifically in SGE’s and the EEZ.
- Improve Caribbean governance to support these engines, with a separation-of-powers and SGE exclusivity.
Since the Go Lean book posits that one person can make a difference and positively impact society, the book advocates for a community ethos of investment in the “gifts” that individuals (domestic and foreign) “bring to the table”. The book identifies the quality of geniuses and relates worthwhile returns from their investments. This mode of study allows us to consider this example of contributions from many artists, scientists, industrialists and philanthropists around the world and their corporate/artistic creations. Re-consider this point from these previous Go Lean blog/commentaries:
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=3276 | Role Model Shaking Up the World of Cancer; Perfect for SGE Application |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2750 | Disney World – Role Model for Self Governing Entities |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2670 | A Lesson in History: Rockefeller’s Pipeline – A Glimpse for SGEs |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2338 | Using SGE’s to Welcome the Dreaded ‘Plutocracy’ |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=2003 | Where the Jobs Are – Ship-breaking under SGE Structure |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=1214 | Fairgrounds as SGEs and Landlords for Sports Leagues |
| http://www.goleancaribbean.com/blog/?p=286 | Puerto Rico’s Comprehensive Cancer Center Project Breaks Ground – Model of Medical SGEs |
The book Go Lean … Caribbean asserts that SGE’s and the EEZ can be strategic, tactical and operationally efficient for elevating Caribbean society. These points are pronounced early in the book with this Declaration of Interdependence (Pages 11 and 14), with these statements:
v. Whereas the natural formation of our landmass and coastlines entail a large portion of waterscapes, the reality of management of our interior calls for extended oversight of the waterways between the islands. The internationally accepted 12-mile limits for national borders must be extended by International Tribunals to encompass the areas in between islands. The individual states must maintain their 12-mile borders while the sovereignty of this expanded area, the Exclusive Economic Zone, must be vested in the accedence of this Federation.
xxvi. Whereas the Caribbean region must have new jobs to empower the engines of the economy and create the income sources for prosperity, and encourage the next generation to forge their dreams right at home, the Federation must therefore foster the development of new industries… In addition, the Federation must invigorate the enterprises related to existing industries like tourism … impacting the region with more jobs.
The Go Lean book itself details the economic principles and community ethos to adopt, plus the executions of strategies, tactics, implementations and advocacies to forge Self-Governing Entities and industrial growth in the Caribbean:
| Economic Principles – People Choose because Resources are Limited | Page 21 |
| Economic Principles – All Choices Involve Costs | Page 21 |
| Economic Principles – People Respond to Incentives | Page 21 |
| Economic Principles – Economic Systems Influence Individual Choices | Page 21 |
| Economic Principles – Voluntary Trade Creates Wealth | Page 21 |
| Economic Principles – Consequences of Choices Lie in the Future | Page 21 |
| Community Ethos – Job Multiplier | Page 22 |
| Community Ethos – “Crap” Happens | Page 23 |
| Community Ethos – Lean Operations | Page 24 |
| Community Ethos – Return on Investments (ROI) | Page 24 |
| Community Ethos – Cooperatives | Page 25 |
| Community Ethos – Ways to Impact the Future | Page 26 |
| Community Ethos – Ways to Foster Genius | Page 27 |
| Community Ethos – Ways to Help Entrepreneurship | Page 28 |
| Community Ethos – Ways to Impact Research & Development | Page 30 |
| Community Ethos – Ways to Improve Negotiations | Page 32 |
| Community Ethos – Impact the Greater Good | Page 37 |
| Strategy – Vision – Confederating 30 Member-states in a Union | Page 45 |
| Strategy – Mission – Build and Foster Local Economic Engines | Page 45 |
| Tactical – Fostering a Technocracy | Page 64 |
| Tactical – Growing Economy – New High Multiplier Industries | Page 68 |
| Separation of Powers – Department of State – Self-Governing Entities | Page 80 |
| Separation of Powers – Interior Department – Exclusive Economic Zone | Page 82 |
| Implementation – Ways to Pay for Change – SGE Licenses | Page 101 |
| Implementation – Steps to Implement Self-Governing Entities | Page 103 |
| Anecdote – French Guiana Space Agency – Example of a SGE | Page 103 |
| Implementation – Benefits from the Exclusive Economic Zone | Page 104 |
| Planning – 10 Big Ideas – Self-Governing Entities | Page 127 |
| Planning – Ways to Improve Trade | Page 128 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Grow the Economy | Page 151 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Create Jobs | Page 152 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Better Manage Natural Resources – EEZ and SGE’s | Page 183 |
| Anecdote – Caribbean Industrialist & Entrepreneur Role Model | Page 189 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Promote Fairgrounds | Page 192 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Develop Ship-Building as SGE’s | Page 209 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Impact the Prison Industrial Complex as SGE’s | Page 211 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Impact the One Percent – Job Creators Inducements | Page 224 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Impact Urban Living – Self-Governing Entities | Page 234 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Impact Rural Living – Self-Governing Entities | Page 235 |
| Advocacy – Ways to Promote World-Heritage-Sites as SGE’s | Page 248 |
| Appendix – Airport Cities – Models for Self Governing Entities | Page 287 |
The Go Lean roadmap requires new SGE projects to be negotiated with local and national governments in the affected geographic areas. A project may, or may not, align with community values from one place to another. Does a community cling to egalitarian values or allow individual achiever to rise-and-shine? The Go Lean messaging is important in this regard. The quest of the roadmap is to elevate the entire Caribbean, but reality and history shows that some climb the social-economic ladder faster, and some slower, than others. One size does not fit all!
So the Go Lean ethos is clear: there is a role for the contributions of one impactful person, institution or company, in this vision for the elevation and empowerment of the Caribbean homeland. The Go Lean … Caribbean roadmap invites these contributions. See Appendix below of the historic details of the Caracol project; the “good, bad and ugly”; this experience shows how SGE’s can easily impact a community, economically – bring in a lot of jobs; but the experience also shows how there are security and governing issues associated with these projects as well. This is why the Go Lean roadmap posits that there is the need for technocratic oversight for SGE’s.
Will the CU approach eliminate all risks and problems with these type of SGE projects? Of course not; but the CU will facilitate the accountability factors to ensure best practices. Considering the experiences in the Appendix below, will the CU mitigate minimum wage job placements? Again, of course not; wages are a representation of market forces: supply and demand. Citizens in Caribbean communities will have a choice: step into SGE grounds and accept their employment conditions or decline. The demand may be for higher wages to attract a ready work force; or the SGE operator/facilitator may enable its own supply of direct workers; then the community is limited to only indirect/spin-off economic benefits. This is reality of shepherding the Caribbean in a globalized economy. This heavy-lifting is the role of the CU.
Change has come to the Caribbean. All Caribbean stakeholders are hereby urged to lean-in to this win-win roadmap to make the Caribbean a better place to live, work and play. 🙂
Download the book Go Lean…Caribbean now!
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Appendix – Caracol Industrial Park – Highs and Lows
Background: In 2012 the Caracol Industrial Park was built on a square mile, 600 acre, 246 hectare, site near Caracol. The $300 million project, which includes a 10-megawatt power plant, road, a water-treatment plant, worker housing in neighboring communities, and development of a port in nearby Fort-Liberté, was built with hurricane relief funds, a loan from the Inter-American Development Bank,[1] contributions by the United States government, and The Clinton Foundation. Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, United States Secretary of State, played central roles in supporting and promoting the project. The anchor tenant is SNH Global, S.A, a subsidiary of Sae-A Trading Co. Ltd, Sae-A, a global clothing manufacturer headquartered in South Korea.[2][3] It began operations in the fall of 2012 with an expected work force of 20,000[4]. The eventual workforce is projected to increase to near 65,000 and result in a expansion of population in the area. Social and environmental disruption is anticipated as the result of this hastily-planned project.[3][4]
Source References
- “Haiti and its partners lay the foundation stone for the Caracol Industrial Park” (Press release). Inter-American Development Bank. November 28, 2011. Retrieved July 6, 2012.
- “New industrial park in Haiti” (Slide 4 of slideshow). The Miami Herald. Retrieved July 6, 2012.
- Jacqueline Charles (June 4, 2012). “New industrial park in northern Haiti sparks controversy”. The Miami Herald. Retrieved July 6, 2012.
- Deborah Sontag (July 5, 2012). “Earthquake Relief Where Haiti Wasn’t Broken”. The New York Times. Retrieved July 6, 2012.
Highs: Secretary Clinton Delivers Remarks at the Caracol Industrial Park Opening Ceremony – http://youtu.be/lAeMKmo4NEs
Published on Oct 24, 2012 – U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivers remarks at the Caracol Industrial Park Opening Ceremony in Cap Haitien, Haiti on October 22, 2012. [Go to http://video.state.gov for more video and text transcript.]
Lows: The Bill and Hillary Clinton Haiti Debacle: Growing anger over reconstruction efforts – http://youtu.be/_Y53HPzCCtE
Published on May 25, 2014 – The news website Tout Haiti reported last month that two prominent lawyers have petitioned Haiti’s Superior Court of Auditors and Administrative Disputes, demanding an audit of Bill Clinton’s management of the Interim Haiti Recovery Commission (IHRC). There are powerful interests that won’t want to see the petition succeed and it may go nowhere. But the sentiment it expresses is spreading fast. In the immortal words of Charlie Brown, Mr. Clinton has gone from hero to goat.
Four years after a magnitude 7.0 earthquake toppled the capital city of Port-au-Prince and heavily damaged other parts of the country, hundreds of millions of dollars from the State Department’s U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), allocated to the IHRC, are gone. Hundreds of millions more to the IHRC from international donors have also been spent. Left behind is a mishmash of low quality, poorly thought-out development experiments and half-finished projects…
A June 2013 Government Accountability Office report gave a barely passing grade to USAID’s Haiti reconstruction effort. It said $170 million was allocated to build a power plant and a port near the Caracol Industrial Park, not far from Cap-Haïtien. The two projects “are interdependent; each must be completed and remain viable for the other to succeed,” the GAO explained. The first phase of the power plant was completed on time and under budget. But the port construction was delayed by two years “due in part to a lack of USAID expertise in port planning in Haiti.” Projected costs, according to the report, say the estimated shortfall of $117 million to $189 million is larger than originally estimated. “It is unclear whether the Haitian government will be able to find a private sector company willing to finance the remainder of the project.”
(Consider the source: This video/commentary is from Fox News Channel, a notorious right-wing-leaning media source in the US; they have historically reported with an anti-Clinton slant).
Lows: Caracol: Haiti’s miracle of development turns into nightmare of exploitation – http://youtu.be/qg_DSVwmX6s
Published on Oct 22, 2012 – WORKERS AT NEW CARACOL INDUSTRIAL PARK NOT BEING PAID MINIMUM WAGE
Despite the inauguration for the Caracol industrial park happening today, October 22, 2012, the first factory at the new Caracol industrial park in northern Haiti, Sae-A, began operations months ago. The new workers are being paid only 150 gourdes, or $3.75 US (less than $.50 an hour) for nine hours of work.
For months now, several hundered people have been working in the industrial park before the official launch. The employees, the majority of whom are young women, come from all over the region to work. While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Haitian government officials and others come together to celebrate the opening of the industrial park, the women who have been working there are calling for just wages and better working conditions.