The Fair Dinkum Economy

This is not a text book. It is intended to be light and informative and appeal to all people regardless of their age, job or nationality. If you are a caring person and are concerned about the loss of jobs in developed countries as they are relocated overseas, the exhaustion of our limited, natural resources, the decline in the quality of the goods you buy, the damage we are doing to the environment or the exploitation of workers in developing countries then you will hopefully find this book to be stimulating and thought provoking. I feel that at the moment, the World is like a ship in a massive storm, we are not sure what is to come or how bad it will be. We would like to turn around and run back to safe waters but we have to keep facing into the waves for fear of being swamped. We are just hoping and praying that things will not get much worse and that our fragile craft will hold together. Let me tell you, I don't think the storm will ever end if we stay on our current course! What is it about the human race, why do we always seem to wait until things have gone too far, sometimes irreversibly, before we do anything about it! We wait for the ice caps to melt before getting serious about global warming, we wait until water and electricity prices really start to hurt before we become frugal in their use, dictators are deposed by revolution because they refused to change their ways, animal species disappear while we are still talking about how to protect them, rivers get so polluted they become lifeless drains before we really get concerned, people get seriously ill before they decide to lose weight or stop smoking...... are we currently seeing this flaw in our behaviour in regard to Globalisation? If this was a fire we would jump up and grab a hose as soon as we heard the alarm - the Globalisation fire has started let's not wait until the house is ablaze. Mankind is at a crises point, many long-established industries in developed countries are in decline. This is the result of the free trade between nations which has been promoted by governments over the last 30 years. Whilst in the short term this appears to be good for the developing countries it will eventually backfire. Developing countries rely on the developed countries to buy their goods and as the latter's standard of living declines so too will their buying power. They are not about to sit back and let this happen. Capitalism has proved to be the best economic system for the World for the last 200 years. It has allowed the people living in developed countries to escape the abject poverty and disease which typified the lives of nine tenths of society in the early 19th Century. From an economic perspective it’s main strength has been in encouraging individuals to strive to improve themselves and to provide an opportunity for everyone to have a better standard of living - if they are willing to work for it. Unfortunately it has also encouraged greed which has led to some very undesirable side-effects. The first part of this book discusses the shortcomings of Capitalism, the Free Enterprise System, Protectionism and Globalisation but don’t let that turn you off – it is not that heavy going. I have written it in an interesting way with plenty of examples from everyday life which I am sure everybody will be able to relate to. I have also touched on topics like the impact of unchecked population growth, the problems with the growth of large multi-national corporations, poverty and World peace. I am not proposing that we scrap the Free Enterprise System, I believe it is a great concept and it's aims are still very relevant but it does need fixing. I don't believe in criticising something unless you have an alternative suggestion to offer. The latter part of this book covers my ideas for improvements. What I am proposing is perhaps the most radical change the Free Enterprise System has undergone, a change to it’s fundamental principals. In Australia the term "fair dinkum" is a colloquialism for something which is honest and fair, if a person is fair dinkum then they are considered by their peers to be someone you can trust, true to their word, someone who will do the right thing by you. If a deal is fair dinkum then is it considered to be just what it purports to be, without any hidden catches or pitfalls. I have used this term to describe a new economy which treats all people fairly, it rewards people for their efforts and does not take advantage or exploit those who are less fortunate. It is intended for a World that encourages and compensates hard work and still has incentives for those entrepreneurs who are willing to take risks to build a better future for themselves. The operation of our economic system effects everyone’s daily life and like the quality of the air you breathe, you can do something, no matter how small, to improve it if you want to; if you do nothing things will just continue to get worse. I have tried to think of a way to raise the standard of living in underdeveloped countries without destroying those of the current leading nations. We need to learn from our experience, we should study the pros and cons of our current model and keep the good but modify it to overcome the bad. This is the essence of this book.