THE 55th Europe Day last week was celebrated
in a unique way. A debate on the topic European Union (EU) and Association of
Southeast Asian Nations: Markets First or People First? was organised by the EU
Ambassador Office, and I was privileged to join the Spanish Ambassador to
Malaysia Maria Bassols Delgado in supporting the "people first"
proposition.
We took
the position that "people first" implies a more humanitarian
consideration based on the promotion of human dignity and relationships
universally in the pursuit of global peace and sustainability.
In
contrast, "markets first" conjures up the notion of material wealth
creation with little or no consideration for human welfare and the environment,
leading to a pessimistic global outlook on an unsustainable future.
Markets
as a structure must serve human needs to be relevant to people.
Markets
must be subservient to human aspirations since various forms of structure and
system are "innovated" by Homo sapiens after all. This has allowed
them to exchange their produce long before the term "market" first
became fashionable, by offering a range of goods or services (including
labour), and more recently, information and knowledge -- which are all arguably
invented by humans to augment their own civilisation.
To
adopt a "markets first" stand is putting the cart before the horse
which may be incongruous today where some 60 per cent of the world's population
(about four of the seven billion) are languishing at the bottom of the global
economic pyramid.
"There
are so much of excesses built up in the economy which needed to be brought down
(corrected)," said Graeme Maxton, economist and author of The End Of
Progress, during the Asian-Pacific Association of Banking Institutes Regional
Conference on May 8-9. He noted that the current economic model that emphasises
growth as a goal is "200 years out of date!"
In
fact, reductionist Gross Domestic Product (GDP) too has been challenged as an
inadequate measure of how the economy is faring, and too simplistic a method to
capture the complexities of the quality of human lives.
Developing
and expanding markets without due regard for human dimensions threaten survival
as a result of an economic binge that will destroy people, the planet and the
balanced prosperity that everyone is entitled to.
The
overarching purpose of EU and Asean is more than just chalking up numbers, as
in the case of GDP and economic "productivity", at the expense of
building relationships between people and their environment in
intergenerational terms in pursuit of a larger human interest and
"happiness" beyond momentary "monetary" gain.
Today,
the majority of the world population still suffer from poverty, inequality and
the threat of climate chaos as a result of the "markets first" ethos.
It has created a financial and economic model fuelled by increasing greed and
widening disparities in society.
When
market aspiration is allowed to reduce people to mere human capital governed by
economic proxies for the benefit of a few, it is not surprising that it results
in untold loss.
A case
in point is the Berlin Conference of 1884 which paved the way for European
trade in Africa and literally divided up the continent to colonise it, which
created artificial states that lacked any cultural, linguistic or ethnic
coherence which is still visible today.
It
ended up in rampant exploitation of the continent with economies deliberately
designed for European markets, not products for local people.
Until
today, Africa is still paying the price with human lives as a consequence of
the European markets scramble. Yet similar notions of dividing up the world
continue, albeit in a more subtle way.
The
Group of 8, or more recently, the Group of 20 meeting of leaders has alienated
the majority of the world's population in its deliberations that further market
ambition through the economic system of greed.
It is
time to reassert that the real purpose of markets and economies is to first
serve the people, and not slavishly do the reverse, if life is to be celebrated
in a dignified way.
This is
more so in areas where abject human suffering has been the subject of inhuman
market intrigues based on an economic model that has turned toxic!
Business & Investment Opportunities
YourVietnamExpert is a division of Saigon Business Corporation Pte Ltd, Incorporated in Singapore since 1994. As Your Business Companion, we propose a range of services in Strategy, Investment and Management, focusing Healthcare and Life Science with expertise in ASEAN. We also propose Higher Education, as a bridge between educational structures and industries, by supporting international programmes. Many thanks for visiting www.yourvietnamexpert.com and/or contacting us at contact@yourvietnamexpert.com
No comments:
Post a Comment