Yesterday, I attempted to explain why democratic business is so important to me as a solution to the majority of the temporal problems in the world. The answer is that my life experiences have molded my perspective:
I grew up in an affluent section of a big city. The benefits of capitalism constantly surround me.
I have attended church all my life. I was blessed with a heavy conscience and a reverence for human potential.
I have started my own business. After I spent months proving that the business concept was equitable, my financer demanded 90% of the business. I shut down the operations because I could not survive on 10% of the profits.
My father is an entrepreneur. He started two successful businesses. He and I have engaged in hundreds of hours of discussions about his day-to-day business concerns.
I have lived among the people in
Brazil. I know what it feels like to look at the U.S. from the outside in. I have survived on one meal a day for multiple months, experienced diseases and ailments foreign to Americans, feared for my safety at the hands of local police, drunk brown water to quench my thirst, and fought off thieves to protect what little I had.
I have lived in Hawaii and learned of its history. I have visited the Dole plantation and I have learned from the Locals how the U.S. reluctantly annexed Hawaii after corporations forcibly removed
Queen Lili'uokalani--a queen loved by her people and dedicated to nonviolence--in order to protect their business interests. I have seen the resulted poverty that effects so many natives on the islands.
I have a degree in business management with an emphasis in entrepreneurship. I have studied the
Nash equilibrium,
laissez-faire capitalism, and other theories that help "businessmen" justify greedy business practices. At the same time, I have learned about the successes of
Muhammad Yunus,
Fabio Rosa,
Albina Ruiz, and many other heroic entrepreneurs that add value to the world and not just to their pocket books.
I have a minor in Spanish with an emphasis in Latin American studies. I have studied the literature of
Pablo Neruda,
Gabriel García Márquez,
Gabriela Mistral,
García Lorca,
Octavio Paz, and the hundreds of other literary leaders that dedicated much of their lives and writings to fight corruption and inequality.
My collective experiences have offered me the motivation to search for a better alternative to the dominant and dominating institution of our time. I have come to realize that I would be selfish not to do all that I can to act upon those things I know to be true for the sake of those who don't know that there is a better alternative. For this reason, democratic business is so important to me.
In Latin America, the armed revolutionaries of yesteryears have been replaced with the ballot-box revolutionaries of today. The buzz words and icons of Latin America have changed from Marxism and dialectical materialism to solidarity and indigenous rights & from Che Guevara and Fidel Castro to Evo Morales, Lula Da Silva, and Rafael Correa. The democratization of Central and South America, has unified Latinos and is revolutionizing their standard of living.
