It Is Either Trade Or Wars

Do you want to play to get along or fight for your life? The amount of money and contracts poured into Defense in many countries rival the biggest world businesses. There is hardly any big business that does not have Defense contracts. While many of these countries cut other human programs from the budgets, the Defense budget is usually sacred. The line between Trade and War is vague. After all, weapon sales remain the biggest world trade.

World Trade and Sports do more to prevent wars than many of the missionary adventures that intentionally undermine Fair Trade to brand, magnify or exaggerate the value of goods and services. We do much better when we strive to attain the best or shoot for ideal character as civilized human beings. The problem kicks in when we take advantage of our relationships to further weaken or exploit unequal trade partners.

Africans would rather wage wars against one another than trade. We even reject and sabotage our own goods and services. Africa’s Peacekeeping forces have folded since Nigeria lost military leadership to fight Boko Haram within. Europeans fight one another along ethnic lines too but not continually as in Africa. The Europeans also have more palliatives to ease their disagreements and the pains of survival.

Rich Western Countries Club do not give African countries the special status given to China and later to Russia. President Obama opened AGOA for African and Caribbean countries but stringent measures applied to inspection of goods wasted most of them. Caribbean banana exporting countries had to compete for rock bottom prices to get their goods in. Most of them rotted waiting for clearance.

China gained admission into the world traders privileged class to spite and tame Russia. The unpredictable consequence of China in the World Trade Organization came out as a double edge sword. China used the influence to get richer following the best practices: spreading trade into third world countries, profit by undercutting the greed of western world with cheaper loans, goods and services. Developing world remains the cash cow even at lower loan interest rates.

Yet, humans remain social animals that enjoy the relationships of one another. Lessons of covid-19 exposed the psychological damage of prolonged isolation. We love social interaction so much as children, adults have to supervise or curtail friendships so that children do not go astray. All play and no work makes children dull just as all work and no play. This relationship is so important, it determines children’s future to teach them when to interact or stay away from bullies.

We also interact with one another through social gathering, sports, plays and a variety of competitions. Good sportsmanship is essential for each of these. So we ask children to shake hands after hard and grueling competitions. We embed good sportsmanship early in life. This is essential for later life. Olympics and intercontinental games are morale boosters for our Youths that spend time training instead of engaging in idle or criminal activities.

Nevertheless, a few of us grow up to be bullies that Intimidate others just to control and take advantage, especially of the quiet kids around us or weak countries without nuclear power to prevent attacks by super powers. The overbearing behavior, when not corrected early in life, followed some bullies into adulthood. Many got away with domineering behavior for so long, they think they can get away with murder or manufactured preemptive wars. This is the reason we must encourage reinforcement of good habits rather than punish bad habits as a last resort.

Therefore, we need to reward civility to discuss and disagree without being disagreeable. Most parents do a great job at this as related and passed on by children and adults. We learn about what our parents would not tolerate and what we would not dare. Taking a break, for better mood encourages solutions as a better path to behavior modification. When temper flares over disagreements in any interaction, we resort to animalistic instinct, crude and unproductive war.

It is not only rich powerful countries that divert money from the local services and the poor. Rich African countries that cannot feed the majority of their people, because we spend more on civil war and imported weapons also do. Vice Admiral Michael Franken, Africom Deputy Commander for Military Operations said during a seminar some years ago, that the USA could not fulfill Nigeria’s request for jet fighters when they realized it would take a lion share of our budget.

Though workers’ efficiency and profit increased all over the world with technology, workers’ wages remained stagnated. Instead of investing in the communities, welfare and sharing profit, most businesses avoid taxes and launder their money beyond the rich of governments. The same government that protects their property with Police and Firefighters, provides hospitals, schools to educate workers and fund scientific discoveries from which the rich benefit more.

Profit itself is a good motivator in any community for most individuals. It is an incentive to trade, create services and jobs. Indeed, it is foolish to starve the well you drink from. If workers and patrons that increase profit are well taken care of and treated well, they also become efficient and loyal customers. Some people argue that money is not the root of all evils but greed is. It comes in the form of excessive profit without paying back a fair share and giving back to uplift the source of the profit.

This is why in developed countries, big businesses and the richest individuals create lobbyists, hire lawyers and accountants to pay little or no tax while workers shoulder and pay more in percentages than their bosses. An aberration that is obvious to everybody but those blinded by greed justify it as necessary for a capitalist economy. Some of the rich even claim paying more to workers discourages them from working. African leaders do not need lobbyists or lawyers at home, they just launder money outside for foreign lawyers and accountants to hide.

While the rich justify not paying taxes on the profit of inherited wealth that sits idle, they think working poor and those mothers not working because they are taking care of their children at home must not get tax privileges the wealthy get. It is the reason the rich businesses that pay little or no tax because of tax credits are called Corporate Bums. They get tax credits but the poor cannot get tax credits for taking care of children.

Farouk Martins Aresa @oomoaresa

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