Dollar Altar

By Robert Mwangi

Declining Western Development Hinges on Human Suffering: Developing Countries Cautioned From Copying The Entire Model.

The observations in this book about Capitalism are not in comparison to other economic models, but on its own merits that need no such comparison to appreciate. Many have questioned the fairness and the skewedness of wealth distribution in Capitalism, but have been dismissed by the so called winners when they say, ”it’s the best that we have.” On this I would say, if you were stranded in sea it would be imprudent to quench your thirst with the best there is. You should focus on how to make the best available water safe to drink. The best we have does not mean that it’s the best there can ever be.
The debate about some Capitalism failures always becomes divisive as most people think that the remedy is socialistic and communism-like and cold war hangovers don’t help.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Sep 9, 2014
• ISBN: 9781312502390

Book preview

Dollar Altar

DOLLAR ALTAR

Declining Western Development Hinges on Human Suffering; Developing Countries Cautioned From Copying the Entire Model

Robert Mwangi, BSN, RN, MBA

Copyright © 2014 by Robert Mwangi

All rights reserved

Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher

Published in the United States

Includes bibliographical References and index.

ISBN- 978-1-312-50239-0

www.dollaraltar.com

Dedication

To my sister Eunice

PRELUDE

Altars?

After graduation from The University of Alabama at Birmingham with a Bachelor of Science in Nursing, I was enthusiastic to start treating patients and anything that had to do with the heart fascinated me. Having done my preceptorship at University of Alabama Medical Center’s Cardiovascular Intensive Care Unit, I was ready to help those ailing from cardiovascular diseases in a critical care setting. Driven by the   weather and the patient to nurse ratio that had made California a magnet State for nurses, I started my medical career in Loma Linda University Medical Centers’ Cardio-Thoracic ICU in Southern California.

The excitement about advances in cardiovascular medicine quickly waned as I started to see the suffering of middle aged men and women, majority of whom were of a certain earning bracket, whose hearts had been attacked, but by what? I started questioning the origin of the conveyer belt that dropped the patients at the cardio-thoracic surgeon’s operating table. I soon discovered that their hearts had been poisoned by fast food and sedentary lifestyles and multiple industries’ earnings were pegged on pre and post-surgery lives of the patients. It quickly dawned on me that most of the ailing souls that sought intervention of advanced medicine were not only the engine of fast food industry but pharmaceuticals, biotechnology companies   and hospitals complete with training schools that staff them all over the country.

My goals seemed to change as I felt a personal responsibility to expose that which at face value seemed as the epitome of modern living and medical breakthroughs. Though I had planned to pursue a Masters degree in Nurse Anesthesiology, which would have effectively made the operating room my office, I felt a certain discomfort. I felt like these operating rooms had literally become altars that sacrificed many for the sake of a few. I thought that a Masters in Public Health would help my quest but I wondered why public health agencies had not treated the precursors (Diabetes and Hypertension) of the leading cause of death in the U.S. as the epidemic that they are. How comes the urgency and vigor that I had seen every flu season from public health officials was lacking in regard to ongoing but preventable cardiovascular diseases?

As I discharged the patients, mostly after undergoing open-heart surgery (Coronary Artery Bypass Graft), I noted that they had no primary care doctors. They also had something else in common. They all had been admitted through the emergency room in a medical crisis. A pattern of deliberate and systemic actions that make sure they only show up to the hospital barely alive seemed to emerge. I started to fantasize with a day when the emergency room would not admit a patient. What if this went on for months? Then I realized that doctors, nurses, and a myriad of other health care workers would be jobless. But for the Emergency Room not to admit any more patients plagued by sugar, fat and salt, fast food restaurants and soft drinks industries would lose millions in earnings or go bankrupt altogether. Could society have conspired to make sure this never happens, I wondered? My fears about operating rooms as sacrificial altars where many suffer and others die so that a few can make millions seemed to be confirmed.

A doctor friend of mine had earlier given me a story as a student which he said was the model for public health that is applied in dealing with public health diseases. Being an infectious disease doctor specializing in tuberculosis, he had the credentials to elaborate the model. He said that if rescue workers took drowning victims to a hospital to be treated, the hospital would tend to them but would not ask why they drowned in the first place, even if dozens others continued to flock its wards. They only know how to treat, one at a time, which is as a result of training that creates silo think tanks, he said.

Public health officials would ask the common sense question. Why and how did they drown? They would quickly discover that the bridge upstream of where the victims were being rescued was broken. People had been driving into the river and washed downstream half-conscious with trauma injuries sustained from being banged on the rocks.

Did the public health officials even know there were people drowning with diabetes and high blood pressure? But if the coroner knew they surely would know, I thought to myself. Why the lethargy, I pondered? Instead of public health, a study of policy making and business social responsibility seemed to be the solution. I sought to understand how the world around me works. This would aid me in understanding the conveyer belt to what seemed like a slaughter-house with a revolving door. An MBA program seemed like the place I would know what was really happening. So I enrolled in the graduate program at California State University San Bernardino School of Business. Here is a portion of my statement of purpose for MBA followed by a reflective essay at the end of the program.

[Working in ICU] has exposed me to how business decisions impact healthcare, particularly the patient who is the consumer of healthcare. For example, cardiovascular diseases are the leading killer in America today, diseases that are preventable through exercise programs and a healthy diet. If governments and insurance companies invested heavily in disease prevention, billions of dollars would be saved and not to mention the agony and suffering saved for would be patients and families. Given the opportunity to pursue MBA degree, my personal goal is to use the knowledge acquired to make health care available to all with emphasis on prevention; which is only achievable by viable business organizations.  This I will do by using the knowledge acquired from the program to encourage insurance and healthcare companies to invest in preventive medicine.

Portion of my reflective essay after completing the program;

My quest for business knowledge was fueled by the realization that business decisions form the world in which we live in. The financial crisis that started in 2007 helped concretize this view. Millions of people lost their jobs as a result of business decisions that were unethical, especially in the financial industry where mortgages were extended to people that did not meet the credit worthiness to qualify for such loans. The MBA program has been a journey that has given me a deeper understanding of finance, economics and politics and how they interact to shape our world […] The program has given me a global perspective that acknowledges that the world economy is interwoven and that sustainable competitiveness is only possible when business decision making is cognizant of this fact […] When I started the program I was hoping that I had chosen the right career path having come from a science background. Today, I am happy that I pursued an MBA because I am better equipped to make ethical decisions that are both environmentally and socially responsible that will positively impact this generation and posterity.

Transformation

This knowledge quest was transformative. I soon realized that the altar extended beyond the hospital operating tables, and a lot of wealth and power in western style economies is derived from similar models. Innocent people are not only maimed and placed on perpetual symptom management regimens but their taxes are squandered, their sons and daughters sacrificed in wars and are swindled off their retirement investments.

FOREWORD

Great theories are a skeleton of reality that helps us understand the principles behind the world we experience. They are analogous to a prism that aids us to see the individual colors from a single ray of otherwise white light. My thesis that modern development and the metrics that ostensibly confirms it, is inversely proportional to quality of life for the majority of the population in the countries that are considered developed, will be the operating prism.

In this book, I will mostly ignore real and perceived benefits in Western development and focus on the maladies and moribund outcomes. The thin brush will repaint the developed world especially the U.S. and the emerging picture will reveal a world that owes much of it acclaimed development to engineered and/or accidental human suffering. It will also present a declining world due to a convergence of short-sighted and misinformed policies; an inherent design failure of free markets.

Throughout the book, I will caution developing countries from copying models, programs and laws that have benefited a few while filling the graveyard with the rest. For consistency, the U.S. is merely a representative sample of modern development.

I will address skewed wealth distribution process and patterns, disease capitalism, war economics, consumerism, debt culture, and misleading economic metrics in the developed world. Detroit City will close the first portion of the book with lessons that the U.S. can learn from the city. The final portion of book will be dedicated to Africa, addressing policy making, illicit and legal transfer of wealth out of Africa and the influence of offs-shore governments, international institutions, and off shore lobby power in Africa’s Parliaments and Central Banks

Development, what is it?

Developing countries are not developing in a vacuum. Their development is informed by what they have seen in the so called developed world. The leaders in these countries think of development as erection of concrete, steel and glass structures but few investigate the corresponding quality of life or the lack thereof that has been imposed upon populations in the world they want to belong to; whose deficient model they are increasingly copy-pasting. Some leaders are clueless and are blindly following the guidelines provided by Bretton Woods Institutes and others to structure their economies in a way that mirrors the developed world.

They don’t realize that the developed world has hit an impenetrable ceiling due to a convergence of shortsighted policies and missed opportunities to correct them. Hence, the only place with real potential for western style growth are those countries in prescribed early stages of development. The leaders in these countries need to rise to the occasion and learn from many mistakes that make the developed world possible and avoid structuring their economies in a way that is addicted to consumerism and human suffering. In doing so, they will have settled for less concrete, steel and glass structures but better quality of life.

Prudent Choice

For instance, what should a developing country   confronted by a growing number of it citizens with diabetes as a result of an increase in fast food consumptions do?  Those that would want to follow the way of the developed world especially the U.S., would invest in a state of the art multi-million dollar cardiac surgery center and a medical school to train cardio-thoracic surgeons given the projected increased demand. In a free market economy, the government would invest in a public medical school and a private company would invest in the said cardiac center. Financial analysts would give the company undertaking the investment AAA rating due to the huge potential. Investors would buy the company’s bonds and shares and wait to cash in when the first of diabetics start clogging their hearts’ blood vessels. The economy would register growth fueled by the sick and the dying but only the rich would be celebrating the numbers. 

Prudent leaders in the developing country should not take this beaten path. Instead, they should invest in diabetes prevention by educating the public, regulating fast food restaurants, regulating sodas and investing in curative medicine not just managing symptoms for the ones who are already sick. This choice would in fact register a declining or stagnant economy but with better quality of life for the citizens. The government would have to invest or build support infrastructure in other areas of the economy that have positive outcomes.

The economy in some developed countries is dedicated to minting sick people and managing their symptoms. God forbid that they somehow got cured because the economy would debilitated or collapse.

De facto Government

The observations