Saturday, October 6, 2012

BELIZE 2013 TO 2033 ENERGY AND SCIENCE POLICY PAPER TO COME OUT



BELIZE GOVERNMENT MAKES POLICY PLAN FOR SCIENCE AND ENERGY – OUT TO 2033.

  Belize is way low on ranking for internet users, in the world.  In the Caribbean we are slightly better than Haiti, the lowest.  We only have five countries worse than us, for technology transfer and direct investment, in the whole world.
  This article in the GUARDIAN, the UDP government weekly paper, was full of dreams, hype and castles in the sky, talk and promises.  Been there and done that before.  Still, it may be a start, but do not uncross your fingers yet, or plan on implementing your plan to produce electricity in the private sector yet.  Lots of water to go under the bridge before that can happen.  Don’t forget, the worst individuals run for political office, not the best, to manage our country.  Our bureaucratic culture is very much, 8 to 5 p.m., 2 hour lunches and coffee breaks.  Allegedly they work in between. Some departments actually do, but most do not.  An energy policy is just a paper that will normally be filed after extracting political mileage out of it for propaganda purposes.  For such a policy to work, you would need innovative politicians.  If they were innovative they wouldn’t be politicians.  Same with the bureaucracy.  Why would an individual supposedly smart with academic degrees, be working for a government salary, when the private innovative risk taking sector could and can be so much more financially rewarding?
  It’s a bit like filling a round hole with a square peg.  They had a professor from MIT in California as speaker.  Dr. Cardinal Warde.  One wonders how many companies he owns on the side, in the private sector?  There is going to be the usual division of labor, through various officious sounding titles, and more paid bureaucrats on salaries, which we tax payers will have to pay for. His Foundation, will assist in educational reform, to inspire more technological and engineering subjects.  One interesting thing announced was a 4 week summer camp for interested HIGH SCHOOL students in science, technology, engineering and such.  Hope they teach them to build small ultra light aircraft, or use a lathe to make small items with a micro meter.  Interesting comment about investing in innovative thinkers.  Haaaah!  This innovative thinker, talker and doer, has been around doing stuff since, for ever.  Only thing out of these governments of ours has been obstructive, not constructive.  Or worse, total apathy.
    You would need to change the political culture to innovative, or the bureaucratic culture to innovative to get anywhere.  You would need subsidies, tax free benefits, government share investment capital in newly formed energy companies for example.  How you develop an innovative thinker, by an academic system, is beyond me?  Perseverance, out of the box thinking, and other entrepreneurial skills are not easily classified, or pigeon holed.  It’s not the academic system, but the individual with the drive, an unmeasurable quantity. Cannot be taught.  You either have it, or not.  Not everybody can be an OLYMPIC athlete and not everybody is a natural entrepreneur. This sort of thing is learned young as a family environmental effect. Some are just born to it.  One goal espoused was replacing the importation of fossil fuel by 50%.  I can think how to do that.  Make it profitable to do so by the private sector.  Innovative legislation. There is neither incentive, or profit at the moment in Belize.
  It comes down to encouraging your human capital.  Something Belize politicians on the self enrichment fast track, would be in conflict with, as anything that would enrich an entrepreneur, they would scent as some way for them personally to enrich themselves off it.  Happens all the time in Belize.  Check out the newspapers on Gaspar Vega, a top politician.  Tax breaks, subsidies, government investment capital in start ups.  Unheard of, but without which; this proposed policy is nothing more than a pipe dream for political mileage use only.  Good upbeat article in the Guardian otherwise.


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