Sustainable Standards and Free Trade - Pt.1

in #trade • 5 years ago

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These next posts are going to be sections of a talk I gave on my perception of the current state of commerce and trade between developed and developing nations. Covering free trade, fair trade, doing business abroad and co-creating and maintaining reasonable standards for producers in developing nations to develop and manufacture their goods.

###I begin with an intro of myself (modifications made for the written form):

I have been vastly under-qualified for everything I’ve done in my life. And i’m still here….so that alone can’t be a good enough reason not to do them.

I want to start this talk by saying that I am not trying to convert you to any particular way of thinking. I am trying to work the best way to do things and I’ve found that for me, rambling about is a particularly good way to do that.

I am going to say an awful lot what I have seen. And you may push back and tell me I’m wrong on quite a lot of it. But that’s all right, because I’ve been wrong about all these things at some point in my life. I might still be wrong about them now.

But as Terence McKenna said “I have nothing but scorn for all kinds of weird ideas other than my own. And the reason I tolerate my own weird ideas is because of what I have gone through. I wouldn’t never believe it if I hadn’t seen it.”

So I don’t expect you to tolerate my weird ideas for any longer than a few blog posts.

This blog is as much for me as it is for any of you reading. Maybe more. Because you see I forget the things that I have learned very often. My walls in my office are plastered with reminders. Pictures and scribbles and notes that I come up with all the time and forget just as quickly. These kinds of blogs and presentations help my hugely to remember the details of what I've done.

My past:

I was born in Schoelcher, Martinique, which is a tiny, out of the way Carribean island where my parents were pioneering
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My parents had more faith in their children's chances in Canadian school system so they brought me and my sister back at a young age to Canada

By the time we moved to the Stratford area I was fully bilingual English/French, which I let wither away when I developed a scorn for schooling in my teenage years

I went to school at Nancy Campbell Collegiate Institute in Stratford, ON - so in my formative years my friends were from all sorts of places. Guyana, Kuwait, Korea, and all other sorts of marvellous places. And so still when I travel the world, I can always look up an obscure high school friend in a far off place. It’s just wonderful. Being able to couch surf around the globe.

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When it was time, my first great leap of independence was to London, Ontario. Desperate to be as independent as a part-time university student who calls home every two weeks for money could be. I worked. I rented. I stayed with friends. I was homeless for a few months. Mostly from my own cockiness.

Because I didn’t like any of my schooling I dropped out from a program at Fanshawe. and since I didn’t like people telling me what to do I proceeded to bounce around every profession under the sun! Here we go with the list. Up to this point in my life I have tried my hand at:

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Carpenter was one of the most notable because I was with an Amish framing crew (they don’t drive themselves). This was a terribly awkward position because my boss and his crew would drink excessively after each job, and in the van on the return trips. But I was a fresh face 20-something yr old who had none of the nerve to tell them any different. He used to ask me when I let him off at his home to burn another Metallica CD or some other heavy metal band to listen to in the van. See they couldn’t listen at home, and anyways, yes that was a roaring mess. So I was burning heavy metal albums for this Amish crew and driving around their party bus which happened to have our tools in it. Until I burned out and quit 3 months later.

Day Laborer - is easy to highlight as maybe the most awful job. They send you to clear up worksites, or vacuum concrete dust for 8 hours and then when you come back they take half your pay, and spit the rest out of a change machine. But since you have no accountability or skills, they feel they can treat you this way.

And at my peak of professional pompery I was 2nd in command with a large education corporation. Working in Orlando and Los Angeles. Then placed for 3 years in Beijing, China. Placed in China I was sort of the executive bridge between American and Chinese offices, the go-between, the peacemaker. And the road warrior since I was on the road usually about 300 days a year.

Now I find myself returned to my hometown, following a path of quasi-nouveau buddhism and minimalism, while making a go at my own business.

Pt. 2, tomorrow.

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#commerce #standards #developing #nations
5 years ago in #trade by
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