Social and Economic Growth,
Human Rights and Maintaining Property Rights

Nipawin - February 12, 2001 - by: Mario deSantis
   

confusion

There is a lot of confusion these days, about what our political and economic directions
should be, and this state of confusion is reinforced by our politicians, business leaders, top
bureaucrats and academicians. In Saskatchewan, while we experience a suffocating
democracy(1) and an unprecedented marginalization of our Aboriginal people, we have new
Premier Lorne Calvert who is heralding the Workman Way, after Roy Romanow's
Saskatchewan Way.

 

 

dichotomy

In Canada, there is a resurgence to go back to the old times and play the governmental
dichotomy of socialism versus capitalism. So we have our health economists headed by
Dr. Michael Rachlis rallying around socialist medicare, and our rightist Albertan professor
Tom Flanagan preaching the gospel of maintaining property rights, free contracts and free
market prices.

 

 

finding
synergy

Our economic growth is not naturally motivated by the demagogic doctrines of socialism and
capitalism. Our economic growth should be motivated by our creativity in finding synergy
among our competing economic interests within a social system which supports the checks
and balances designed to ensure governments of, by, and for the people(2).

 

 

checks and
balances

In Canada, as we are concerned, these governmental checks and balances have been broken,
and this is why there is an ongoing social concern about social equality, and this is why in the
course of writing our social and political failures in Saskatchewan I coined the term "a World
for the Few and Privileged(3)."

 

 

creativity

We must stop cheating ourselves and say that the United Nations says that Canada is the best
country in the world(4), while in reality we have been losing social and economic grounds, year
after year in the last some thirty years. Synergy of work and creativity lead to a vibrant social
economy, and this is not accomplished by preaching the falsehood of either capitalism or
socialism, but by ensuring our democracy, that is basically by having equal human rights rather
than maintaining property rights.
   
------------References/endnotes:
   
  List of relevant political and economics articles http://ensign.ftlcomm.com
   

1.

The right to tell the truth in peril!, Injusticebusters

 

 

2.

Business Dynamics, by John D. Sterman, 2000, The Rules of the Game, page 380

 

 

3.

A World for the Few and Privileged in Saskatchewan, by Mario deSantis, February 18, 2000

 

 

4.
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A Saskatchewan Way Of Economic Growth: Good Psychology, by Mario deSantis, October 16, 2000