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Many people have asked me
how it is that I came to write this book. The story is quite simple.
Several years ago when I was practicing architecture in Vancouver, I
became actively involved with the World Business Academy (WBA), in fact
I was president of the Vancouver chapter for a time. This was a very
active organization, based on the idea that business is now by far the
largest and most successful institution on the planet. With
success comes an obligation to do one’s part as a good and successful
citizen to promote a healthy community. That was at the time when
dozens of successful factories were closing, laying off employees and
moving their factories to China or India to take advantage of dirt cheap
wages. The WBA felt it was important to study how the North
American business model could change to actively serve the public
good. The problem is still with us, but was acute at that time.
Some years later, my wife and I were
living part time in Mexico at the time when their peso crashed.
Little merchants were going bankrupt and closing everywhere. Banks
were seizing everything they could get their hands on. It was a
time of business collapse and misery for small business. At the
end of that year I saw in Forbes Magazine that there had been some 18
new billionaires created in Mexico that very year. It was quite
apparent that virtually all of the pain of the financial collapse was
falling on those who could least afford it. At that time I wrote
my first book 'There’s More to Life Than the Bottom Line'.
A few years later, when we were back in Canada full time, I noticed some of the same symptoms occurring here.
It was clear that the benefits of the productivity increases of our society were not being shared by the public at large,
but were being shared only with a very small percentage of the population, the
top income earners. I wrote a book which I originally
entitled 'The Coming Age of Economic Democracy'. I did not foresee the financial
collapse. Consequently many sections of the book had to be
re-written to reflect the new reality, and thus the new title 'Beyond
the Crash! Building an Economic & Ecological Democracy'.
I hope this book plays a part in
awakening the American and Canadian public to the need for a new type
of capitalism that is responsive to the real needs of the public as
well as to the vital needs of our planet. I welcome your comments.
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