We have never had a plan of action that put together the best ideas of the best minds of our time. This is one of the purposes of The Monfort Plan, a plan that constructs a credible success story by incorporating the work of some of the most talented and innovative pioneers. Ideas need creativity and enthusiasm to move forward. Ideas need to be commercially appealing, realistic and viable to move ahead in today's market economies. Ideas need to be original and entertaining to deserve the attention of the average citizen in North America and Europe.
On Friday 15 August 2008 I started building The Decem List. The Decem List consists of more than 90,497 experts from around the world in a variety of disciplines and fields classified in 825 different categories. The purpose of building The Decem List was to communicate, to spread out an action plan to redefine capitalism and eradicate extreme poverty. The objective of spreading out the action plan was to find the Expert Dreamers of today that would subsequently build up the best team of Expert Dreamers the world has seen since the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) emerged in the late 1940s. I took advantage of the fact that I was an unkown individual among the expert community, with no prestige or reputation, and consequently not afraid to move forward. Many experts in The Decem List were reluctant to establish contact. They would not have turned me down had I had a reputation.
The Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) was the U.S. Agency in charge of administering the Marshall Plan dollars. Its first director was Paul G. Hoffman, the Chief Executive Officer of the Studebaker automobile corporation. President Harry S. Truman appointed Hoffman to head ECA. Congress thought that the European Recovery Program (Marshall Plan) would be best run and managed by people with considerable business and financial experience.
Who would be best positioned to run a Second Marshall Plan? What would be the advice for anyone who designed a team of Expert Dreamers with the ability to administer a massive development aid program? ECA offers important lessons about the success of the Marshall Plan. First, hire the most talented among the Expert Dreamers. Second, put them to work in the countries where funds are being allocated. It is a lesson to take into account.
On Monday 17 November 1947 Time magazine published an article entitled "The Great Deed." Time introduced the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) as follows. It was generally agreed that there should be a separate body set up to administer the European Recovery Program. Three different groups had plans for such a body: the State Department, the Herter Committee and the Harriman Committee. On basic principles, they saw eye-to-eye. The boss should be appointed by the President, subject to Senate confirmation. The administering body should have wide and flexible authority to procure goods and facilities, administer and allocate funds. It should work in close cooperation with the State Department. It should make frequent and complete reports to Congress. Appropriations should be on an annual basis. State's plan called for a European Cooperation Administration under a director. His diplomatic assistant would be an Ambassador-at-large, with headquarters somewhere in Europe. The Herter Committee recommended that the agency be a corporation with a board of directors acting with the advice of other Government agency experts. If Congress preferred this setup, State would not oppose it.
Members in the Decem List typically received one message per month. Everybody on The Decem List had the possibility to request a removal following the instructions provided in the following disclaimer that accompanies each of the messages:
The Monfort Plan is a five-year, forward-looking plan to eradicate extreme poverty from the developing world. The Monfort Plan proposes a new institution based in the developing world with the potential to provide a basic, free and universal service in the areas of water, sanitation, healthcare and education to the extreme poor worldwide subject to a certain degree of conditionality in areas ranging from corruption to legal environment. The New Institution will be established in a new international territory based on a specific country in Subsaharan Africa and will emerge in 2015.
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Along the road while writing the book I have conducted 225 phone interviews and 325 face-to-face interviews. I visited 25 countries during an 18-month period. I felt that among the categories of experts that I interacted with during during the 18-month interval, academics were most reluctant to speak to someone that has no reputation, no reputation to lose when it comes to proposing a new economic architecture.
We lived financial times. We no longer do. We lived the white man's burden. In addition we now live the academic man's burden. A part of academia is reluctant to embrace change. A part of academia lives in an orthodox world and is imprisoned in the Prison of Thought. Thinking out of the box is not rewarded in today's academic environment. Orthodox academics have become friends with the Pirates of Heartless Capitalism. We ought to evolve as a society according to their models. Let's turn the modus operandi around. Let's turn the status quo around. Let's adapt our models to the reality of an unequal world, to the reality of a world on the wrong path that will not reach sustainability and the era of Global Public Goods if we do not turn the course of this journey.
One Hundred Expert Dreamers will join the Chief Dreamer to constitute The Monfort Team, the best of experts that has ever served the global public interest, a reincarnation of the Economic Cooperation Administration that implemented the Marshall Plan, the success story in development of the twenty-first century.
Over the course of the five-year period ending in 2009, I interacted with the Hundred Expert Dreamers. I met 60 of them and talked on the phone with 40. They are from 41 different countries: Angola (1), Argentina (1), Australia (1), Austria (3), Bangladesh (4), Belgium (1), Bermuda (1), Bolivia (3), Botswana (2), Brazil (2), Canada (3), Chile (1), Colombia (3), Costa Rica (1), Cote d'Ivoire (1), Finland (1), France (1), Germany (3), Holland (2), Hungary (1), India (3), Israel (1), Jamaica (1), Lesotho (2), Madagascar (3), Mali (2), Mauritius (1), Mozambique (4), Namibia (3), Nicaragua (1), Nigeria (1), Norway (2), Peru (2), Senegal (1), Serbia (1), Spain (4), Tanzania (2), United Kingdom (7), United States (22), Uruguay (1) and Zimbabwe (1).
The hundred Expert Dreamers are introduced throughout the book. Forty of them will hold senior positions in 20 different operational areas: Agriculture, Bank for the Poor, Chief Executive and Diplomacy, Conditionality, Decem Alliance, Decemfund, Decemland, Education, Financial Reform, Future, Health, Immigration, Income and Inequality, Microsavings Insurance, Mining, Small Arms Trade, The New Institution, Trade and Labour Rights, Water and Sanitation and the Yunus-Fund.
I am proud of the Expert Dreamers. I am proud of their achievements and their forward looking vision. They are the giants on whose sholders I contemplate a fairer capitalism. They are the giants that will defeat the pirates of heartless capitalism.
There is a better world ahead of us. Let's begin the Journey of our Lifetime, Expert Dreamers. Come on board on the Ship of Optimism that will lead of to Decemland, the land of ten percent. It is time, Expert Dreamers, it is time to say why not instead of why, it is time to look beyond our own boundaries and universalize the global priorities.
I dreamt of the World of 2050. I dreamt that we would leave a better World to our sons and daughters. I am now confident that we are about to experience major accelerations in the progress of the planet. I am now positive that we are about to eyewitness major breakthroughs in the model of global understanding.
It is time. It is our time. Let's move ahead.
Find more about Jaime Pozuelo-Monfort at http://Monfort.ORG