A simple observation from looking at GDP is that the world’s economy largely revolves around the four industrial and technological powerhouses – the US, China, Japan and Germany. For decades, these four nations alone have amounted to almost 50% of the entire world’s GDP. A part of this is due to the vast amount of manpower available in these states; (Particularly in the case of the US and China.) something that Canada cannot hope to match within a short period. However, more importantly is the ability of these states to amass a large amount of highly talented intellectuals. A large amount of labor power alone does nothing to improve the wealth of the state without the proper leaders to guide them. The greatest success of the US is that it has managed to attract the best talents to its schools from across the world. A brief examination of the world’s corporate and political leaders will show that a large portion of them at one point attended an US institution. Yet Canada isn’t lacking in educational resources; our top universities are constantly amongst some of the best in the world and are frequently the destination of those seeking higher education from other countries. Our biggest issue is the inability to keep the talents we helped educate. This leads us into discussing the fundamental wealth – The people. Physically skilled laborers, educated workers and intellectual leaders are all essential components of a society’s wealth. However, the accumulation of this fundamental wealth and the prospering of society begins at the top, with not only the government but with those gifted with the intelligence and motivations required to become leaders in the economy, manifest ideas and put individuals with different abilities to work. Yet it falls on the government to provide the incentives and opportunities for these people to become leaders within the state. Mozi once said:
“It is analogous to the case of wanting to increase the number of good archers or charioteers in one’s state. One must reward and esteem them, revere and praise them; then one can succeed in increasing the number of good archers or charioteers in one’s state. How much more should this be done in the case of worthy men—those who are well versed in virtuous conduct, discriminating in discussion, and broadly knowledgeable! Such men are state treasures, guardians of the altars to the soil and grain. They too must be rewarded and esteemed, revered and praised; then one can succeed in increasing the number of worthy men in one’s state.” (8, Mozi, 63, Ivanhoe)
Obviously the age of accumulating fine archers and charioteers has long past us but Mozi’s idea of honoring the worthy remains one that we can draw our inspirations from. Rather than direct monetary rewards based on success, our policies are tied in with our ideals of education and societal structure and that is to encourage and actively provide assistance to ensure the success of the people. We will provide adequate funding towards projects and research proposals both foreign and domestic that demonstrate positive possibilities even if the return may not be immediate. By doing so we hope to not only retain some of the top intellectuals we helped educate but also to attract foreign talents from other states. In turn, this will open up more job opportunities for people of all professions and social classes and ultimately bring us to achieving our goal of accumulating capable workers and talented leaders.