Editorial

It is remarkable how the role of the State has been misrepresented, especially in some countries in the region. The primary functions of governments are being carried out at half measures or not being done at all: the insecurity of people and goods is increasing, justice is neither swift nor effective, health and education services are only for those who can afford them, and public infrastructure is a far cry from the taxes that correspond to paying for it.

Despite this, there is an ever increasing amount of institutions and officials / consultants dedicated to teaching -theoretically- how to create businesses, how to manage them, how to do business, how to export, etc, etc, etc..

The question is obvious: if those officials / consultants really know about what they are trying to teach, why are they not employers themselves?
And the answer is clear: because they have no entrepreneurial spirit, because their greatest ambition is to safely collect their salary, because they dont want to spend nights awake because of falling sales, and especially, because they do not know how to manage - in practice- a company.

In Central America there are tens of thousands of officials / consultants who on a daily basis use words such as entrepreneurship, support for SMEs and MSMEs, export promotion, etc.. And there are also many hundreds of millions of dollars wasted on hundreds of programs to support the companies who pay their salaries; programs that -with few exceptions- never surrender their accounts or conduct real reviews of their success or failure.

It would be much more productive if those job positions, along with their salaries, were given over to the areas of law enforcement, judicial bodies , health care or public education, or simply monitoring and traffic control for trucks carrying the actual production of the country, so that they could arrive promptly to their destinations, rather than the making average speed of 20 kilometers per hour as seen on the roads of Central America.

More on this topic

Luis Alberto Moreno's teetotum

August 2015

The President of the IADB has advised Costa Rica to make a tax reform to raise taxes arguing that today the teetotum indicates "everyone gives".

EDITORIAL

The use of the old fashioned game of a faceted spinner by the head of the hemispheric institution as example, deserves to have the whole story told: the person who spun the teetotum was the Costa Rican government, the same participant of the "game" who on their previous turn benefited from the teetotum when it landed showing "TAKE ALL". Luis Alberto Moreno is saying that the serious fiscal crisis which the country now finds itself in means that now everyone must contribute to its solution. That means aproving more taxes.

More Bureaucracy to "Help" Companies

September 2014

The Ministry of Foreign Trade in Costa Rica has created a new unit to "support local companies engaged in exports or who have the potential to do so."

EDITORIAL

The question that immediately arises is how this "support" to companies with export potential will be given since it is already well established that official "consultants" who populate the offices of the new unit, do not know how "to be entrepreneurs," but merely how to receive their salaries on time every month, regardless of the fate of companies that they "support":

Costa Rica: More of the Same

August 2014

The initiative for a National Strategy for Employment and Production created by the new Solís administration shows that there is still a belief that public officials know how to produce wealth.

EDITORIAL

The Costa Rica entrepreneurs' opinion is convincing: the Union of Chambers states that "employment is not generated by decree, but through policies which improve the business climate" ...

Better be Employee than Businessman

October 2009

This is how we are raised in Latin America, disapproving or disliking those who earn a lot of money as businessmen.

Latin America does not foster entrepreneurship. Education, specially high school, rises us with the goal of getting a good job, as opposed to owning a business.