No lack of supporters of the current national government who attack me for defending the business economy, for, quite mistakenly, they conclude that I am an enemy of workers, when it is obvious that there are no companies without employees and no employees without companies. And without the development of these relationships, societies cannot generate the wealth that is required to truly raise the living standards of countries, including those of employees of all types.

Let it not now be the clever or clueless person who concludes that I am an enemy of the non-business economy, such as that of peasants and other self-employed workers. Because I have been proposing for five decades that Colombia should support and defend the different economies, including the very important one of the weakest, as demonstrated by the great contribution of the coffee peasants to the progress of the country.

You may be interested in: MinComercio launched the Seal and Ranking of Payment in Fair Terms: this is how your company can apply and gain the recognition of suppliers and customers

Because with the steam engine and other engines, the natural power of human beings has been multiplied by thousands, also from the powerful energy source of fossil fuels.

But beware: the engines that turned tools into machine-tools could not have been used if production had not been concentrated in plants with tens, hundreds or thousands of workers, i.e., in enterprises. An example illustrates the point: a poor farmer goes bankrupt if he buys a powerful tractor to use on his tiny plot of land.

With the Industrial Revolution and companies, grew significantly the wealth of countries, the income of workers, the standard of living of the population increased greatly and, among other achievements, the State was able to offer free public education, another great leap forward in social progress. The democratic rights of wage earners finally appeared, including the right to organize to deal with companies. And political democracy was conquered, replacing the fierce despotism of the feudal monarchies.

That is why my debates on Agro Ingreso Seguro or the illegalities in the Altillanura were initiated with the express statement that they were not against businessmen or companies, but against certain behaviors that I considered unacceptable.

The above to conclude that at the base of Colombia’s underdevelopment -that of the capitalism of the scarce 6,500 dollars per capita, eleven and eight times less than those of the United States and Germany-, are the low rates of formal employment compared to those of developed countries, figures that also indicate how rickety the Colombian business economy is, not because of entrepreneurs or wage earners, but because of the lousy national economic policies.

To better understand what is happening in the country, where formal jobs are barely 10.2 million out of a possible 39.4 million, 588 thousand companies of 50 workers each would have to be created to formalize them all. And how many more companies and self-employed businesses would have to be set up to meet the new purchasing capacity created?

Concluding then that in Colombia and Bogota there are common interests to work on in the midst of differences, such as creating, creating and creating more sources of formal employment and wealth.

Bogotá, June 30, 2023.

También de este columnista: Ni cabe ni se necesita el Transmilenio por la Séptima