Saturday, January 7, 2012

BELIZE EDUCATION - THE DIRECTION WE MUST GO IN BELIZE.

Small metal lathe
Metal working lathe
BELIZE EDUCATION, THE DIRECTION WE MUST GO AND CHANGE TO !

http://www.wimp.com/tiniestengine/

Video on making a tiny working engine and outlining the export possibilities of cheap, high markup manufacturing, home cottage industry style.

Here is a machinist in fine small metal work, in this video, producing a working small engine. His cost in metal is about $100 usa. The finished item would sell for $2000 and up.

Not only that, Terry Warburton of Warburton musical instruments, who has property in Camalote village in Belize, has his business in Central Florida, making metal brass mouthpieces for musical instruments. He also has expanded to making trumpets and cornets. He tells me that $3 worth of brass metal, can be turned on a computer driven programmed lathe ( I´ve seen it in his garage sized workshop ) and sell for $60 usa over the internet. That means his markup for mass produced labor is 2000 times.

In England, I attended a Magicians Convention and bought one time, a .25 cent quarter coin, that had a shell coin over the original. Also bought an USA penny. Produced by a machinist I spent $55 usa for each trick. The metal cost was .50 cents of course, using original coins. What the trick was, you had a magnetized playing card, and you place the coin, or let a person actually handle the quarter, or penny. Then you did the misdirection, mumbo jumbo bit and turned it by placing the coin on the back of your hand, passing playing card over it, which picked up the shell and the second face of the coin that had been hidden in shell, became exposed as a different coin. Very fine machining indeed.

This is the kind of education needed in Belize. There is not any of the four or so machinists in our small country, who have lathes, have the capability to make such small tolerance work. I talked to the machinist in Spanish Lookout who has huge lathes, but he did not know how to make a steam engine even. You are talking about skill, not expense, to make 2000 % on your money invested here. There is a huge niche market for all kinds of speciality items, for which there are only the occasional in the whole world there are only a few people specializing in such things. You are not talking about big mass production factories here. Just small cottage industry garage sized workshops. The internet has opened up markets ALL OVER THE WORLD for such things. You have the same thing in molds, and plastics and injection machines, etc.

When we talk about EDUCATION in BELIZE and exports, this is the direction we need to take. Very small niche items, with HUGE DOLLAR MARKUPS IN VALUE, for small neglible costs in materials. Apparently our academia bureaucrats lack the skills, or even the knowledge to do, or teach these things. We are going to have to get a government program to entice skilled people to come to Belize and do these things. Belizeans are great copy cats. You let them see somebody making money somehow, TWO or THREE years later, we will be boosting our GDP, providing employment because of the BOOM in new businesses. Our existing academic people simply DO NOT HAVE THE KNOWLEDGE and experience.

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