Thursday 20 February 2020

TO FIX A BROKEN WORLD

There is this book by Dambisa Moyo titled, EDGE OF CHAOS: Why Democracy is Failing to Deliver Economic Growth. I imagine that here in Nigeria, it has passed essentially under the radar except perhaps in such circles as the Lagos Business School.
I have found this review by Jason Hickel most engaging. The analysis was great and forthright. Now contrast Moyo's pet paradigm with the call by Prof Charles Soludo in his cry, "FROM BERLIN TO BRUSSELS - Will Europe underdevelop Africa Again?" I am yet to see a single response from the politicians and Financiers of the advanced economies up North to his call.

There is this story narrated in the Brothers Kamarazov by the Russian writer Tolstoy(?) on what greed for say land can do to a man. If indeed we default to the position of Moyo and her principals, and achieve a new GDP of say 10 times the current figure, and as usual retain 90percent of it for the top 1%, then what? What would they do with all that extra wealth? Relocate to Bali where they will be surrounded by poverty and filth? I just don't get it. It doesn't make any sense at all. Such a world may no longer be worth living in. That is exactly what the advocates of Trumponomics fail to understand. We may find ourselves back to Franz Fannon's world, nasty, brutish and short.

What would prevent a poor policeman or soldier from shooting his commander? All the money in Fort Knox cannot take care of that possibility. Or the owner of an obscenely palatial mansion being dispossessed by his very own servants overcome with hatred for their lazy "hard-working(?)" employer and drowned in his own swimming pool? Because they are grossly underpaid? . The seeds of a revolution are being unwittingly sown by the likes of Moyo. The concept of FAIR distribution of the resources of the planet earth and the output of our combined effort is lost on them. Any discussion of that is off-handedly dismissed as a reversion to Socialism. This is sad and very dangerous.

No comments:

Post a Comment