The World Is Logical

Since I began reading The Economist and getting to see the world no longer from a Nigerian standpoint the world no longer looks like a ragbag of the fortunates and the unfortunates. Luck began to shrink in the picture of the world I see. 

image: esri.com

And Nigeria no longer seem such a terrible place to live. I got to understand the true meaning of home advantage. There is no country in the world where a first generation immigrant is not discriminated. In Japan there's a cap to how high you can rise in their business world; in US you'll have a lot of catching up to do while battling subtle racism; in UK they are clear about the fact that they don't want immigrants; in Saudi Arabia you'll become a rich slave; in Russia you will suffer and in Brazil you'll have no true connections. In the long run, there is no true greener pasture. It's up to people to water the pasture where they are and make it greener for them and for a time. Xenophobia is deeply rooted in human nature. No one likes an outsider to beat him on his own turf. There will always be that Pharaoh in every country who (someday) will rise up against the successful immigrants in his country. It has happened in South Africa, Libya, Iraq, Germany, and is happening in Thailand.

The developed countries all worked their way to the top. They measure everything, have professors providing research-based advice on every aspect of the country, operate transparently, kick against corruption, make policies that are not just reactive, make use of their brains and do things right. And some of them started from a state much worse than we are currently in. But we have refused to make the right change. We still don't have an accurate figure of how many we are in this country. No one can vouch for the authenticity of the data the government provides through the National Bureau of Statistics. We sort of celebrate corruption and we don't make research-based decisions. 

Luck has almost no role to play in the way a country turns out to be. We keep complaining that the British put together very different people without seeking their consent and named them Nigeria. But I don't know of any country in the world where the people weren't gathered together by a dictator or war. It's never about how we came together. None of us got the luxury of choosing the family we were born in or picking our siblings, yet we make the most of it. But we have contented ourselves with blaming our national troubles on an amalgamation that happened 100 years ago. We keep leaving out logic and expecting chance to throw us along the path of success. We are not willing to work our way to the top. We still don't see that the world is logical.

Everything we read in the books at school are real. The principle of demand and supply is real. If the supply of jobs is much more than the demand for jobs there will be high unemployment and very low labour wage. If a country exports raw materials and imports finished products it will always be left out of the biggest chunk of value creation in the production chain, and stuck with low level skilled workers. If a country won't prosecute corrupt politicians then they will continue to abound. Just like gravity, nothing defies logic for long.