1/23/2008 As many of you well know, a country’s prosperity can only come from three possible sources: natural resources, financial capital, and ever increasingly, human capital. As Bermuda has no natural resources to speak of, and with financial capital only domiciled here due to current advantageous conditions fast being copied by other jurisdictions, we need to realize, and fast, that the only opportunity for us to continue to differentiate ourselves in this ever flattening world, is by increasing the value of our human capital.
In fact, Geoff Colvin wrote in an article in the December 10, 2007 edition of Fortune magazine entitled “The Battle for Brainpower” ... “We’ve know for a long time that this day was coming, and now it’s here: Countries are finally realizing that their future prosperity depends... …on human capital. Companies have been battling for years to attract and keep the best people. Now countries are engaging in the same fight.”...
Protectionism
In Bermuda however, we have a situation where we have a Term Limits policy in place that to all intents and purposes, and despite the initial good intentions, is now potentially driving knowledge workers out of our country, and very possibly directly into the open arms of our competitor countries. This will absolutely be to the detriment of Bermuda as a whole.
Some will say that overtly protectionist policies such as these are important to ensure that Bermudians are not disenfranchised in their own country. To answer this, Business knows it is completely unsustainable to even think about domiciling in Bermuda and not involve the citizen population. However there is a point where fair and just policies to advance the current and future prospects of Bermudians may quickly be passed, and instead protectionist polices become too burdensome and difficult, and not only become barriers to entry of new business, but may even drive existing business away. It is not a case of giving key and scarce exemptions to individual employees to try to ameliorate businesses’ concerns. The hard and fast facts are that knowledge workers exist in all levels of an organization, and oftentimes can make up departmental teams that are unrivaled in their particular field in regards to dynamism and collective endeavor.
Policies that slowly chip away at these “dream teams”, through either term limits reached, or individuals in the team making personal decisions to leave Bermuda due to a looming six year deadline (never mind those that potentially never came in the first place), can be devastating. As Colvin added in the same Fortune article, “No country can have world class workers if it continually protects them from world class competition”.
Immigration over protectionism is akin to countries imposing tariffs on less expensive but identical overseas manufactured products to ensure that localized manufacturers can get the price necessary to sustain the profitability of the company, and thus keep the workers employed. This as we all know is becoming rapidly unsustainable, as much of the world is moving towards free trade, thus removing all protectionist tariffs. In economic parlance the benefits of Free Trade or LACK of Protectionism are explained using the term Comparative Advantage.
The benefits of Comparative Advantage can be summarized using the following analogy:
Two men live alone on an isolated island. To try to survive individually, they must undertake a few basic economic activities like water carrying, fishing, cooking, shelter construction and maintenance. The first man is young, strong, and highly educated and is faster, better, more productive at everything. He has an absolute advantage in all activities. The second man is much, much older, and therefore weaker, and only has a basic education. He has an absolute disadvantage in all activities. In some activities the difference between the two is great; in others it is small.
Is it in the interest of either of them to work in isolation? No, specialization and trade can benefit both of them. So instead of the younger man working by himself (even if he has an absolute advantage over the older man), from an economic standpoint, it makes better sense to work together, even though the younger man’s individual output would decrease.
How should they divide the work? According to comparative advantage: the young man must spend more time on the tasks in which he is much better and the old man must concentrate on the tasks in which he is only a little worse. Such an arrangement will increase total production and/or reduce total labour. It will make both of them richer.
In Bermuda, the simple fact is, Bermudian’s, as a whole, will collectively and economically “do better” or achieve a Comparative Advantage when Free Trade of Human Capital is encouraged (albeit with the careful and measured management by the Department of Immigration). Make no mistake about it, other jurisdictions are, to put it bluntly, gunning for us. We as a country must be very clear that our Comparative Advantage, with the addition of overseas knowledge workers, is far more beneficial to us as a whole than the absolute disadvantage of us trying to go it alone.
Therefore fellow Bermudians should know that if Government has the foresight and fortitude to amend, and perhaps even strike the current Term Limit legislation, there is a real and significant benefit to all Bermudians.
Entitlement
Currently in Bermuda, there seems to be broad agreement by Government and business that a pervasive attitude of entitlement is creeping in. Last year in fact Premier Brown said …“I have lived in the U.S. and seen what happens when people have their entrepreneurial spirits and ability to self-sustain taken away from them because the state came in to provide for them. We don’t want that and we are not going to have that in Bermuda.”
Bermuda and Bermudians have traditionally in the past embraced the culture that hard work will lead to great success, and much of where we are today is because of that attitude. However, we are in danger of losing that competitive advantage as it seems that more and more Bermudians simply believe that we should just get “it” without really having to work for “it”.
Some argue that the current spate of criminal and anti social behaviour is driven by a misplaced sense of entitlement. Truthfully though, as a country, and a community, we need to look a little closer to home to see where this sense of entitlement is coming from. And when I say closer to home, I mean “in the home”. Not that I want to sit here and preach about Family Values, but is it really any surprise that we have young individuals out and about seemingly without any sort of parental control or guidance, when we Bermudians, perhaps not necessarily celebrate, but at the very least tacitly accept the amount of single mothers that, in many cases, are not even out of their teens, having children? To be clear and to not cast generalist aspersions, there are some fantastic single mothers that have done an outstanding job raising their children and they should be rigorously applauded. However the facts are pretty incontrovertible that children who are born to single mothers will most likely, through their lives, achieve much less than those born into a stable, cohesive and supportive family household. If they do not have a stable family environment to help them learn by example what it is to be a contributing member of this community, is it any wonder we now have individuals that believe that if they haven’t earned it, they still have the right to take it?
In also understanding the development of the culture of entitlement pervading Bermuda, we also need to truly ask ourselves: has education failed us, or have we failed education? Sitting with Mike Charles the General Secretary of the Bermuda Union of Teachers the other day at a luncheon, I asked him very frankly: what in your opinion is the biggest cause of the difficulties we currently face in education? His answer took me by surprise, as I expected him to perhaps say lack of funding, poor administration, shortage of qualified teachers. No. He looked me squarely in the eye, and said, the reason we are struggling right now is that we failed to hold ourselves to a higher standard. We dumbed down the educational requirements of each level. We moved from a minimum graduating standard that had a world wide acceptance to a graduating standard of a Bermuda Secondary School Certificate that to all intents and purposes really has very little relevance to the outside world, and more and more seems to have very little relevance to the Bermuda workplace requirements.
So if I interpret Mr. Charles’s comments correctly: we put ourselves in the position we find ourselves in. We failed by not keeping educational standards high, we failed by complaining to schools and teachers when our child should have been held back because they hadn’t mastered the necessary levels of understanding to move to the next level, and we failed when we complained to the schools and teachers for reprimanding our children. We can only really blame ourselves for building this culture of entitlement, because as Bermuda got easier to live in (to the point that it now has the highest per capita income in the world), we started to “take it easy”. The problem now is that we have to fight an uphill battle to bring the values back that drove Bermuda to such unrivalled successes, and which now are in danger of slipping away. As much as we may want to look towards education as the sole blame for some of our social ills, the sad fact is we need to first look at the falling away of family cohesion, and abrogating of parental responsibilities to properly raise our children.
It isn’t good enough just to pay child support. Children learn by what they see. If they see a strong male figure in their life, making sacrifices and selfless decisions in the upbringing of their child, making sure the child makes it to school on time, and leading by example in making time themselves, taking their son to football practice, and then cheering in the freezing rain through the game, it WILL make a difference. Our children will see it, and the will emulate it later in life.
Meritocratic Ideals
Avoiding protectionist policies and counteracting the culture of entitlement is a crucial way to move towards a more meritocratic workplace. And the best ideals of Meritocracy are a key path in moving past aristocratic and oligarchic systems that have existed in Bermuda in the past, leveling the playing field and truly allowing individuals the hope of success if they work hard and focus.
Meritocratic ideals mean that appointments are made and responsibilities are given based on demonstrated ability. Proponents of meritocracy argue that a meritocratic system is more just and more productive than other systems, and that it allows for an end to distinctions based on such arbitrary things as sex, race or social connections. And we all know that we could do with a lot less focus on race. However in order to get to the point that we are working towards a more cohesive and collectively successful island of Bermudians, we have to realize that sometimes the best man or woman for a job may not necessarily be Bermudian. That means that we may not be able to even come close to achieve the ideal of having all Bermudian teachers in our schools. If we truly want the very best education for our children, we will have to import more overseas teachers, and work to bring up the level of qualification of existing Bermudian teachers. If we want a more ordered and safe society to live in, we must be ready to be policed by foreigners, because we can no longer afford to have too few applicants who are in some cases, not even marginally qualified to fill the ranks of the Bermuda Police Service. For years, the Bermuda Police Service has been running at a significantly understaffed level, and it was in part because of the goal of the Bermudianization of the police force. We cannot continue to “dumb down” the levels of qualifications, as it failed us in Education, and it will fail us again. In the meritocratic ideal, putting the best person for the job in the job, can in fact cause the entire population to “rise with the tide”.
When we are all working at a heightened level of excellence, let’s remember the Economic principle of Comparative Advantage and the cross benefits they confer on both expatriate workers, and Bermudians. We will ALL achieve much greater success; success in our social integration, success in our artistic endeavor, success in our governing principles, and yes continued success financially, if we work together. Our Human Capital is our biggest advantage we have. So fellow Bermudian’s, lets choose to not dumb ourselves down, as, in the global world of competitiveness, a misplaced sense of entitlement will only take us further and further out of the game. The only way Bermuda can continue to enjoy its chart topping quality of life and financial stability is in leveraging the combined strength of our integrated pool of knowledge workers, where Meritocratic ideals of best practices can help us all to great global success.
Let’s not end up like our colloquial namesake the Bermuda Onion. The source of much of late 19th century prosperity, the Bermuda Onion dominated the market and was Bermuda’s number one export and foreign currency earner. Then, in 1898, a small Texas farming community changed its name to the Bermuda Colony, later becoming the town of Bermuda, Texas, allowing their onions to be legally called Bermuda Onions. Competition began between Bermuda and Texas to export onions. A combination of what the Texans could do with their onions with the new railway system nationwide in the USA that Bermuda could not, and high protectionist tariffs imposed by the USA, led to the total destruction of the industry in Bermuda.
Oh, they are still called Bermuda Onions, and they are still considered by chefs and gourmands to be some of the tastiest and the best in the world.
However, the only part of the Bermuda Onion we in Bermuda are left with, is the tears.
|
