Monday May 6: minimum requirements for prosperity

Years ago, I worked in a "behavior house" -- a home setting for my fellow Americans who had propensities for violent behaviors. I worked there alongside people from all over the world... for some strange reason, they had all picked up stakes and moved to America, then to Rhode Island, and had ended up working in the same behavior house in East Providence where I was stationed. Guess they had a hankering for working with people who would try to rip your hair out in big chunks, or fling TV sets across the living room. Either that or-- like me -- they just needed a steady paycheck.

In any event, I learned why one of my co-workers had left his homeland. Seems he was a self taught car mechanic, and he had used his skills to build up a small fleet of vehicles. In his small nation -- located on the Atlantic coast of a very warm continent -- automobiles were at a premium, and not many people owned them. So he hired out these cars, sort of like a taxi service. And he made pretty decent money doing this. And all was well and great and wonderful, until an army officer showed up with a squad of soldiers.

Seems this officer took a liking to these vehicles, so he took them. At gunpoint. Needless to say, my future co-worker was very upset, but he was unarmed, so he did nothing. However, he made the mistake later on of complaining about the treatment he had received. Word got back to the authorities, so this fellow told me he had ended up "on the list".

Being pretty simple in those days, I said "List? What list?" I was genuinely puzzled. So this fellow looked at me as if I was the dumbest person ever, and explained -- as if he was talking to a small child:

"The list for being fed to the crocodiles."

Ohhhhh... that list.

ASnyway, they must really feed people to the crocodiles there, because this co-worker of mine left his country that very night. I though about his story for a long time, and it occurred to me to wonder just how many other people like him there must be, all over the world. Hope smothered, opportunities wasted, dreams denied. Are the problems of poverty really the result of lack of resources? Or does it go deeper than that? 

What do you need -- as a person, a state, a nation -- to become wealthy? In other words:


WHAT ARE THE MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS FOR PROSPERITY? 


Today's assignment is for you to tell me what you believe these requirements to be. Please list these requirements -- and there should definitely be several at the very least-- and provide not less than three complete sentences for each item on the list. One sentence explaining what the requirement provides, what it's good for. A second sentence explaining what the attendant difficulties will be for a country to achieve prosperity if they DON'T meet this requirement. A third sentence offering a possible alternative to this requirement, some way around it.

Send these requirements to me in the body of an email, with your name and the phrase "minimum requirements for prosperity" in the subject line

Cheers,
Mr. L