Adam Smith, the father of economics, said in the 18th century: “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest. We address ourselves, not to their humanity but to their self-love, and never talk to them of our own necessities but of their advantages.”

This globally famous and often-cited quote has underpinned many aspects of economics, but today I will interpret it in terms of Jordan’s competitiveness and the feeling of belonging, of citizenship.

The basic premise of competitiveness is that one acts in one’s self-interest. There is, in all of us, a sense of wanting to better oneself, to compete, excel and become someone better. It is as if one were born with a price tag attached to his or her shoulder, which increases through training, education, doing well wherever he/she work. As individuals, we want to improve our relevance to society and the market, so that we heighten our value through whatever we do. This is the underpinning and most important element of competitiveness.

Society, however, has to have a merit-based reward system.

Let me share a story I learnt last week of a leading US business figure (one whose presence is coveted almost on any podium and country that desires to become an innovative economy) who was born in the US out of wedlock to an Arab father and an American mother. The parents, not being able to raise the child, offered him for adoption. He grew up under a different name and had no connection to his biological father. The boy excelled in school and did extremely well in national exams, which enabled him to enter one of the top universities in the US.

While studying for his degree, he came upon a great idea and quit university to start a company (currently the world’s most valuable company) and to become the highest-paid executive in the world. The billionaire is American and never speaks of his father’s origin. I wondered, as I read his story, what his fate would have been had his father taken him back to his country, where not merit, but whose son he is, is important.

I wondered how an overachiever like this billionaire would have fared in a society that cares so much about the title before one’s name. Would someone have listened to him or instead asked him which part of the country he came from and what his tribal/clan/family references were, etc. This man, whose company products are coveted by the high and mighty, and the elite of my society, as a show of their modernity and progress, might have ended up as an outcast and a loser. Would he have received the nurture his genius deserved? I doubt it.

What of the US, the country that gave him an equal chance and recognised his merit? It gained so much from not being a rentier society, where one receives economic wealth and status simply because of his lineage or region of birth. The annual sales of the company he established are larger than the GDP of his biological father’s country. The US has also been ranked among the most competitive economies in the world. It achieved this ranking and the tag of world’s largest economy by encouraging creativity within an unequalled merit-based system.

Let’s take another story of an equally known figure: the son of an African student who married his college sweetheart. Another man, born under difficult conditions, went on to become the leader of the most powerful country, of the largest economy in history. Would he have fared as well had he been born in a developing country? I really doubt it.

Just imagine a child whose parents separated years after he was born, whose father returned to his country and remarried and whose mother died in his formative years. The child’s drive and excellence took him to Harvard Law School, the top in the US and anywhere, and he went on to head its prestigious Harvard Law Club, not a small feat by any measure. He later became a senator and is now the president of the US, the country that appreciated his merit.

Note that in both stories, these contributors to the competitiveness and wealth of the US were granted citizenship through their mothers, not their fathers, and because they were born on US soil. I wonder how much we lose in competitiveness from not allowing Jordanian mothers who marry non-Jordanians to grant citizenships to their offspring.

So what’s the moral of these two stories? Countries that base their reward systems on achievements and merit create not only competitive economies but also loyal citizens. To create a more competitive economy, we must focus on the merit of a person, not on his gene pool. In doing so, we will make citizens of all; a collection of people who individually, through hard work and excellence, find in their country a competitive space to better themselves and in the process, become better citizens.

Jordan Times, 2 February, 2o11

http://urdunmubdi3.ning.com/