Thursday, February 05, 2015.
I'm seeing things that are nauseating everywhere. A little analogy mayn't suffice but it bears evidence of the fact that to inform the less inquisitive, stories are a quick resource.
Here's a story, then.
Two companies - A and B - are allowed almost equal resources for their growth and development. While one company invests said resources appropriately and reaps bountifully to the benefit of not just members of staff but visiting guests and neighbouring companies, the other contents itself with an endowment process that is adeptly engineered to profit the 1% that control the agents of government running the company.
Company A (the wise investing one) becomes a tourist destination, even drawing envious visitors from the not-so-profitable company (B). In fact, it (company A) begins to concern itself with raking in more profit, not just from the almost similar resources it has with company B, but also from earning extra rewards from tourism giving it a cash haul that it quickly reinvests in estate development and sundry other money doubling endeavours.
All these were so financially rewarding as to attract more attention from management and staff of company B, most of the "elite" 1% of whom began to engage themselves in spending corporate funds in investment interests in company A, monies that if put to good use within company B might have made doing business there slightly bearable.
The problem with company B was complex, simply because the 1% of the company strength who ran its affairs were disingenuous with the structure of the company. They put in place a system that encouraged a dubious business culture and thus rendered it almost pointless to encourage best practices that could've made them as successful as company A. They made mockery of trust, punished whistleblowers, compromised confidence in word of honour, promoted mediocrity, dragged down motivation, awarded notoriety in brigandage and gave applause to theft of the common good. It took the company to the Hobbesian peak where you took the liberty of survival at all costs or you died.
All the while, the 1% insulated themselves and their progeny from the malfeasance that was their creation. They catered company money away for themselves and their wards, allocated prime and juicy contracts to themselves, took hefty cuts from budgets, sold to and bought from the company at exorbitant and giveaway prices (respectively) not possible elsewhere and in so doing, kept the 99% in a transition state of never-ending immiseration, a state where it appears as if should they apply a little extra effort, they'd break away from their dreary conditions, but in reality never get to reach it, no matter the amount of efforts deployed (any memories of Boxer in Animal Farm by George Orwell?).
Knowing the difference that knowledge can make in either causing change or maintaining the status quo, company B's management gradually crippled the learning structures that were part of the company's historical wealth. Though "education" continued, what it offered was a putrefying morass which products weren't even good enough to be employed by the company, many of whom kept searching for any opportunity to jump ship from company B to company A (or any other company for that matter) to be used as auxiliary staff for the meanest menial jobs that will never be done by staff of company A.
With education bastardised, morale low, misery high, job losses piling, poor class bulging, rich class thinning, scarce resources scarcer, anger brimming over, members of staff begin to disunite. No longer patient enough to see what their similarities are, they become pawns in the control of the 1% who induce them to focus on issues that divide them. This fomentation of disunity is genius because if it isn't evoked, it'll be a matter of time before a violent revolution usurps the power management currently enjoys. So, it serves the 1%ters well to cause disaffection amongst the majority. But it cannot be done openly because it will be noticed. Which will be just as bad.
Therefore surreptitiously, they give undue advantage to one sector of the staff knowing that another sector will raise their eyebrows and ask questions. They relay half truths and blatant lies, knowing that another tataafo sector will do their bidding and spread their lies abroad thereby running foul of those involved in that sector who know the truth. They hire the most jobless among the workforce as personal staff and pay them outrageously, make them display new-found wealth ostentatiously, and so cause bad blood amongst those slaving daily for the paltry money made.
Then, out of the blues, chaos erupts.
The 1% quickly use their influence to stow away raw cash they have amassed in the stocks of company A so that they're not caught unawares and that they have something to fall back on while the damage goes on in company B. As conflicts intensify, they make public appearances and statements to the press on how it is the enemies of the company that have caused the crises. They point fingers and name names, some within and some outside the company. But the situation doesn't get better. As it goes on for months, they continue receiving salaries but confidently explain to staff that if the crises isn't put under control, there's no way staff salaries can be computed. Being already a divided entity, staff swallow their saliva and place their conditions in the hands of God; this they do in churches whose pastors still demand that unpaid staff pay their tithes.
Matters get to a head when staff, a few, combine to call for a change of personnel at the helm of the company because of many things but mostly due to suffering, hunger, starvation and death. They claim that the management has not done enough to prevent their plight. Seeing these little beginnings of unity is disturbing to the 1%. They hatch a plot to further divide an already fractious motley of staff.
The 1% display an array of "ongoing" and "completed" projects that were done, as they claim, using monies that the protesters are asking for and noting that these projects were undertaken to make life easier for them and therefore it was selfless, because the 1% don't really need these projects, their needs are all paid for by the company. It's the staff under who need them and the 1% are bending over backwards to help them but all they get in return is ingratitude and protests and boos.
A few of the protesters possess gargantuan ignorance. So, they are swayed by the array. They can't tell what being daft is even when they are prime examples themselves. So, they tear down the minuscule unity that the protesters were able to forge for this brief while. In fact, not content with that, they turn on their own colleagues who are suffering similar ills as themselves and berate them for protesting to the wolfish admiration of the sly 1%.
When those not easily hoodwinked ask these numbskulls why the volte-face, the latter reply telling them to look around and see what the management is doing for their benefits. The former try to make them understand that all these are in no way commensurate with what should be in place if things were done as they should but it all falls on deaf ears.
A few wise ones among them challenge the daft to a trip to company A with similar startup earning potential as company B to give them a taste of what could've been but only a few agree to the challenge. Those who visit company A indeed verify the fact that, give and take a few marginal differences, company B is indeed punching way lower than its weight, and therefore come to understand the essence of protesting the crass backwardness of company B. Some even identified segments of company A owned by some of the 1% in company B.
The protest continues with a simple message. We are not deceived. Wide scale theft of company's natural resources, more than enough money going to the 1% than anything else, unremitted allocations, missing funds, engagement of characters with dubious background on company salaries, outsourcing of materials that have local alternatives in-house, liaising with notable criminals and putting them on company payrolls, inadequate concern for wanton murder of company staff resident in an area, fraudulent purchase of company property by allies of company management, spurious recalculation of company profile, "cooking" company books were all a part of a wider problem that called for change. For them, had these issues been addressed by a stronger, adept management, company B might have begun to close the wide gap between itself and other companies like company A which also began with the type of resource-based mono-economic reality that defined company B. Company B should have been a lot further along the path to growth and development and become a renowned tourist destination like company A.
The morale of the story? It's not just about refurbished airports, access to fertilisers, locomotive trains, improvement of manual farming, access to medications for catarrh, or about grants for business startups anymore in the 21st century. As hip as these may sound to those who see them as articles to boast about, the times have moved past that stage especially for countries in the same oil-producing cartel as us.
We are not supposed to be but we are an embarrassment to oil producing states. With not a single refinery working? What disgrace. If there should be any boast it should be about what we accomplished with our oil wealth based on how using it has diversified our money earning potential as a Dubai will boast for instance.
That entity is a good example for company A and we, the worst of company B. Lemme not even go into the crises in the north. Where is the electricity for these airports? Or for small businesses who must think of how to add generating sets and petrol to their operating costs (of doing business) or fold up within the next few months? Where are the subsidies to encourage mechanised farming? Where, the safety nets for parents who lose their jobs and suddenly have a sick infant to care for? And we are seeing things, abi?
Fools, all of us.
***
The original version of this article was posted by Moore Numental in two parts as two consecutive comments on a post on Facebook on February 05, 2015, and has been reproduced here, with minor edits.
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