One of my life goals is to, one day, publish a collection of short stories. In my head, these stories would revolve around cosy yet grotesque murder mysteries. I love reading mysteries that aren’t about blood and gore, but really around the intrigue of the mystery itself. At the same time, I do enjoy unnerving stories, especially those that focus on ordinary people doing extraordinarily peculiar stuff. A classic in this genre, and an inspiration for me, is Lamb to the Slaughter by Roald Dahl, from his Tales of the Unexpected collection.
In light of that, and with the deepest appreciation for The Edge in allowing me to try all sorts of different formats in the 12 years or so since I’ve been fortunate to have a column, I want to try something a little different. For the next few articles, beginning with this one, I want to see if I can write a series of fictional short stories that illustrate different views of economic development. I recognise that this may be pushing against the edginess of The Edge, so to speak, but it might be cool. For readers, feedback would be most appreciated (including feedback along the likes of, “I don’t think you’re ever going to be able to publish your short stories …”).
Before we go, I just want to put the standard disclaimer that I now see at the end of all movies — This is a work of fiction and all that. Also, let’s suppose this story happens in some alternate universe.
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The hand-stitched nation
In 1984, the nation of Ekonomi achieved independence, ending centuries upon centuries of a colonial chokehold on the tiny resource-rich nation. Like so many countries that had experienced exploitative resource grabs from the far more powerful Southern nations, the functional objective of Ekonomi for God knows how long had been to produce commodities at the cheapest possible prices to wealthier nations for their own industry.
The two leaders of Ekonomi’s rather violent independence revolution were Amadeus and Ludwig. They had grown up together, having first met, like so many Ekonomistas, in the trade schools set up by the colonialists to provide a steady stream of (cheap) labour for their economic activities in Ekonomi. Amadeus was a child of trade; both his parents were involved in the importing and exporting of goods into and out from Ekonomi. Ludwig, on the other hand, was a child of the plantation; his parents were servants to the wealthy and powerful officials from the South.
They had bonded over a shared love of composing music. But Amadeus was fortunate. His parents had bribed a Southern commodities trader to allow for Amadeus to escape the yoke of exploitation in Ekonomi that so many like him would face. Amadeus would journey to the South to become a scholar where he would one day return to Ekonomi to, at least, become a plantation manager or something sufficiently worthy of a Southern scholar, even one who was an Ekonomista.
But the Amadeus who returned defied the Southern expectations.
Instead of returning as a scholar, he returned a revolutionary. Along the way, as he deepened himself in the ways of the South, he sent books, pamphlets and even scrolls home to his old friend Ludwig, hoping to sow the seeds of fury in colonial injustice. And from all that grew two revolutionary spirits so fierce, in reinforcement of one another, that they overthrew their Southern overlords. And for the first time in forever, from a time that even Ekonomista historians could not pinpoint, Ekonomi was sovereign.
The fervour that had accompanied the revolutionary independence movement was intoxicating. In the days that were to come, Amadeus was chosen by a small council of revolutionary leaders to be their Prime Director. He was, after all, trained by the South and, more importantly and pragmatically, he possessed networks and contacts from both the trading activities of his parents as well as his fellow scholar-mates from the South to restructure Ekonomi’s economy.
Amadeus’ first step was to negotiate trade agreements with nations from the South. He was a big believer in international trade — we are, after all, the sum of our experiences — and he believed that Ekonomi would not survive if it attempted to be fully self-sufficient, at least at the start. “Deals first, survival first” was his motto. In doing so, he leaned heavily on an intellectual idea on trade from centuries ago called comparative advantage, where nations, or even individuals, should embark on trade in which they are the comparatively more efficient producer of a given good.
Amadeus’ vision was to leverage Ekonomi’s comparative advantages, namely its abundance of natural resources as well as its low labour costs. That, he believed, was Ekonomi’s comparative advantage. He struck a deal with a global producer of basketballs in the South, supplying those basketballs to even their top professional basketball association. Ekonomi would both provide the resin that it possessed in abundance as material for the balls and have its citizens hand stitch the balls for export.
The agreement brought much fanfare to Ekonomi. The signing ceremony with Scalding was attended by thousands with Amadeus declaring a shining new future for Ekonomi. As the cameras flashed, Amadeus thought, “We have earned our dignity in trade, not just in violence. This is proof that the revolution survives.” Ludwig, on the other hand, was troubled. He clapped along with the crowd in performative unity, but in his mind, as the Economic Security Director to the Prime Director, he viewed the idea of merely trading according to comparative advantage would lock Ekonomi into a low-cost economic structure, with little way out. He would remember thinking to himself, “We’re cheering for our own shackles. What then was the revolution for?”
The next Council meeting proved explosive. Ludwig’s protests were met with a barrage of anger from Amadeus. “Patience first, risk later. We have to start somewhere,” Amadeus snapped, slamming his fists onto the council table. “Our people barely get by. How do we raise revenues to fund your risk-taking propositions? We need foreign exchange. These gambles of yours may make us lose everything we’ve fought for. We will betray the revolution. So let’s give this a go and, yes, over time, we can begin taking more risk.”
Ludwig stayed silent but, in truth, the mere hint of being a traitor to the revolution meant that their relationship had been forever changed.
A further crack showed up via Amadeus’ approach to private business owners, including those who had collaborated with the Southern colonialists, garnering huge amounts of rents. After all, every relatively successful exploitation requires insiders. In exchange for licences and permits in these businesses, effectively rendering them monopolies, he coaxed the business owners to develop infrastructure in Ekonomi. Ludwig, on the other hand, was far more sceptical of these folks, convinced that their true allegiance was not to the nation, but to money.
Amadeus thought himself merely practical. But as a British economist had once quipped, “Practical men who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influence, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.” And so it was that Ekonomi began producing hand-woven basketballs for the Southern markets.
Over the next few years, the export of basketballs brought in some foreign exchange, but not as much as Amadeus would have liked. Further, the structure of the economy remained stubbornly low cost. Pragmatism-based arguments of sticking to adjacencies meant that there was no real way up the value chain for the Ekonomistas. They had to hand stitch stuff because it was cheapest to hand stitch stuff locally.
As Ludwig visited the small stitching sites littered across the country, his sense of injustice grew. “Did we fight so hard only to see our children stitch up balls by torchlight late into the night? Did we do all of this just to remain chained to some bogus ancient theory that kept poor countries poor?”
In the quiet of the night, Ludwig returned home, but a new fire had risen. And so he began plotting what he would do if he were Prime Director.