Mira Markovic is an "Honorary Academic" of the Russian
Academy of Science. It cost a lot of money to obtain this
title and the Serb multi-billionnaire Karic was only too
glad to cough it up. Whatever else you say about Balkan
cronies, they rarely bite the hand that feeds them (unless
and until it is expedient to do so). And whatever else you
say about Russia, it adapted remarkably to capitalism.
Everything has a price and a market. Israel had to learn
this fact the hard way when Russian practical-nurse-level
medical doctors and construction-worker-level civil
engineers flooded its shores. Everything is for sale in this
region of opportunities, instant education inclusive.
It seems that academe suffered the most during the
numerous shock therapies and transition periods showered
upon the impoverished inhabitants of Eastern and Central
Europe. The resident of decrepit communist-era buildings,
it had to cope with a flood of eager students and a deluge
of anachronistic "scholars". But in Russia, the CIS and the
Balkans the scenery is nothing short of Dantesque.
Unschooled in any major European language, lazily
content with their tenured positions, stagnant and formal -
the academics and academicians of the Balkans are both
failures and a resounding indictment of the rigor mortis
that was socialism. Economics textbooks stop short of
mentioning Friedman or Phelps. History textbooks should
better be relegated to the science fiction shelves. A brave
facade of self sufficiency covers up a vast hinterland of
inferiority complex fully supported by real inferiority. In
antiquated libraries, shattered labs, crooked buildings and
inadequate facilities, student pursue redundant careers
with the wrong teachers.
Corruption seethes under this repellent surface. Teachers
sell exams, take bribes, trade incestuous sex with their
students. They refuse to contribute to their communities.
In all my years in the Balkans, I have yet to come across a
voluntary act - a single voluntary act - by an academic.
And I have come across numerous refusals to help and to
contribute. Materialism incarnate.
This sorry state of affairs has a twofold outcome. On the
one hand, herds of victims of rigidly dictated lectures and
the suppression of free thought. These academic products
suffer from the twin afflictions of irrelevance of skills and
the inability to acquire relevant ones, the latter being the
result of decades of brainwashing and industrial
educational methods. Unable to match their anyhow
outdated knowledge with anything a modern marketplace
can offer - they default on to menial jobs, rebel or pull
levers to advance in life. Which leads us to the death of
meritocracy and why this region's future is behind it.
In the wake of the downfall of all the major ideologies of
the 20th century - Fascism, Communism, etc. the New
Order, heralded by President Bush, emerged as a battle of
Open Club versus Closed Club societies, at least from the
economic point of view.
All modern states and societies must choose whether to be
governed by merit (meritocracy) or by the privileged few
(oligarchy). It is inevitable that the social and economic
structures be controlled by elites. It is a complex world
and only a few can master the knowledge it takes to
govern effectively. What sets meritocracy apart is not the
number of members of its ruling (or leading) class,
usually no larger than an oligarchy. No, it is distinguished
by its membership criteria and by the mode of their
application.
The meritocratic elite is an open club because it satisfies
three conditions:
1. The process and rules of joining up (i.e., the
criteria) are transparent and widely known.
2. The application and membership procedures are
uniform, equal to all and open to continuous public
scrutiny and criticism.
3. The system alters its membership requirements in
direct response to public feedback and to the
changing social and economic environment.
To belong to a meritocracy one needs to satisfy a series of
demands, whose attainment is entirely up to he individual.
And that is all that one needs to do. The rules of joining
and of membership are cast in iron. The wishes and
opinions of those who happen to comprise the club at any
given moment are of no importance and of no
consequence. Meritocracy is a "fair play" by rules of equal
chance to derive benefits. Put differently, is the rule of
law.
To join a meritocratic club, one needs to demonstrate that
one is in possession of, or has access to, "inherent"
parameters, such as intelligence, a certain level of
education, a potential to contribute to society. An inherent
parameter must correspond to a criterion and the latter
must be applied independent of the views and
predilections of those who sometimes are forced to apply
it. The members of a committee or a board can disdain an
applicant, or they might wish not to approve a candidate.
Or they may prefer someone else for the job because they
owe her something, or because they play golf with him.
Yet, they are permitted to consider only the applicant's or
the candidate's "inherent" parameters: does he have the
necessary tenure, qualifications, education, experience?
Does he contribute to his workplace, community, society
at large? In other words: is he "worthy" or "deserving"?
Not WHO he is - but WHAT he is.
Granted, these processes of selection, admission,
incorporation and assimilation are administered by mere
humans and are, therefore, subject to human failings. Can
qualifications be always judged "objectively,
unambiguously and unequivocally"? Can "the right
personality traits" or "the ability to engage in teamwork"
be evaluated "objectively"? These are vague and
ambiguous enough to accommodate bias and bad will.
Still, at least appearances are kept in most cases - and
decisions can be challenged in courts.
What characterizes oligarchy is the extensive, relentless
and ruthless use of "transcendent" (in lieu of "inherent")
parameters to decide who will belong where, who will get
which job and, ultimately, who will enjoy which benefits.
The trouble with transcendent parameters is that there is
nothing much an applicant or a candidate can do about
them. Usually, they are accidents, occurrences absolutely
beyond the reach or control of those most affected by
them. Race is such a transcendent parameter and so are
gender, familial affiliation or contacts and influence.
In many corners of the globe, to join a closed, oligarchic
club, to get the right job, to enjoy excessive benefits - one
must be white (racism), male (sexual discrimination), born
to the right family (nepotism), or to have the right political
(or other) contacts (cronyism). And often, belonging to
one such club is the prerequisite for joining another.
In France, for instance, the whole country is politically
and economically run by graduates of the Ecole Normale
d'Administration (ENA). They are known as the
ENArques (=the royal dynasty of ENA graduates).
The privatization of state enterprises in most East and
Central European countries provided a glaring example of
oligarchic machinations. In most of these countries (the
Czech Republic, Macedonia, Serbia and Russia are
notorious examples) - state companies, the nation's only
assets, were "sold" to political cronies, creating in the
process a pernicious amalgam of capitalism and oligarchy,
known as "crony capitalism" or privateering. The national
wealth was passed on to the hands of relatively few, well
connected, individuals, at a ridiculously low price. The
nations involved were robbed, their riches either
squandered or smuggled abroad.
In the affairs of humans, not everything falls neatly into
place. Take money, for instance. Is it an inherent
parameter or an expressly transcendent one? Making
money indicates the existence of some merit, some
inherent advantageous traits of the money-making
individual. To make money consistently, a person needs
to be diligent, resilient, hard working, to prevail and
overcome hardships, to be far sighted and to possess a
host of other - universally acclaimed - traits. On the other
hand, is it fair when someone who made his fortune
through corruption, inheritance, or luck - be preferred to a
poor genius?
That is a contentious issue. In the USA money talks.
Being possessed of money means being virtuous and
meritorious. To preserve a fortune inherited is as difficult
a task as to make it in the first place, the thinking goes.
Thus, the source of the money is secondary.
An oligarchy tends to have long term devastating
economic effects.
The reason is that the best and the brightest - when shut
out by the members of the ruling elites - emigrate. In a
country where one's job is determined by his family
connections or by influence peddling - those best fit to do
the job are likely to be disappointed, then disgusted and
then to leave the place altogether.
This is the phenomenon known as "Brain Drain". It is one
of the biggest migratory tidal waves in human history.
Capable, well-trained, educated, young people leave their
oligarchic, arbitrary, influence peddling societies and
migrate to less arbitrary meritocracies (mostly to be found
in what is collectively known as "The West").
This is colonialism of the worst kind. The mercantilist
definition of a colony is a territory which exports raw
materials only to re-import them in the form of finished
products. The Brain drain is exactly that: the poorer
countries are exporting raw brains and buying back the
finished products masterminded, invented and
manufactured by theses brains.
Yet, while in classical colonialism, the colony at least
received some recompense for its goods - here the poor
country is actually the poorer for its exports. The bright
young people who depart (most of them never to return)
carry with them an investment of the scarce resources of
their homeland - and award it to their new, much richer,
host countries. This is an absurd situation, a subsidy
granted reluctantly by the poor to the rich. This is also one
of the largest capital transfers (really capital flight) in
history.
Some poor countries understood these basic, unpleasant,
facts of life. They extracted an "education fee" from those
emigrating. This fee was supposed to, at least partially,
recapture the costs of educating and training the
immigrants. Romania and the USSR imposed such levies
on Jews emigrating to Israel in the 1970s. Others
despairingly regard the brain drain as a natural
catastrophe. Very few countries are trying to tackle the
fundamental, structural and philosophical flaws of the
system, the roots of the disenchantment of those who
leave.
The Brain Drain is so serious that some countries lost up
to a third of their total young and educated population to it
(Macedonia in South-eastern Europe, some less developed
countries in South East Asia and in Africa). Others were
drained of almost one half of the growth in their educated
workforce (for instance, Israel during the 1980s).
Brains are an ideal natural resource: they can be
cultivated, directed, controlled, manipulated, regulated.
They are renewable and replicable. Brains tend to grow
exponentially through interaction and they have an
unparalleled economic value added. The profit margin in
knowledge and information related industries far exceeds
anything common to more traditional, second wave,
industries (not to mention first wave agriculture and
agribusiness).
What is even more important:
Poor countries are uniquely positioned to take advantage
of this third revolution. With cheap, educated workforce -
they can monopolize basic data processing and
telecommunications functions worldwide. True, this calls
for massive initial investments in physical infrastructure.
But the important input is the wetware, the brains. To
constrain them, to disappoint them, to make them run
away, to more merit-orientated places - is to sentence
oneself to a permanent disadvantage and deprivation.
This is what the countries in the Balkans are doing.
Driving away the best part of their population by
encouraging the worst part. Abandoning their future by
dwelling on their past. Caught in a fatal spider web of
family connections and political cronyism of their own
design. Their factories and universities and offices and
government filled to the brim with third rate relatives of
third rate professors and bureaucrats. Turning themselves
into third rate countries in a self perpetuating, self feeding
process of decline. And all the while eyeing the new and
the foreign with the paranoia that is the result of true guilt.