Public transportation in the 80s in Bolivia didn’t amount to much. There were long-distance buses, and a few train lines, but there was a big gap in the market that was filled by private enterprises: people would have trucks, put a few wooden beams across the back of the truck that people could sit on, and then take passengers. The way it was organized, was that trucks and passengers would all congregate early in the morning at a certain city square, and then the driver would walk around yelling out his destination, while the passengers would try and find a driver that was calling out where they needed to go. Before too long, passengers and drivers are matched up, and everybody is on their way.
I was in Cochabamba, and wanted to make a trip into the rainforest to the north, into the Chapare region (I wanted to see coca fields, and I had heard they had them there – but that’s a topic for another story). So, I went to the square as mentioned in the guidebook, and it didn’t take long before I had found a truck that was going north. I was the only foreigner among the passengers, and the truck driver was so excited about this that he let me ride in the cab next to him. Over the next few hours I had a very interesting conversation with him. But before I relate that conversation, I need to tell a story I had picked up many years before this trip.
The story goes like this: A western business man is on vacation in a tropical country and comes across a native fisherman snoozing under a palm tree. The following conversation ensues:
Business man: Why aren’t you out fishing?
Native: I caught enough fish this morning, so there is no need to go out and catch more.
Business man: But if you catch more you can sell those!
Native: What for?
Business man: You can then save the money and after a while buy another boat!
Native: What for?
Business man: You can then hire some people and they will go fish on your other boat, and you will sell the fish, and get more money, and save that up and buy another boat!
Native: What for?
Business man: You can get a whole fleet of boats and become rich!
Native: What for?
Business man: Once you’re rich, you don’t have to work anymore, and you can spend your days lazing on the beach!
Native: What does it look like I’m doing now?
I had read this story as a little kid, and, while it brings a little chuckle, I always appreciated the deeper question that the story asks, namely: what are we really pursuing when we are pursuing ever more money and possessions?
Now, back to Bolivia, and my trip in the cab of this truck. Here is the conversation I had, a bit paraphrased, but accurate in its essence:
Me: Do you own this truck?
Driver: Yes, I do.
(I was intrigued, because clearly there wasn’t a lot of money around, and trucks aren’t cheap).
Me: So how does this business work?
Driver: Well, I go the bank and ask for a loan for a second-hand truck so I can transport people and make a living that way. They ask me what the truck will cost, where I plan to drive, how many passengers I can expect to have. They estimate how much I need for petrol and maintenance, and estimate how much money I need to provide for myself and my family, and then they calculate how high my weekly repayment can be. If that payment means I can pay off the loan in less than three years, they give me the loan.
Me: Ok, so what happens when the loan is paid off? You’ll have all this extra cash flow.
Driver: I’ll hire a driver who can drive the truck for me.
Me: Ok, and you yourself, will you get a second truck and drive that one?
Driver: No, I’ll be in the passenger seat. I’ll be the owner, but not the driver.
Me (inside my head): What??
My first reaction was along the lines of “What a pompous ass!”. Of course, in my own culture nobody would ever dream of doing such a thing. But then the story of the native under the palm tree came to mind, and I realized the problem I had with the truck driver was not so much that he didn’t see the need to work hard, but more that he had a desire to prominently let everybody know that he was the owner and boss. If he had said he would hire a driver so he could spend time with his kids I guess I would have found it much more palatable. But either way, not much later I changed my mind both on the truck driver and the fisherman under the palm tree.
A few weeks later I was in La Paz. To this day, the poverty I saw around La Paz (in terms of homelessness, beggars, the day jobbers I encountered, sick and disfigured people, you name it) has been the worst I’ve ever seen (remember I’ve been all over South America, Africa, and Asia since that trip). And I asked myself why this was. It was clear that there was no social safety net, no unemployment or welfare payments. This was no surprise, as it was pretty obvious the government didn’t have any money for such programs. Which brings me back to the truck driver. What if he would get a second truck and use it to make more money? He would pay more taxes. What could the government do with more money? Could it alleviate poverty in some way? Please don’t think that I’m naïve about the practicalities of this. Clearly more tax revenue does not automatically mean less poverty. Money needs to be spent wisely, corruption must be kept under control, dependency must be avoided, etc., etc. The principle I’m getting at is that on the societal level, if more wealth is created, mechanisms can be found to share some of that with the less well-off. But the starting point has to be that wealth is created in the first place. And what is needed to create wealth, is that those people in the society who have the skills, the nous, the wherewithal, the leadership capability, the entrepreneurial flair – that those people actually use those skills. If Steve Jobs had been happy to tinker with some electronics, play some games in his garage, and leave it at that, we would never have had iPhones. Similarly, while the truck driver is not at the same level as Steve Jobs, still he has proven that he has a certain set of capabilities that allowed him to set up his own business. Therefore, to stop using those capabilities as soon as he can afford to sit in the passenger seat and do nothing, represents a net loss to society. Only if people use their capabilities to the fullest extent possible can society as a whole (including those less fortunate who don’t have such capabilities) benefit. So why didn’t the truck driver do this? Could it be said the problem was that he was not greedy enough? Did anybody say Gordon Gekko?