Wealth

For once, here’s a photo bristling with clenched fists that I actually like.

Yesterday, below the fold of this paper’s front page, some of the darlings of Filipino entrepreneurship were photographed waving their fists. Among them were guys like Elray Villafuerte, Vivienne Tan, Socorro Ramos, Joey Concepcion, Vicky Belo and others who started up businesses and nurtured these businesses well.

Between them, they have created tens of thousands of jobs, billions in sales and tons of exports. Between them, they have helped our GDP grow. Most important, between them, they have produced a cultural revolution of sorts: instilling the essential values of wealth-creation such as credit discipline, an exemplary work ethic, modern management styles and good corporate governance.

In a society where people stampede for a raffle ticket, where inexplicably wealthy politicians and bureaucrats are lionized in their neighborhoods because they underwrite the costs of a fiesta, the historic value of this quiet cultural revolution is immense.

But why are they waving their fists?

Well, to be sure, not for the same reasons that the destructive ideologues of hate do so.

The destructive ideologues of hate try very hard to instruct our people in insidious values: exercise political power to intercept the flow of wealth. Hold governments hostage so that they will excrete unproductive subsidies. Or simply, pump up anger among those who feel they have something to be angry about if only to prevent any political peace from happening.

Those in yesterday’s soothing photograph were not pumping their fists to indicate anger. They were doing it to demonstrate oomph, much like Tiger Woods does after he sinks a 40-foot putt.

Those in yesterday’s photograph were not assembled to ask government for anything. They had come together to build support for the ‘Go Negosyo Summit’ scheduled for next week, coincidentally at the same time that we celebrate the 20th anniversary of the Edsa Revolution.

These are guys with the best credentials for the cause they preach: they are advocating a culture of entrepreneurship.

That is in stark contrast to the old leftist cause: distribute wealth without creating a culture that efficiently produces wealth; damn business and expect the poor to be pulled from the quagmire by public expenditure alone; condemn investments and yet expect poverty to heal itself.

I found the photo so refreshing because it contrasts so well with the general drift of the media discourse the past few weeks: blame government that so many are poor. Blame the fact of poverty for the senseless tragedies that happen because the culture of poverty was exploited by those peddling the opium of instant gratification.

I wrote, in the preceding column, that poverty alleviation is a goal that requires more than investment flows and government social spending. All that will be for naught if the popular culture is incapable of wealth-creation.

It is too easy for the traditionalist movements of rage to rail about government not doing enough and yet, at the same instance, preach against the modern ethic of productivity.

It is too easy to condemn inequality in the economy and imagine there is a political solution to it. The most disastrous ideological experiments of the 20th century had to do with the delusion that the poor may be redeemed simply by shaking down the rich. In all instances, that had resulted in redistributing poverty rather than redistributing wealth in a sustainable way.

I know this delusion intimately. When I was younger and even more stupid than I am now, I was a raging socialist. My bankrupt idea of empowering the people was to organize them so that, without producing wealth themselves, they will be able to demand a larger share of the wealth from those who do.

Later on, I realized that this glittering thing we called "social justice" had at its kernel a grave injustice: we wanted some imagined social form that ensured everybody would be comfortable even if they did not work for it.

That realization was not an easy one to make. Everyday, I live and work in a little barrio called Diliman that I have often, with very little sarcasm, described as "the last Soviet on earth." Here poverty is romanticized and people frown on any indication of personal comfort. I know that modern universities descended from medieval monasteries, but sometimes it seems we have not shaken off the cult aspect of that form of life.

I have spent most of my years doing development work. In the course of doing that, this realization, simple and compelling, crystallized in my mind: unless we build a society with a broad-based capacity for wealth-creation, our people will always be poor.

The task of building such a society will not progress if we do not attend to building a culture of wealth-creation.

It is never enough to build farm-to-market roads or dig artesian wells or force soft-hearted corporations to buy badly-woven baskets. Part of the culture of wealth creation is an ethic of excellence: the enterprise must thrive in the challenging terrain of competition. They must not rely on charity or political brokerage.

These guys who wave their fists and rally around the battle cry "Go Negosyo" represent the culture we must build if we are to liberate our people from poverty. These are guys who will ask people to work hard rather than intoxicate them with the prospect of instant prosperity by way of a raffle ticket.

One will never win the ratings game or be elected to high post by telling our people they should work harder. But these guys are not after ratings or elections. They want to teach people to create wealth, not beg for wealth.

They are the real revolutionaries. They represent the real path to liberation.

And because of that, I am happy to co-identify with them. I am honored to call them comrades and join them in the new cultural revolution we need to mount so that the new economy will not be an oppressive reality for the majority of our people. It will be fertile ground for their prosperity.