Envy versus Ambition

If you had to pick one factor that separates the submerging (euphemistically termed “emerging”) world from rich societies, what would it be? Lack of capital? Lousy economic planning? Lack of education?

My candidate is this: envy.

Ambition creates wealth. Envy creates poverty. There’s a lot more envy than there is ambition in the world…and there’s a lot more poverty than wealth, too.

If your neighbor has a nice house, and you live in a shed, you can put you and him on an equal footing one of two ways. Ambition would inspire you to build a house as nice as his. Envy would inspire you to burn his house down. Which is easier to do?

One place where many economists have gotten off track is when trying to apply textbook theory to the real world, they fail to account for the human gravity of envy. The premise that people would rather be rich than poor is dead wrong. Most people would rather be poor, and make their neighbor poor in the bargain. They’d rather burn the house then build it.

Fortunately, envy has a flip-side: The funny side of folly, that which we know as “comedy.”

Is there comedy in poverty? When people pull it onto their own heads, why not? When they choose it, why not vicariously enjoy the fruits of their decisions as an observer? If I saw a rattlesnake bite itself to death, I’d think it’s pretty funny–the ultimate justice. So why not have a chuckle or two if people poison themselves with the venom of envy? What’s the use of studying economics if you can’t laugh at the snakes in the shadows?

Getting away from such snakes is often a matter of priority for those who want to better their lot. Others become snake-charmers, and can use mob envy as a tool for manipulation and profit; true, there’s a lot of competition in that industry, but the profits (and power) can be enormous.

One friend of mine uses the analogy of a crab pot to describe envy. According to him, if you have a bucket of crabs (earmarked for dinner), when a crab manages to start climbing out of the bucket, the other crabs will pull him back in. This act doesn’t do any of the crabs any good, but they do it anyway. This act describes–perfectly–the human condition, and why most of the world lives–as it always will– in desperate, grinding, wretched poverty.

Without this human entropy, economics might be a “cleaner” science, but it would be a bit boring. I like the dramatic, comical contrasts the envy thing gives us. Singapore bootstraps itself into prosperity while east Timor degenerates into machete mayhem and zip-gun zaniness. Indonesia talks of famine, while the stores of its shopkeepers–and the food within–burn at the hands of envious mobs.

As prosperity and technology continue to roll on, hand in hand, the haves and the have nots will look at each other over an ever widening gulf. We know what’s responsible for that. Go ahead, smile, it’s okay: Envy, like all stupid anachronisms, is comical to behold in our modern times.