While this is a blatant over generalization of what is already an unflattering stereotype of an entire people, we recite it to underscore an essential truth about how Bahamians order their affairs.
In far too many instances, Bahamians misplace priorities. Take for example, the current spate of sick outs, some of which are reportedly ﾑwild-catﾴ operations. Workers with apparently nothing better to do, than to gripe and complain, have conjured up excuses to jump down from their jobs. Were they subjected to real consequences for their decisions, they would have opted to give their employers a fair dayﾴs work for a fair dayﾴs pay. Having a perfectly false sense of who owes what to whom, the strikers took matters into their own hands, regardless of the distress caused to others. Interestingly, while instances such as this one receive high public attention, the misplacement of priorities takes place in other more intimate circles.
Take for example, the sorry case of the parent who does not have enough money to pay for her childﾴs books and other learning materials, but always has enough money to pay for cell phone, cell card and cable television. Or for that matter, take the truly sorry cases of able-bodied men and women who gripe and complain about inadequate social welfare payments; about the high and rising level of unemployment; and about how hard life is for them; but who ﾖ all the while ﾖ will not search out employment when and where it is available in the country.
Most perversely, some of these people of the misplaced priorities routinely blame migrant labour for taking their jobs, when for example, an immigrant construction worker is prepared to work where and when jobs are available, his Bahamian counterpart wants the job to come to him. Again, we witness a case of a misplaced priority.
We see evidence of this phenomenon at all levels of Bahamian society, where individuals and groups will so misplace priorities that they are progressively pauperised as a consequence of their bad choices. Indeed, in recent memory there are untold examples of public expenditure ﾖ using borrowed money ﾖ to put on a show as to how fine things were in The Bahamas.
When no money flowed in the decade of the nineties, government spent money as if there was no tomorrow. Even as the former government threw good money behind bad, a small number of observers who knew that the times could not last, counselled caution. But, then, obviously, they did so to no avail. One egregiously bad example of a misplaced priority is the Government Guaranteed Education Loan Program. This running sore of a social experiment continues to bring grief to the Bahamian people. Another more contentious issues might be that of the attempted privatisation of Batelco and the lost millions of dollars already pumped into that abortive project.
We could add to the list the absolutely disastrous bleacher fiasco, which took place on the watch of Prime Minister Christie and his reputedly ﾑNewﾴ Progressive Liberal Party. This is yet again another perfect example of a priority being misplaced. If trends and examples such as these are allowed to continue, this country will be fated to failure.
Our thesis is that Bahamians routinely misplace priorities. This, in turn is rooted in a boom and bust political economy, thus prevailing attitudes towards getting and spending money. In good times, everyone grabs for their share. In hard times, it is every man for himself; thus the depiction of The Bahamas as a hard-edged, ﾑdog eat dogﾴ world. As we have repeatedly suggested, this is not the whole story. There are any number of examples of situations and circumstances where Bahamians do pull together for the achievement of the common good, and where priorities are not misplaced.
However, when resources are not properly allocated, the resultant burden is invariably carried by people who are not a part of the problem. When, for example, people are taught and are made to believe that they can get something for nothing, or for very little, the goods received are not valued, thus the contempt for public property and the marked dearth of civic responsibility on the part of so very many Bahamians.
The remedy to this malady is simple. People should be obliged to pay more for whatever services they receive. For that matter, they should be taught, from early childhood to the end of their days, that there is ﾖ in fact ﾖ no free lunch.
Editorial, The Bahama Journal
