The Self-sufficient state;


A flower will blossom in the spring, but this flower will not stay for ever, unfortunately winter will kill the plant. To keep the plant alive and beautiful we must put it in an adaptable environment. The same example I can make with a country. The time before oil, Kuwait was a basic non active country. At the discovery of oil Kuwait blossomed and achieved great success! But like the flower Kuwait's success will fade away as the drying up of oil is inevitable. Even with the oil, what is the success of Kuwait without its oil? Our blind reliance on oil should give every Kuwaiti deep fear for his country. It takes my breath away whenever I come across the idea of the drying up of oil wells. Some people say we don’t have to worry for the oil will keep us going for more than 100 years. I say that’s not a lot of time in the lifespan of a country. 100 years is barely accounted for in history, and we all want Kuwait to survive and flourish for far more than that! Even so, even if we had enough oil to keep us going for a million years, no country should base its economy on a single income. What if oil becomes replaced? People come up with new ideas and new sources of fuel everyday! And not one of these ideas will be good for Kuwait because these ideas soul purpose is to replace oil, hence, replace Kuwait's main source of income! For Kuwait this should be a major problem.

For every problem there is a solution. I, propose a solution. My theory is that the Kuwaiti oil should only be used for the purpose of boosting Kuwait's economy and infrastructure in a way that it would lead Kuwait out of the danger of a one source based economy. Kuwait is being cuffed down by this reason, a reason that makes our economy an inflexible and stiff economy, so stiff that it will break by the approach of any obstacle that comes against income.

This solution will bring many good results then bad, if there are any. First we will make the most of our free land. As you know, Kuwait is using less then 15% of its land. And also University graduates don’t have to wait 1 to 2 years to finally get a job. I propose we conquer our own country, by saying that I mean instead of investing millions outside of Kuwait, Kuwaiti traders and investors should invest in their own country. In order for Kuwait to free itself from a one source income economy Kuwait must rely on itself for the basic needs such as building materials, plastic, metals, or things complicated as machinery or simple as clothing fabrics. But in order to make all these things, we need factories, factories need money and money comes from our oil. In this situation instead of selling our oil to foreign countries and buy our oil back in the forms of plastic and other materials we make our own.

Why do the poor countries stay poor and the rich countries stay rich? The rich countries buy the one thing the poor countries can offer and then, sell it back to the poor countries with a higher price in a different form! For example what can Indonesia offer the United States? The answer is cheap labor. The United States opens its factories and expands its economy in Indonesia where there is cheap labor and produces the product cheap in Indonesia to sell everywhere in the world triple the price or even more.

The Ottoman Empire, the offspring of the Roman Empire, the America of its era dominated all of Europe and most of Asia, became a backward empire, an empire that stopped evolving while watching smaller countries advance into the industrial age, slowly and gradually becoming stronger and stronger. It is safe to say that the reason why the Ottoman Empire became known as the "sick man of Europe" is because it refused to accept change and advance into the industrial age. That logically is what led to its collapse. That makes me think, did Kuwait really go through the phase of the industrial age? If not shouldn’t we worry? If such a great power like the Ottoman Empire deteriorated because the empire didn’t advance to the next level, shouldn’t we as a country take that into consideration?

So why do we sell our oil to other countries and then buy it back for example in the shape of plastic like a toy? Why can't we produce that toy here in our country? We would get the toy cheaper, plus we would have created more jobs for people in Kuwait at the same time. We would rely on ourselves for the product and flourish our economy hitting two birds with one stone.

Looking at the outcomes of the theory from a different angle, we, from this plan tackle another major problem in our country. The bidoon or the unofficial Kuwaitis that live on our land and can't have any progress in their lives what so ever, because of a crack in the system. These people have been lost in the middle of a problem that until now no one who had the power, wanted to solve. How do these people come in handy in a theory like this one, Industry means production and production means labor. Bluntly, I would not be surprised if I don’t see a great excitement among Kuwaiti citizens acquiring a job that involves hard labor in a factory. With this in mind, the bidoon, desperate for jobs would be a perfect solution for filling in the jobs that require hard labor in our industrial movement. In other words blue collar workers or the workers that physically work the factory have the undesired jobs. While the white collar workers or the workers that work in offices these are the higher paid well respected workers of a factory or a company. Every industriously developing country needs both types of workers to fully reach its potential growth. While most Kuwaitis are only willing to work white collar jobs, the bidoon unhesitant for any type of work, would be more then willing to take over the blue collar jobs.

The proposition demands a grand spread through our country's land. America didn’t become an enormous industrial power over night. The industrial age of America molded the country in such a way that town factories began to spread all over the land. Town factories are towns established for the sake of the factories. Hence the factory workers are the town's people. Examples of such are coal mines, all the major coal mines had towns established around them.

In conclusion I believe we have both the resources and land to fulfill our full industrial potential, so we can say at the end the results of this great change give us more positives then negatives, the three main goals would be met. First, we would be fully dependant on our own production; second, we multiply the sources of income for our country and don’t just depend on one source. Third, we solve the problem of the bidoon, not to mention that over population is becoming a major problem in our country for the population is growing fast, but our areas that we live in are not changing size wise. While spreading our population across our country we will be decreasing the pressure of over population in the city. I would like to end my article by stating a quote that expresses good human quality is described by working the land you have to its full potential and by educating the people to reach a certain goal. For Xenophon a Greek general and historian once said – "If you consider what are called the virtues in mankind, you will find their growth is assisted by education and cultivation."









By:
Mohammed Shams Al Deen.