Antidote to Crime

The day I got robbed was a crazy day. I don't regret what happened because I walked away with the most important thing of all, my life. Sure, it was painful, humiliating and definitely unfair but it happened and there is nothing I can do about it. What I can do is embrace it and learn from it. It was tough in the moment but in hindsight, I showed strength in the face of adversity and survived. I did what I could and did great.

I think about that moment and what I can learn from it. Should I have fought? That would have made things worse. Should I just let them be? That would perpetuate bad behaviour from these free-loaders. What's the solution? There needs to be action because no action makes them bolder with each passing day. Force is required, force is necessary. That is my point. Court process can be suggested but I think primal forces are required. Violence is necessary.

However, poverty is the parent of crime and revolution. This is the problem. Many young people are poor and feel like they can't achieve their dreams in this society. They feel left out and trapped in a system that oppresses them with high prices, inflation, gate-keeping and humiliation. They want a way out and it makes sense that many of them will turn to evil things like stealing, fraud, corruption and so on.

If I were to dissect this problem, I see that we live in a society suffering from severe scarcity mentality. As a people, we believe that there is not much to go around. There are too few resources and too many mouths to feed. In reality, there could be more than enough but we are too blinded to even consider that thought. This is the source of the crime that we see. The crime is not the disease, it is a symptom of a huge problem in our society.

In this society, there is high inequality where few people own a lot of the land, capital and influence. There are very close to government power and channel public resources to fund their private endevours. They build their private gardens but deprive the public of it's means to thrive. Not to mention the most expensive thing of all, they don't focus their attention on making the country better. From what I see, building the country is an afterthought of their personal ambitions. Public development is the carrot on the stick that they use to convince the public that good things are happening. This allows them to extend their terms in the next election. They do it for votes, nothing more.

Leadership is what we lack. The holy grail is that we need people who can formulate a vision for this country and can execute diligently to make it happen. The Pillars of Building a Great Startup apply amazingly to this. As a leader of a nation, you need to master the art of getting great talent, raising and managing funding, designing and implementing a strategy to execute and articulating a vision to inspire. A leader who masters these has a great shot at changing a nation's future.

Although I got robbed, the pain is gone now and I have moved on. In fact, I would even say that I pity those boys. They robbed me for small things that I could easily be replace with hard work and commitment to my work. They didn't take that. Therefore, I will always do better than them in life. In truth, I just have an upperhand in terms of opportunity, access to capital, great networks of people and great skills that allow me to execute high leverage activities. Those are things that I have come to learn to be grateful for. When you have them, you think everyone is as blessed as you are. This is far from the case. The real question is what will I do with all this access. Will I decide to enrichment myself and build an enclave that protects me from an ever-empoverished and desperate society or will I use my access to build my capacity to give back to society and make it better and more prosperous? The choice has always been mine and it is yours too.