Welcome to the year 2030. I got your letter.
2020…
I’m also very happy for the new year. The last decade was a tumultuous one for our species starting with 2020. Do you remember the coronavirus? It seems so long ago now since that happened. I remember how we all had to stay indoors for months fearing for the future of our species. No one understood what was happening, all we knew was that it was a new virus and it was spreading fast. But thanks to our health workers and essential workers (they were the real heroes) all around the world, we made it through by sticking together and trusting science.
Do you remember “social distancing?” The kids that were born after 2021 probably never heard that word before. But we survived thanks to Ugur Sahin and Ozlem Tureci, the superstar couple and many people like them who developed the vaccines that made it possible to return to our-not so-normal lives again. We called it “The new normal.” What a year it was!
I think the year 2020 was the awakening the world needed. It showed us we had to care more about our environment. Also helped us understand that work and life could take on new better meanings. We didn’t have to sit in a cubicle in someplace anymore for work and what we called work could take on a new meaning. “Remote working” had been a foreign-almost progressive-concept before then, but we were forced to quickly adapt and now it’s the only way we work. Well, except for the factories. Our big giant factories billowing thick black smoke into the atmosphere, destroying our environment. I’m sure you are not happy to hear this. But I think it’s important for you to know. Maybe countries like yours would formulate better policies for dealing with the developing world.
I think you need to know how our situation may be endangering the excellent work countries like yours are doing in the area of global warming and taking care of the environment in general considering how globalization connects us all now.
New ways...
Countries like your own understood new ways of doing things had to be developed and adopted. And offered the right incentives to create the new systems and adopt them. Your letter mentioned that you don’t own anything anymore, that everything is a service now.
That’s in stark contrast to what’s happening over here. We still own everything we use; services are limited to things that we cannot own or afford. Even the things we didn’t use to own in 2016, we now own. Things like fresh water and trees. Can you believe that?
Freshwater tax…
Freshwater and trees used to be free, anyone could drill a borehole, dig a well or plant a tree in their yard, not anymore, they are now personal properties for which the government issues a license to anyone who wants to drill or plant one and the law is heavily enforced especially amongst the urban population and those in the middle class. All these were free and unregulated in 2020, now they are licensed commodities on which the government collects tax. If you don’t own a borehole, you have to buy freshwater from the supermarket or a neighbour, because the government installs water meters in our homes and we pay tax based on how many litres we consume in a month or the number and trunk sizes of the trees we plant. Some charitable organizations also play the important role of providing free freshwater to underserved communities and pay for grants that allow them to grow new trees in their homes. One of our biggest tech startups is Omi.NG. You have probably heard about them. They have created a desalination technique which allows seawater to be consumable. It’s almost as good as the real thing.
You’re probably wondering how that’s even a thing. There’s no drought or anything of that nature. Water is just as plentiful as it was back in 2020. But our main source of income which is crude oil has lost its value in the world market, and the government had to look for other ways to funds the budget. We have defaulted on so many loans no country or monetary organisation is giving us any loans anymore, it is one of the reasons why we have been told to be grateful for our factories at least. They provide jobs.
Trees as luxury organic commodities…
Trees have also become classified as luxury organic commodities. We started flaring a lot of gas since the worldwide demand for crude oil plummeted and crippled our economy. It is like we were intentionally trying to set the world back on the greenhouse gas index. Maybe it is because our government feels left behind and they are trying to undermine everyone else. You remember how Iran used to spin centrifuges so they could get nuclear deals? I think our government is trying to get a greenhouse gas deal by destroying the atmosphere.
The air is generally polluted. Asides the gas flaring, a lot of manufacturing companies have also moved here. The biggest manufacturing corporations moved here because burning natural gases is still considered a more cost-effective practice for production and manufacturing compared to clean energy. Crude oil still powers most of the manufacturing industry worldwide. This may come as a surprise to you since Denmark outlawed burning natural gases past a certain threshold which is not optimal for the manufacturing industry.
Where do you think the pots and kettles you order online come from? They are all made over here. My cousin, Idris works for one of such factories; they make cutleries. The government needs the revenue since we can no longer fund our budget by selling crude oil which is still our main source of revenue, second only to agriculture. So they continue to pollute our air and water, even the water for farming is heavily polluted and this has led to high inflation in food prices. The only measure of comfort is from the trees we can plant around our homes. So, the government taxes this too.
AI what?
Your letter described those who live in 19th-century villages. That’s putting it lightly Ida. This is more like the 18th or 17th century. But it is not all bad, distrust for the government means we do not trust any mass registration exercise and keep a low digital profile. We don’t trust the government not to abuse the technology. We can still think without AI knowing exactly what we are up to. We prefer it this way.
I have some questions
Who pays for all the free things? It’ll be a dream to live in a city where everything is free. Does everyone work and give all their income to the government, how does this work?
Also, since everything is free, how do you ensure everyone is contributing their fair share of the work needed to make generate enough revenue to continue to make things free? Is it free if you still have to fund it? What about the people that refuse to work since they figured they can get things for free. What happens to them? How does everyone else feel about having to do the work needed to make things free while others choose not to contribute but still get things for free?
You say you don’t pay rent and you’re hardly out working. How does your government ensure there are enough homes for everyone to live in for free? Please write me back on this.
They simply relocated for profit sake
And, manufacturing which used to pollute your air didn’t just disappear. They were moved to “lower-income economies” like mine. How else would they have been able to make all the thing we all need, all the parts for flying cars and autonomous vehicles? Would clean energy ever be as cheap as natural gases? I wonder sometimes. Most manufacturing companies still go for this cheaper alternative and since corporations are just as concerned about their bottom line as they were in 2020, they simply sought cheaper alternatives. I also ask myself if corporations can become like charitable organizations which are non-profit making organizations and more concerned about the general wellbeing of people. How do we keep corporations but kill the profit mindset?
I’m in awe of the outstanding people you all seem to be amidst all that technology and everything that has been made to help you turn work into creation-time and development time. I’m surprised anyone still bothers to do anything productive. What drives that attitude in your opinion, do you think people have a natural yearning to be productive even when they don’t have to worry about providing for themselves and their loved ones. I’m happy you found a system that works. It sounds like a nice place.
Over here, flying cars are reserved almost exclusively for the political elites. The government although says it cannot fund another election just appropriated some money to be spent on buying the latest flying cars model. They claim it’ll make their jobs easier and it is for the benefit of the country.
The Federal government in November also declared anyone who uses electric and solar-powered flying vehicles “an enemy of the state.” The justification is that since we cannot generate enough revenue from selling crude oil to other countries, buying our fuel is the patriotic thing to do. Importation of petrol and diesel engine automobiles are encouraged and subsidized, while electric and solar panelled vehicles are heavily taxed. Anyone could have guessed this would be the position of the government 10 years ago when Aliko Dangote, Nigeria’s foremost industrialist decided to invest in a refinery even as the world was preparing to move away from and find other alternatives to greenhouse gases.
The president just signed a bill into law that raised the tax on electric and solar-powered automobiles by 2000%. Although it is tax-exempt for government ministries and agencies, through which the politicians imports theirs “for official duty.”
I’m afraid I do not share your enthusiasm towards the direction of things, we live in different worlds. Sometimes I wish we had done more at the critical junctures during our maturity as a nation. Maybe things could be a lot different for us and the world by the virtue of that.
Anyway, I plan to relocate my family to your country in 2 years. I have been saying the same thing since 2020, although the Danish embassy keeps turning me down, something about how my history of use of social media is unsatisfactory. But I believe I’ll get it this time, I have cleaned up my act good.
Send my greetings to your folks.
Regards,
E.B Things.
Authors note: If you find this article unpleasant, that’s what I was going for. Also, this wasn’t created as a criticism of the 1st author’s article. I believe that as Nigerians, and Africans at large, we cannot start living in a dream world of flying cars and free things considering the amount of work we haven’t even begun to do. Our future is closer to the one articulated in writing above if we continue to show the same kind of apathy that we have shown to politics in the past. This article was written to jolt us back into reality and ensure we do the work needed to take advantage of the current technological revolution. We have only known extractive political and economic institutions for the entirety of our history. There’s nothing to suggest we wouldn’t continue in that trajectory while the world leaves us behind.
Upcoming articles would be centred on the nature of our extractive polity and how we can counteract them so that we too may be able to dream like Ida Auken.
But first, the work.
