I really enjoyed this ESPN Magazine piece (via The Browser) on India’s 15 year old, 7-foot tall basketball phenom Satnam Bhamara. His father, a farmer, is also a seven-footer, and his grandmother is 6’9”. The piece tracks his journey from his small farm village in Punjab to the elite IMG sports and education facility in Bradenton, Fla. The kid is doing well and looks to have a genuine shot at being the first Indian ever to play in the NBA.
The article is titled "One in a billion," and the theme running through it is that Satnam has the opportunity to do for basketball in India what Yao Ming did for it in China. He’s very aware of the cultural and national prestige that would accrue to his homeland if he were to succeed. And of course, if he does make it to the NBA, it won’t just be India’s collective ego that benefits, but basketball fans everywhere who will be exposed to his talent.
Reading it, I was thinking about the similar gains to be had from the ongoing rise in living standards in the developing world, and the replication many times over of Satnam’s general journey off of the farm. The analogy is not great, since Satnam’s road to success involved mostly having had the good fortune of a 6’9” grandmother.
But the hope is with increased economic development and the deliverance of hundreds of milllions of people from lives of subsistence labor and grinding poverty, that other one-in-a-billions will emerge. Rather than being athletic phenoms, maybe they will be science researchers, genius inventors, or innovators in health care or energy or education. That the "rise" of underdeveloped parts of the world represents not just the greatest poverty-alleviation scheme in human history, but a massive potential boon to human welfare the world over.
There’s also a high-skilled immigration story here. Satnam was plucked from obscurity because the NBA happens currently to be making a huge marketing push into India. But Satnam didn’t have dreams of playing in Europe or in South America: he’s in Florida, and he’ll likely play basketball at an American university, and if things go very well he’ll become an American millionaire and make his home here. Would that we made it just as easy for other high-skilled foreigners—not only the one-in-a-billions—to come develop their talents and do their work here, pay their taxes here, raise a family here.
Liberalizing immigration laws is the closest thing we have to an economic free lunch. In my view our continuing unwillingness to do this represents our single most short-sighted national policy. That’s quite a distinction, in a strong field.
0 Response to “Genetic Lottery Winners and Globalization”