Hilary Robertson-Hickling

The concept of a playing field is widely applied to many spheres of modern life beyond sports. The Cricket World Cup being played in the Caribbean has demonstrated that the teams which some derisively called minnows are more than equal to the task and have beaten some of the traditionally powerful cricket teams. This reminds us that no nation or group of people will dominate the world forever. Power is not everlasting as the rise and fall of many great empires and individuals has demonstrated. As human beings we still seem unable to grasp the capacity of others to perform at the same levels that we can orthat others can surpass us.

People never seem to learn

A current television series on imperial Rome has shown that there are many nowadays examples of the treachery, greed, brutality, decadence and arrogance and that people never seem to learn. We need to recognise that where the players have equal opportunities they are just as capable of winning. This is true of the economic sphere where small post-colonial nations are pitted against their former colonisers in the World Trade Organisation and the new formations which exist to create globalisation which will foster some of the same old exploitation of the old colonial world.

In our country, we know that many efforts have been made to level the socio-economic playing field in Jamaica but many of the inequalities persist and that the neo-liberal economic policies fostered by the World Bank and the IMF have resulted in widening gaps in social classes in the developed and developing world. Riots in China and India recently were all about the exploitation of the rural poor and their resources to enrich those who now inhabit the burgeoning cities and industry.

Reform of capitalism

In the United States, there are now voices clamouring for the reform of capitalism which has resulted in the decimation of the middle class and the expansion of the poor. The group of billionaires in that country wields more power than many national governments while having responsibility only to the shareholders. They have no responsibilities to the consumers who use their products, their employees or the communities or countries in which they produce their goods or services.

Trickle-down economics was heralded in the 1980s and 1990s but it seems to have had very limited success. It is clear that the Earth's inhabitants will have to share the earth, the sea, the sky and the air and that no country will be exempt from global warming. Somehow we cannot allow some to live on less than a dollar a day while others are as rich as Croesus.

That reminds us that we have to create the kinds of playing fields where there is much greater equality. Great players, great coaches, great venues, great supporters, good governance and governments make it possible for higher quality games to enrich all of us. It may sound idealistic but the opposite yields only disaster and destruction.