A few days ago I returned from a world tour, 18 flights, 60000+ km. Only in the last 24 hours, I have already answered the question “What impressed me the most?” 7 times, so I decided to write a public answer in order to save myself a little time and not miss the details of my story..

What impressed me the most. poverty.

For a long time I naively believed that the main success towards the prosperity of the nation, and of all mankind, is technology.. We do not need to spend time searching for candles, just press one button on the wall and the light will appear. We do not need to carry water from the well and then heat it over the fire to take a bath, just open the tap. We do not need to overcome thousands of kilo meters to talk to a person, just dial the number. The benefits of technology are so obvious that it would seem that this is the path to prosperity: to invent, improve, develop.

But Madagascar residents have long known how electricity works.. On average, one resident of Madagascar consumes 53 kWh of electricity per year. No need to raise physics textbooks, I will tell you, this is about the same as you consume electricity while living in a two-room apartment in one week. That is, in one week we burn a year’s supply of electricity for a resident of Madagascar.. Do you think they learned to live without electricity? No, they just don't have it.. In Antananarivo, not in any village, but in the capital of Madagascar, there are stalls with rental sockets hourly..

Dialogue with our driver in Madagascar:.

“Can we stop by the supermarket on the way to the hotel?”.

- What is a supermarket?.

- Uh, well, this is the place where they sell products.

- Ah, the store, yes we can, but this is a hook in 40 minutes (at that moment we were still in the capital of the country).

- No, we do not need a large store, just water, to buy and something to eat for the evening.

- Yes, I understand you. Need a hook in 40 minutes. Nothing to do, let's go.. We come to the store - 4 rows, each 4 meters long, stale bread, water, a few canned goods and chocolates, insanely cheap alcohol, and of course, coca-cola. This is the whole range..

Perhaps for a while, I thought, the whole thing was about resources.. Who has the resources, he will have a strong economy and a rich population..

Johannesburg is the largest city in South Africa and one of the largest diamond and gold deposits in the world.. And until 1994, I was right, in just 100 years, after the first discovery of a gold-bearing rock, the small village turned into a metropolis with huge skyscrapers and endless shopping centers.. What happened in 1994? No, gold is not over, it is still mined there.. In 1994, in the presidential elections, Nelson Mandela defeated and abolished apartheid.. Beautiful, bright, kind and in all senses a progressive idea.. How now, just 25 years later, looks like Johannesburg?.

In the very center of the city are 40-storey buildings with broken windows (which were once class A business centers), without the light of water and sewage. Instead of a toilet, they use elevator shafts (yes, therefore it is better to take floors higher). There is no asphalt, the feeling that it was broken down with a crowbar and carried away somewhere, I technically do not even know how to do it. Trade is everywhere on the streets - some animal's fried intestines, Chinese slippers, almost rotten fruit.. Again with great difficulty finding a shop. I went to the cashier, on her face an expression of horror, like she saw a ghost:.

- Please go, I do not need problems.

- (Perplexed) What are the problems? I just want to buy a bottle of water..

- No, no, get out of here..

Whether the manager or the owner of the store gets stuck in the conversation.

- Guys, how did you get here?.

- We were late for the plane, so we stayed here for a day, we decided to see the city.

- I will sell you water, but please leave here.

- So what happened? ? ?.

“You are white. And here, as in the films, I leaf through the last 2 hours of the walk and I understand that we have seen exactly 2 white people in all the time, as we later learned the proverb“ if you see a white person walking on foot, it means that he was hijacked 10 minutes ago car ”. Already in the hotel I learn the history of this city, as from the largest metropolis of the continent, the city has become the largest criminal ghetto not only in Africa, but in the whole world..

But if it’s not about resources, there’s only hope left, education. The more educated the nation, the richer.

There is no more surprising and illustrative example to debunk this myth - Cuba. With the arrival of Fidel Castro in 1959, a great emphasis was placed on power. The literacy rate is 96%, which corresponds to the numbers of the richest countries.. 10% of the total budget goes to education, for comparison, in the UK only 4%, in the USA 2%.

And you feel it almost immediately upon arrival, almost every passer-by speaks calmly good English and is ready to easily discuss any topic with you.. True, the conversation on the third, you notice that the ending is repeated - if you want, I will sell you a cigar, bring a girl, go treat me and I will tell you even more. Remember the above I wrote about the store in Madagascar? So in comparison, a store in Madagascar is a WallMart and a store in Cuba is a stall at home.. Assortment - Bread, Toothpaste, Drill. I’m wondering about the range, “What we have and sell," the seller responds carelessly. Moms do run up to the man with diapers on the street and excitedly ask him where he could find such a miracle. Then you pay attention to the magnificent architecture of the building, which is almost completely destroyed. Yeah, then civilization was here! What happened?.

Fidel castro. Do you know why Cuba is called the island of freedom? They fully realized the uncomplicated “take away from the rich, give to the poor”. In 1959, with the advent of Fidel to power, almost all enterprises were nationalized (in other words, they were taken away from their legal owners in favor of the state).

And here you realize that all that beautiful old Havana (from which there was a faint trace) was built just by these greedy capitalists.

All the journey, I continued to think, what does distinguish prosperous nations from the poor, and most importantly, what conclusions Ukraine can make from this. Fortunately, I had a large library of books on the reader and 78 hours of clean flight time.. Therefore, when I saw the book “Why nations fail” in my library, I could not think about anything.

But that's another story..