Boris Teški: Educated and Employed Are Leaving Due to the New Croatian Silence

Are we getting better? The investment rating is rising, our GDP is increasing, and the state budget is achieving a surplus. What can be said about a country where statistical data shows progress, yet more and more educated people are leaving? What is fiction and what is reality? There are no greenfield investments or investor interest in investing in the Croatian economy (except for tourism) even after joining the European Union. This confirms the thesis that we have a systemic error at the core of the political-economic system.

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Unfortunately, even the adopted laws of the European Union cannot guarantee the effectiveness and transparency of their implementation because we add something to every law that makes it unenforceable or misinterpreted. Therefore, negative assessments of legal security are inevitable in every analysis of the business environment. Today, from the state administration, whether regional or central, it does not matter, the non-implementation or incorrect implementation of certain laws begins, which each new political party modifies upon coming to power according to some of its particular interests (not to mention the effectiveness of state bureaucracy and the judiciary).

Dominant Interests

In a time of regulated economic environment, we promote a free market, forgetting that market freedom also implies all other freedoms, as well as legal frameworks that regulate and ensure fair competition. These conditions do not change according to need or by choosing rules that apply only to certain participants in the market competition, not to others. Interests, whether ‘systemic’ or particular, dominate the economy and society as a whole. Have we built a closed society of the privileged and protected, or have they built a system that protects them? It is less important because the consequences are visible every day. While discussions about demographics and demographic policy, pensions, and reforms continue, reality is forgotten, but not so much economic as sociological and psychological.

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The messages of all the above bring a loss of optimism, both business and otherwise, so apathy and dissatisfaction dominate every part of social life, science, sports, culture, etc. The wrong value system and negative selection that favors the creation of a society of silent and compliant individuals govern the economic, political, and social scene. The lack of a culture of communication, dialogue, and exchange of ideas, regardless of ideological affiliation, is once again creating the cult of ‘Croatian silence’ that provokes resignation and emigration, just like in the last century. Today, we lack everyone in the labor market, waiters, doctors, engineers…

Some studies show that 60 percent of those who emigrated to Germany had jobs, and among them, as many as 37.8 percent were highly educated. What is the cause? Many things, but it is certainly not just a matter of the tax burden on labor. It is alarming that more and more young people who have jobs are leaving, all due to a well-founded feeling that a meaningful future cannot be built here. The development of modern knowledge, more appropriate curricula, and everything else that curricular reform aims to change is unfortunately not enough.

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A Distorted Image as Art

Building a knowledge society primarily implies building a system of social valuation of knowledge in every part of the educational system and later within the employment and work evaluation system. At the same time, our education system and knowledge transmitters are the least paid and socially least valued part of the state and social system, both in terms of the conditions in which they work and the compensation for their work. Our expectations that a low-productivity and technologically backward economy that does not create added value, and therefore no future, will be the bearer of change are difficult to realize, and there is no longer a system for transferring and raising industrial knowledge that was characteristic of the Croatian economy. The disintegration of large systems, scientific institutes, and ineffective economic transition increasingly shows the consequences every day. Once, the Croatian industry built industrial and petrochemical plants and nuclear power plants with its own strength and technological solutions, and today we do not even know if there is a Croatian company that could build a highway; we no longer know how to build bridges or there is no one to do it.

A small number of new companies based on new technologies (such as Rimac Automobili) do not make a spring, but dramatically warn of the lack of systematic and strategic economic support for such projects. Nowhere in the world is this left to the free market. But it seems that nothing can save us from ourselves, from our divisions and invented ideological differences, our ability to present a distorted image of reality as a successful work of art.

Author: Boris Teški