I have just come back from holiday in the Ukraine, and this has spurred my thoughts on the “unfairness” of the difference in the lot in life experienced by members of different nations. Is it unfair that some people are born in Switzerland and others in Somalia? Is this just a variation on the different life chances of people born into different social classes in a single nation? Why are some nations doomed to poverty and others destined for prosperity? Whose “fault” is this? And should we feel uneasy about it?

It seems this question is very apt in terms of libertarian discussion. Clearly some people within a society are born into families that afford them advantages. Some whole nations may be said to be advantageously placed compared with other nations. If you read of people starving in a famine somewhere in Africa, one way of looking at it is that it could have been you: you did not deserve to be English; national identity is a product of chance. This is what Cecil Rhodes referred to when he said that to be born in England was to draw a winning ticket in the lottery of life. It is not quite the winning ticket nowadays, but it is still a decent outcome compared with most other alternative economies that we could have been born in.

There is a certain awkwardness discussing this issue with members of nations down on their luck. Clearly you wish to sympathize with decent people in such nations. Were we to trade places with them, we might find that they were able to make more of the opportunities in an economy like England, where many have grown effete and complacent, than many English people actually do. On a one-to-one basis, it does seem unfair that some countries are just poorer, which limits the life chances of all their inhabitants.

The Ukraine is a good example. It is difficult not to be sympathetic to individual Ukrainians, living in a country whose official GDP is smaller than in 1991, when the Ukraine became independent from the Soviet Union. Apparently, living standards are higher, as the black economy accounts for around half of the economy, and so GDP statistics do not capture all economic activity. Nevertheless, it is hard to argue that the Ukraine has recorded a creditable economic performance since 1991.

Individual Ukrainians did nothing to make this so; they can do nothing to make it no longer so. This is the case in all nations, of course: individual people lack the power to control the nation’s destiny. A Ukrainian I know lives on the fifth or sixth floor of a building of flats with no lift, and shares with friends. There is no living room; the kitchen is big enough for one person to stand in; the furniture is basically just firewood. Such flats have central heating, but turning it on is determined centrally by the city: there is no “on” switch to turn on the radiator yourself. In a cold snap in autumn, the temperature in the flat is the same as in the street outside.

Prices of most things are the same as in the West. This is particularly the case with imported items or technological goods. Locally produced milk and cheese would be cheaper than in the West, of course, but most consumer goods are no cheaper in the Ukraine, or even more expensive in the Ukraine, than in England. I think this reflects the purchasing power of Tesco and other large English shops.

Average wages in the Ukraine are around £130 a month. Clearly such Ukrainians are condemned to a wasted life compared with citizens of most other European nations. You can buy poorly decorated flats in buildings constructed of pre-fabricated panels for around £30,000, or more in Kiev. Many Ukrainians were, however, handed their Soviet-era flats for a small fee years ago, and some families are lucky enough to have acquired several such flats from expiring grandparents and the like. Consequently, people are often able to survive on little in a way that would not be the case in England.

While there is a tax system, it is disorganized and few people are asked to make returns. There are few services from the government. Healthcare is supposedly free, but hospitals generally require those they believe can pay to buy needles, food and other consumables for their loved ones in hospital, or even to tend to them themselves in hospital. Good care often requires cash bribes to the doctors. But in the end, in the Ukraine, your money is your money, and not the government’s, and this is one plus factor compared with countries such as the UK.

Clearly, on a one-to-one basis, one can only be understanding towards Ukrainians, given that a country sandwiched between the EU and Russia, not wanted by the EU and under economic siege from Russia in the past year or two, forms the backdrop to their lives.

However, the behaviour of the government reflects the national culture to a greater or lesser degree in all countries. The country is dominated by oligarchs, and at all levels of society people imitate the abusive behaviour of their overlords by demanding bribes. Encounters with the police often require bribes. All other encounters with the bureaucracy require cash inducements. Even on an individual level, Ukrainians seek to rip each other off. If you leave your ID card in a bar, they might hold it for you, but won’t give it back to you without charge. They know the money and time it would require to get a new one from the police, and so they will demand a “holding fee” from you, for having looked after it. In England, this is called “stealing by finding”.

Ukrainians are not easily admitted to the EU partly because of the behaviour of the population. If the Poles and Lithuanians have sponsored significant crime waves in England, then I must warn that those nations have nothing on the Ukrainians. Fraud, theft, blackmail, prostitution, pimping, drugs trafficking—all these crimes would see a large boost were Ukrainians present in large numbers in the UK.

The trouble is that, to a large extent, nations are their own worst enemies. The “tragedy” of developing nations is that culturally they inflict their situation on themselves. The situation is similar to the unprogressive culture that prevails on sink estates in the UK, where it is hard to unpick whether those communities are “victims” of a lack of social opportunity and the easy availability of welfare, or whether those communities are in fact problem estates who are visiting their own problems on themselves. To a certain extent, both at the estate level and at the national level, both explanations are true when the situation is seen from different angles.

I wouldn’t like to emphasize the point to Ukrainians, but England was poor once. Reading of the way children were treated in the factories of Lord Shaftesbury’s day, one cannot help but realize that England had to make its own way out of its plight. There were no World Banks or rich nations to offer assistance; just the long slog of finding appropriate economic policies to foster socioeconomic development.

Countries like the Ukraine may make little of their advantages, but they do live in a world where much of the conditions for rapid growth have been put in place for them by other countries. They did not invent the light bulb, or electricity, or railways, or motor cars, or computers, or the Internet; and yet they benefit from all of these. A world market exists: the Ukraine does not need to conquer India and go to war with Imperial China to enforce a global trading network. Appropriate policies would see rapid economic growth as the already existing technology of other nations was transferred quickly.

Ultimately, the world does not owe the Ukraine a living. IKEA pulled out of building a store in Odessa more than a decade ago, because the land prices were higher than in London or New York and it did not wish to pay bribes to local officials. Land has a manipulated price in all countries, and IKEA believed that corruption was at the heart of the high cost of investment. If the Ukraine wishes to receive investment, it must do something about corruption.

It is difficult for individual Ukrainians to influence the political process. The discussion in the Ukraine is of how much it costs to become an MP there. How much do you have to pay in bribes to get elected? Election results are not believed to be the genuine result of popular opinion. Most MPs in the Ukraine are resistant to reforms that would reduce opportunities for corruption.

Consequently, Ukrainians are left hoping the new government will do enough to clamp down on corruption and move the country into a more Western orbit, without really being able to force the government to do so. To that extent, the situation is “unfair”.

However, individual Ukrainians betray a mercenary and greedy approach to life that limits the ability of a Westerner to sympathize too deeply. Not all Ukrainians would invest the money they have in businesses or in English lessons or even in saving for a flat. Clearly there are many small businessmen in the country, but their ranks are dwarfed by the numbers of Ukrainians who spend all their income on clothes. They wish to show off Armani suits and Versace bags. They have detailed knowledge of the expensive perfumes that are in fashion at the moment. Women—and men—spend a fortune on hairspray and take an hour to get ready to go to the shops to buy a pint of milk. Everything in the country is for show: to show others you are fashionable and you have managed to keep up with the times and the latest brands.

Despite the fact they are the second-poorest country in Europe after Moldavia, the average Ukrainian would turn his nose up at an Android phone, such as I have. It has to be an iPhone for them. Why don’t they economize and put the extra money towards self-improvement of some type? They seem to want everything now, the same as it is in the West. Yet prosperity has been centuries in the making in the UK.

It is difficult to avoid the view that Ukrainians have added their contribution to a situation whereby they are towards the bottom of the economic rankings. They don’t seem to understand that you can be happy and poor: you can live in a small flat, and if you are with loved ones, you will manage one way or the other to be happy.

One can admire the tendency of Ukrainians to be aspirational, while deprecating their materialism. That libertarians admire aspiration is not the same thing as saying that libertarians believe material things are the only desirable things in life or even the central objects of desire in life. In the end, a country never gets to be a prosperous society until it has other values than materialism. Capitalism (and the Common Law) are ultimately founded on social trust, which implies that something other than material values must come first: it is this that Ukrainians lack. Until they understand this, unfortunately, Ukrainians will deserve to be less well-off.