The warlord economy made literacy worthless as a route to success

Evidence

After all the trouble and risk we undertook to get the money, it became useless. We would have been less hungry if we had stayed at the village instead of walking the miles to Mattru Jong and back. I wanted to blame someone for this particular predicament, but there was no one to be blamed. We had made a logical decision and it had come to this. It was a typical aspect of being in the war. Things changed rapidly in a matter of seconds and no one had any control over anything. We had yet to learn these things and implement survival tactics, which was what it came down to. That night we were so hungry that we stole people’s food while they slept. It was the only way to get through the night. — Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone- Memoirs of a Boy…, 96 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: War conditions render accumulated money useless and force starvation survival tactics — Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone- Memoirs of a Boy…, 96; Education lost its value when firepower replaced credentials as the path to power

Related

• War conditions render accumulated money useless and force starvation survival tactics (similarity 0.89)
• Education lost its value when firepower replaced credentials as the path to power (similarity 0.79)

Broader Connections

• Education lost its value when firepower replaced credentials as the path to power #corroborates (0.90)
• War conditions render accumulated money useless and force starvation survival tactics #expands (0.40) — Farrar, Straus and Giroux Ishmael Beah, A Long Way Gone- Memoirs of a Boy…, 96