If one were told that running a country is likened to running a football club, one would be amused. But amusing as it is, that depicts modern migration and labour headaches all over the globe.

The world is rapidly becoming a common market. The labour market is critical for it dictates all the other markets. The better stock of people you have, the more potential your economy has. Just like a football club. The right-wing Nationalists aside, the nations that adopt strong migration policies have or will have a better pool of people than many ethnocentric societies elsewhere.

How much of that concerns the average Malaysian, that in the last decade, supremacy of land and capital became obsolete, disembowelled rapaciously by a New World Order? A considerable lot.

Today, we live in a human planet. Robinson Crusoe is king again. The resolve, intelligence, capacity and brilliance of individuals sit above everything else. Whether it is about brain surgeons, classical pianists, vaudeville artists or scientists, the onus placed on government is to get and retain human capital. No football squad is competitive without enough competitive players.

We need people. They with capital, like those Canada enticed from Hong Kong before the hand-over. They who are highly skilled, to provide service and to share it with the locals. They who are entrepreneurial, to invigorate business activity. The argument need not be made; it is self-proving.

Malaysia has inherited a unique and claustrophobic attitude towards migration that the idea of an active migrant policy is seen as a perfidy. Yet every nation we consider as a valid success promotes 'smart' migration. Some say it is because of their ageing population, and negative population growth patterns. The more real and underpinning reason, however, is that a global marketplace exists and people are willingly traded, and the best buyers have the best stocks, ergo the best potential.

The Malaysian government to be fair has actively tried to retain the brain stock and lure back the legion of Malaysian talents from their foreign stations - precisely what other countries have been doing in the past. However, these nations also actively try to attract the brains of other countries. We, due to historical baggage, do not do as much of that.

In 1961, the Malaysian model was considered and felt acceptable when it injected a compromise, balancing the Chinese from Singapore with the indigenous people of Sabah, Sarawak and Brunei, even if Malaya hardly had a relationship with Borneo up to then. The point is, racial composition is important in Malaysia still, because we have not moved from living in a compromise to living in a nation.

But enough of the politics, let me focus on what all Malaysians are very concerned about, wealth generation.

In order for Malaysia to sustain its competitiveness, it needs to retain local talents and draw foreign talent. As a nation of 20-odd million people, we cannot act like China or India. Our population growth is already slowing down. Soon the ratio of those above and below 25 would sway to the former. Many more Malaysians will leave home and work abroad - are we going to say that the all-out effort by developed nations to get the third world's best is not getting any favourable result?

Detractors can insist that we only need to continuously develop our own talent pool, for example increase the number of graduates to population figures, and make the talent-retaining programmes even more comprehensive. Of course we need to increase the number of graduates, which means increasing the amount of specific sets of skills each individual has. However, the base skills needed have increased. Meaning you cannot do a lot with just a primary- or even secondary-level education.

Proactive governments like Singapore understand that it is easier to develop the brain pool in the country than to keep the trained pool within the country. Your pool does not become smarter in a vacuum, they learn to want more out of life, unnoticed often by conservative governments.

Today governments do not decide the place of citizens anymore - people decide their government's place, and if there is a stalemate, people move. In a sense the monumental Bosman Ruling that freed football players all over the European Union, is becoming real worldwide without explicit legislation. Players first get spotted and developed, and when the academic term ends, they pick their own challenges.

Money is a consideration, in recognition of their worth, but not everything. They want a league that is challenging, they want to operate in a club that recognises their talent and uses them in the right department. They want some success. They balance the issues. The club has to make sense to the player, rather than the other way around in many senses.

Are we prepared for a future of developing our talents, continuously challenging our talents within our structures, getting the team to win enough glory, add new personnel, therefore keeping up with all the other top teams?