Trying to Reform the Third World

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Though, at first, I was suspicious of Western attempts to spread Democracy and general Enlightenment in the Third World, and imputed the vilest of ulterior motives to all attempts to do so, I am beginning to see that a good proportion of those who support these changes and general "improvements" of the Third World do so out of very altruistic motives.

Here are some of the objectionable aspects of life in the poor nations of the East that Europeans and North Americans find intolerable:  (1).The lives of women are burdensome, and seem to be dictated by the needs of often cruel and ignorant men.  (Americans are faced with the fact that life in Utah, for instance, is very similar, but the freedoms written into the Constitution of the USA make it impossible to deal with the aspects of Utah life that are still under the control of conservative males.  It is so much more rewarding to try to make changes in the East.)  (2) The rulers of many Eastern and African nations put themselves into power using a superficially democratic method, but then keep themselves in power in a dynastic style, with sham elections, and militias of armed thugs.  Despotic rule, in other words, continues.  (3)  Great poverty and great wealth exist side by side in the East and Africa.  The quite legitimate imperative of affluent Americans to mitigate the starvation and the poverty of the Third World is frustrated by the corruption of the ruling elite, and in a few cases the corruption within the Third World local offices of global charities and NGOs.  A large proportion of the charity dollars goes into infrastructure, and the local coordinators of the NGOs, modestly paid by American standards, are highly over-paid by the norms of the countries where they work.  There just isn't anyway this conundrum can be resolved.  If the local coordinators were to be paid according to local norms, they would find it impossible to travel to the international headquarters, spending the sort of money that the organization expects them to spend; if they are paid according to a Western Hemisphere salary scale, it will naturally cause enormous rifts between them and other local workers, which would lead inevitably to theft and corruption.

The media of the Western Hemisphere, now abetted by global technology such as cellphones and the Internet, is very influential.  The residents of the Third World look hungrily at the freedom and the lifestyles of those in the West.  They don't realize that (A) the freedom of the West is getting to be rather an empty thing; there is freedom to do all sorts of things provided you've got the money.  Those who have the money are beginning to be rather a small minority.  A recent study of the facts of the matter revealed that while the richest 5% of Americans enjoyed incomes that increased between the late 90s and the present, the so-called Middle Class made do with incomes that were essentially static, and a small proportion of the Middle Class actually found themselves in the working class.

(B) The citizens of the Third World gaze balefully at their political elite (which is essentially the same as the economic elite), and see political systems ---put in place by colonial powers, for the most part, with great altruism in the recent past--- that are not working.  They fail to see that the political systems of the West are not working either.  The not-workingness of political systems appears to be something that is intrinsic to human society.  The effort to subvert political systems never sleeps.  In order to have a working political system, it must effectively manage the economy, and in order to have a good economy you must have an effective political system.  One can easily see that any accident can ruin this unstable net of dependencies.  And human greed precipitates accidents all the time in the West, just as in the East.

The Democratic process depends crucially on the ability of a people to identify and support leaders.  The US political system invests millions of dollars just on this process alone.  The Republican National Committee is said to be in debt to the tune of 23 million dollars---I could be off by a decimal place or two.  The Democrats are in debt for about a third of that amount.  In addition, the Federal Government spends several millions of dollars in Presidential Elections, just to subsidize the expenses of the main candidates.  This amounts to more than the entire GDP of many small countries.  It is the easiest thing in the world for the Establishment in poor Third World countries to stifle the emergence of potential leaders.  And the leaders that do emerge are often the villains of the future.  The recent history of Africa is a lesson in the futility of believing in political heroes.  Nelson Mandela stands out as a counterexample of a man whose ethics have not succumbed to expediency, and of course we really know too little about him to make a once-and-for-all determination of his character.  All the other leaders have shown themselves to be weak, over the past half century.

My main point is the following: Democracy in the USA is very close to being broken.  Its successes in the thirties and the sixties were due to abnormally high levels of idealism among the population, the recognition of social injustices that seemed inconsistent with the life of a great nation that considered itself instrumental in ridding the world of two oppressive imperialistic regimes, namely Germany and Japan.  But the psychological forces at work to stoke the engines of the stock market worked against the very feelings that made it possible for the country to bounce back from the Vietnam War ---or maybe it never did bounce back.  Could it be that millions of Americans saw that they could never make it big unless they prevented everybody else from doing the same?  When did we discovered that The Pie was finite, so that to get a piece of it meant shutting out all the other "losers"?

There is a cadre of insane conspiracy-theorists who are here to stay, and a large sector of the population that hangs on their every word.  Recently, Frances Scott Piven, vilified by Glenn Beck with great determination, described why she had been singled out for this honor.  Ms Piven has been a Sociology professor at City University of New York, and a leftist of note.  But Glenn Beck objects to her agenda of orchestrating social reform as a conspiracy against Capitalism itself.  Glenn Beck makes his money by cheering on the Capitalist Bloc in the US, and it seems that he has been deceived into thinking that he is actually a member of it.  The Capitalist Bloc is not a safehouse or a fortress; it is a battlefield.  Glenn Beck will only enjoy its largesse so long as he is helpful to them. [Added later: there is some evidence that Beck is beginning to embarrass some sectors of the conservative coalition.  But they're tolerating him for the present, since he appears to be helpful.  But he will eventually become a liability, just as some voices on MSNBC have become an embarrassment to the Democrats.]

It will take a while for the nations of the Western Hemisphere to spiral into anarchy.  The rise of organized crime in Mexico is just a small portent of things that are to come.  (The large proportion of Mexican Immigrants into this country are probably the few who are courageous enough, and upset with their drug lords enough to take the desperate step of trying to cross the border.  They should be more welcome in this country than the terrible people who buy Mexican drugs, who are largely among the white middle class.)  So we can stagger along for several years while the political system self-destructs.

It is possible that, by some miracle, things go the other way.  Barack Obama promised a change in direction in American politics, and he may still make a change.  But the level of intelligence of the population at large seems not up to the task of abetting enactment of good legislation, and hindering that of bad legislation.  So it is clear that the political system is going to be hostage to the feelings of the flighty public.

The successful democracies of the West appear to be those in which there is no great influx of immigrants, there are great natural resources, the climate is largely hostile, and the population small and largely non-religious.  Racial diversity, a comfortable climate, a large population, and strong religious feelings all spell death for a smoothly-working political system.  The prospects for all of us are bleak.  It is too much to expect that a steady stream of forward-thinking, charismatic leaders will come forward in this country to save us.

Postscript:  The thrust of this post was that none of us really has a good system to offer emerging Third World democracies.  In principle, Democracy is totally awesome; in practice, it is only a matter of time before human frailties find ways to defeat it.

A recent article by George Lakoff  describes (at length) what the stereotypical Conservative really wants.
Read through the conservative responses to the article; some of them are very persuasive.  Many conservatives ---as the responders point out, presumably counting themselves among these--- are just sick of what they think of as panhandlers who find a totally unproductive life comfortable, what with Welfare and Social Security.  (Many Democrats agree that HUD is a cesspool that should be cleaned out.)  But Clinton showed how it is possible to put the brakes on Welfare; we can all agree that corruption and abuse of Welfare dollars must be slowed down and stopped, keeping the money flowing to deserving cases.

If wages were high enough that being employed was far superior to being on Welfare, one assumes that people would begin to look for work.  But it is useful [to Business] to keep labor costs low.  But one day, when labor costs in foreign countries are as high as they are here, how will we cope with the problem?

By their very nature, Democrat solutions to American problems are compromises.  Conservative solutions, on the other hand, are arbitrary and inflexible.  What can I say?  The system is broken.

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