By Diana Holbourn
Becky and Other Students Discuss World Problems, How Some Have Been Unintentionally Made Worse, and How Some Have Been Diminished
Book three of the online Becky Bexley series. Chapter 3 continued.
This series accompanies the books about what Becky does at university and afterwards, which you can find out more about on my author website. (The online series is in draft form.)
When they'd stopped laughing, the student who'd been talking about corrupt government leaders before said, "Anyway, to carry on with what I was saying before, in a lot of these countries that had gained independence, their new governments tried to make sure that anyone who was critical of them couldn't get a job. They sometimes suppressed opposition movements and threw their leaders in jail. And a lot of people who got jobs when they were in power didn't dare criticise them or ask why they weren't improving things, in case they were fired for it. The governments nationalised industries so they could get their supporters to be the top people in them, so they could make a lot of money from those industries' profits themselves, or they threatened to do that if they were criticised by industry leaders, or threatened to refuse to give them trading licenses to sell their products to more places.
"So most people tended to just let them carry on the way they were, even though most of the people in their countries weren't benefiting from independence, but were still living in bad conditions and poverty. And from what I've heard, it seems that governments brutally suppressed protests that broke out because people were poor and hungry, while they themselves lived in luxury. Well, it's still going on now.
"And another tactic they can use with rivals who actually might be able to do them some damage is allowing them to get really rich by corruption, or buying them off with gifts, with money that could have been used to build hospitals, and improve poor people's lives in other ways. And then if they suspect they're not loyal any more, they can accuse them of corruption and throw them in prison, and most people are impressed, thinking they must be good leaders if they're cracking down on corruption, not realising what really happened.
"And in the 1980s, when some of those dictators were put under pressure by organisations like the World Bank to privatise some of the industries in their countries so business leaders could have more freedom to do what they thought was best with them, they made it look as if they did, but gave them to more of their supporters, who tended to have more talent for war than business. They gave those policies names they thought would sound progressive, like 'Black Empowerment' and 'indigenisation' - to signify that they were being run by people native to the country they were in; but most of the people in their countries weren't empowered at all by them, because the governments were really just milking the system, just out for themselves and their supporters!
"And then sometimes governments of Western countries said they'd only continue to give them aid if they held elections and allowed the people to vote in opposition parties if they wanted to, so they held elections that they rigged, and then the Western governments carried on giving them aid, since they didn't realise they were rigged. That's what I heard anyway."
One student said, "I heard that dictators can actually find it useful to hold elections. Well, rigged ones of course. But I heard that there are a few reasons why they can find it useful. One's that it makes good propaganda, if they want to convince other governments that their countries are democracies really. But there are other reasons they find it useful, like that if they win with a total that sounds really impressive, like over 90 % of the vote, it can discourage opposition groups, in the hope that they'll decide it isn't worth trying to organise big groups of people to oppose them, or to try to overthrow them, because they'll think the ruling party's got so much support they could never succeed.
"And dictators also think of elections as a way to divide their opposition; if lots of people don't like their policies, they can all band together to oppose them; but if the ruling party declares elections, and the opposition groups that oppose them would like to win power, but they all want different things, they'll get divided, and might start opposing each other, because each one will want more votes than the others; and the government can join in by trying to discredit all of them, and trying to stir up arguments between them, so their opposition will get weaker, since opposition groups will be building up hostility to each other, arguing among themselves. And if the opposition's made up of several little parties instead of one big one, the vote will be divided between them, so no one opposition party's likely to get anywhere enough votes to come close to winning.
"And another reason dictators like to hold elections is that they can get reports on the votes so as to find out whereabouts most of their opponents live and most of their supporters live, and then they can reward their supporters, by, say, getting better housing and schools built in the areas where they live, and they can punish their opponents, by withholding funding from the parts of the country where they're strongest, that might otherwise have been used to build new hospitals, and better housing for people and so on.
"And I read about the different ways dictators can rig elections. Apparently, there are lots of different things they can do. There are companies they can hire to be the brains behind the rigging and organise it. And they might use several techniques in one go sometimes.
"I've read that there are countries where parliaments don't have a fixed number of seats, but censuses are taken, and the number of candidates who'll stand for election in each place is determined by the latest population figures for each place; but in areas that are known to elect opposition candidates, the government can deliberately misreport the populations as being below what they really are, so those areas won't get as many seats in parliament as other areas will. And in areas where there's known to be a lot of government support, they can misreport the populations as being higher, so those areas get more seats.
"And they can change constituency boundaries, so areas with a lot of opposition voters in them can be put into constituencies by themselves, so although it means opposition candidates are more likely to win in those areas, the opposition vote over the whole country will be less likely to be strong enough in most areas to defeat government candidates at election time.
"And they can do the opposite, rearranging the boundaries so pockets of strong government support are lumped together into constituencies, so government politicians are most likely to win in those areas.
"And they can hunt around for anything they can use as incriminating evidence against the best opposition candidates, so as to try to get them disqualified from standing.
"And they can make sure that the media gives a lot more coverage to government politicians and their promises of improvements in the country, which they'll often have no intention of carrying out, than they do to opposition politicians, so people won't know nearly so much about those and what they stand for.
"Actually, parties in power in so-called real democracies can do a lot of that too - rearranging boundaries so enough of their traditional voters will be in enough places to give them a better chance of winning future elections, and giving favourable treatment to people who own newspapers that support them in return for their support. Quite a few papers are owned by billionaires who benefit from the Tories being in power because they tend to keep taxes lower, and owners of some big papers can make deals with politicians where they promise their papers will support them and contain articles trying to discredit opposition leaders, in return for favours like making laws that allow them to take over more popular papers, when the law before said that one person was only allowed to take over a certain number.
"Owners of papers have even influenced governments to make people who promote their interests government advisers, in return for making sure their papers contain a lot of articles that try to influence voters to vote them in next time. There was even a deal made by one of them and Margaret Thatcher that was kept secret for years and years, - and they denied it had been made, - which guaranteed that she would get the support of the papers, in return for making it easy for their owner to take over a couple of other papers, in preference to other people who wanted to do that. Party leaders who've refused to do what owners of popular newspapers have wanted have paid a price when they've got their papers to switch sides and start supporting the opposition party instead, to try to get them into power at the next election.
"Newspaper owners have even tried to influence other government policies, like there was one who tried to get John Major who was prime minister in the early 1990s to get Britain out of the European Union, and said that if he refused, his most popular paper would switch sides and start supporting Labour. He did refuse, and that's what the paper did. And then Labour won the next election. Mind you, it might not have been all to do with that.
"There are even allegations that the newspaper owner who did that managed to get one political party in Australia out of office by discrediting them in the press, because they wanted to put a lot of government money into providing fast broadband across the country, and he thought that would mean his television channel wouldn't get such high ratings, because people could stream films from websites a lot more quickly, that they could watch in preference to watching that. And newspaper owners are said to have been able to influence other government policies too, buy privately telling politicians their papers might turn against the government in power if they didn't do what they wanted.
"At least a lot of journalists in democracies are free to criticise governments though. In some countries, journalists, and opposition politicians themselves, can be imprisoned, so the opposition candidates can't stand for election, and the journalists can't give them publicity.
"Another thing governments in phony democracies like that can do is get a lot of polling cards made out for people who are actually dead, but are still on the electoral register, and then government officials can use them to vote for the government. It's easiest to engage in dodgy practices like that if they can get polling officers to side with them, or if they can intimidate them into keeping quiet about what's going on, if they know about it.
"And obvious opposition supporters can be intimidated into not voting.
"Other people can be intimidated into voting for the government at polling stations where the government have got the polling officers on side, and where they'll know if people do or don't vote for the government, because there can be a camera or gaps in the booth people go in to cast their ballots, so polling officers will be able to see who they vote for.
"And sometimes polling officers don't check the identities of everyone voting and cross them off a list, or whatever they're supposed to do, so some people can vote more than once.
"And people can be bribed to vote for the government, with the people who bribe them ordering them to pretend to be illiterate - which a lot of people in developing countries will be anyway - or blind, so they'll have to vote by voice, so the people bribing them will be able to hear who they're voting for, so they can check that they really are voting for them.
"And in opposition areas, people can be given pens to sign their ballots that actually contain disappearing ink, so they can vote, only for what they put on the ballot paper to disappear unbeknownst to them a few minutes later!
"And the government can arrange it so they confuse the voters by putting names on the ballot papers that are very similar to or the same as the opposition candidates who are standing, finding unknown people with those names and persuading them to stand somehow.
"And also, when the votes are being counted, a lot of opposition ballot papers can simply be discarded.
"And there are other techniques dictators can use. The ones they'll like best are the ones they can use before an election, before election observers are around who can object, such as manipulating constituency boundaries, which they can claim is perfectly reasonable.
"Election rigging means that governments that are treating their people badly, or living in luxury while a lot of their people are in grinding poverty, without good schools and healthcare services, can get away with it for years, because there won't be much or anything the people can do about it, because they won't be able to vote them out of office."
One student said, "It seems odd that people would have actually gone to war to try to win independence for their countries, as if they really really wanted their countries to become better places, but then when their countries became independent, they turned out not to care about most of the people in their countries at all, but wanted to make money, and stay in power no matter what the people wanted, even if it meant exploiting them. It makes you wonder why they wanted their countries to be independent! Maybe it was just because they themselves wanted the power and the top jobs, not because they really cared about other people. And maybe they joined the army fighting the colonial powers because the army paid good wages, and they really enjoyed fighting or something. Who knows!
"Well, maybe the motivations were different for different people. I hardly know anything about it really. But I think that when a lot of people hear about people fighting for the independence of their countries, they might automatically sympathise, and think they were trying to do good; but that just shows you it's not necessarily true!"
Another student said, "That reminds me of something I heard someone say about how she was shocked that doctors would work for the Nazis and do horrible things to people. She was obviously assuming that people must train to be doctors because they want to help people. But someone else seemed to think she was silly to be shocked, saying that people can become doctors for all kinds of reasons that have nothing to do with helping people, like because they'll make a lot of money and be looked up to."
One student sniggered and said, "I'm not saying I doubt that, but when you think it takes years of really hard work to get through medical school, you'd have thought anyone who had those motives would be able to think of easier, quicker ways of making money and getting to be looked up to, wouldn't you! ... Mind you, I can't seem to think of any at the moment.
"Then again, what about being a wasp hunter? Imagine if you set yourself up as a hero wasp eliminator, and went around the country wearing protective gear, deliberately seeking out wasps' nests, and other wasps going about their business, and capturing them, and then you invited people to shows where they could watch you destroy them all? Mind you, all the people who went to the shows would have to be pretty brave, in case the wasps escaped! And thinking about it, people like environmental health officers destroy wasps' nests already, probably without going around showing off about it! I suppose you must have to be brave to be one of those really, actually searching out wasps' nests, and families of rats, and bed bugs and things, so you can kill them.
"Maybe if someone told you they were a pest controller who went around killing rats, you might think, 'Yuck!' At least, you might if you were trying to eat your dinner at the time! But you wouldn't want this country to have to do without people like that, would you! Imagine if this country got so full of rats and wasps, no one ever dared go out of their front doors! We'd all starve to death. Then this country would maybe get to be called Ratland, and no one would ever dare come here, except daredevil tourists, who somehow liked the idea of travelling to places full of creatures that spread diseases and sting you and things!"
The student who'd been talking about corruption said, "Yeah. But when you think about it, a lot of countries are full of creatures that cause nasty diseases anyway, and people have to live in them whether they like it or not. One of my relatives seems to like adventurous holidays, for some reason, and she went to Peru not long ago, but she got amoebic dysentery, as well as altitude sickness after she climbed up a mountain, and maybe other things like salmonella; and she got bitten by flies or mosquitos as well! Maybe if she hadn't been treated in hospital, she would have died! She said she got to admire the people who have to live there, having their water and some of their food contaminated all the time with bacteria and whatever parasites cause some of those diseases, and having to put up with mosquitos and things!
"It's a shame people have to put up with things like that! I wonder if they've had governments in the past that could have done more about it but didn't, because they either didn't care, or they just somehow didn't know what to do about the problems. You'd have thought they could have called in people from other countries who knew how to get rid of problems like that if they didn't, even if it meant paying them for it in installments over years and years, wouldn't you! I don't know if South America's another place in the world where top jobs were given to people who just wanted to make money, instead of making their countries better, after they won independence from Spain, or Portugal in the case of Brazil. Mind you, a lot of politicians the world over might be mostly interested in themselves and their supporters making money, who knows!
"Anyway, I read that a lot of money that was given to the governments of developing countries in foreign aid, and that they got from taxes, and could have used to try to help bring people out of poverty, and give them a decent water and electricity supply, and improve health services and things for them, went towards the luxurious lifestyles of the ruling parties instead.
"And another way ordinary people suffer is by having to pay bribes to get a lot of the services they need, and being the victims of criminals who pay the police bribes to let them off without punishment, even when their crimes have been absolutely horrendous! And when a person goes to report a crime to the police, it seems they'll often be asked to pay a bribe if they want the police to actually do something about it.
"And people are asked to pay bribes if they want to get their children into decent schools, and if they want to be treated when they're ill, and in all kinds of situations like that.
"And then when new people are employed, if they know people who do jobs like theirs often ask for bribes, a lot of them will want to do it too, being glad of the opportunity; and that's especially true if their wages are low, so they have to make more money somehow if they want a decent standard of living.
"And one thing that stops businesses thriving that could provide jobs to lots of people and help them climb out of poverty is that if they have to pay bribes a lot, that'll eat into their possible profits, till it'll be less worthwhile even being in business. They might be asked to pay a bribe if they want a license from the government to export their products, or if they want one quickly instead of having to wait ages for one, and a bribe if they want a license to import products, and for all kinds of other things. And if they refuse to pay, their competitors who do will get business they could have had.
"And a lot of businesses never get to be set up and thrive, because governments can grant businesses run by their supporters the sole right to produce particular things in return for a share of the profits, making new regulations for the specific purpose of making it harder for other businesses to compete with the ones run by their supporters, for instance making it the law that they have to get licenses to trade, and then making it hard to get them, and so on. So any business that could do a better job of what the businesses run by government supporters do will find it hard to get up-and-running.
"So self-serving government policies can be a lot to do with what keeps a lot of people in a country poor. Obviously there might be a whole lot of other things going wrong too; but maybe things could be improved a lot more than they are if a new generation of people came to power who were somehow really skilled and dedicated to wiping out corruption!"
One student said, "I heard about a man in Mexico who did all sorts of things to try to start new businesses, thinking of all kinds of ways problems in the country could be solved, but he was never successful, so his family was always poor. One day he bought a big machine that could mend potholes in the roads, convinced that since there were so many, he'd be bound to get business. But year after year, the government refused to give him a licence and pay for him to do it. Eventually he asked them why, and he was told that he was stupid to even think he had a chance of being given a contract to do it, because the licences were always given to government supporters and relatives of city officials, and that it was in the interests of the government that potholes didn't get fixed, since then they could keep rewarding their supporters by paying them to supposedly do the work, knowing they wouldn't, so they could keep rewarding them by giving them licences and paying them to do work that they knew would never get done year after year."
The students thought that was bad.
Then one said, "I actually heard that there is a country where some pretty drastic things were done to get rid of corruption. I think there still is some corruption there, but it's nowhere near as bad as it used to be! Well, that was last time I heard, anyway. I suppose it could come back a bit, and I've heard that some politicians who come to power promising to wipe out corruption end up corrupt themselves! But some pretty impressive things were done to eliminate it!
"It happened in Georgia, one of the countries that used to be part of the Soviet Union. A government came to power that was voted in by over 95 % of the electorate, apparently! So they had a lot of support to do it. For some time before that, Georgia was thought of as one of the most corrupt countries in the whole world! It was really common to have to pay bribes for things, and a lot of people in positions of power would take advantage of the system to make people pay them. For instance, traffic police would pull drivers over and accuse them of some offence they might not even have committed, and they'd have to pay to prevent themselves from getting into trouble for it. But some rich people who could easily afford to pay thought they could happily commit traffic offences, and just get away with paying an amount it wouldn't be any problem for them to lose when the police stopped them.
"The problem was partly caused because wages were so low that people like the police actually needed bribes if they were going to make a decent living! The government actually wanted them to get most of their pay from bribes, so they wouldn't have to pay them anything much. According to what I've heard, the government refused to give them money for their police cars or to power their cars, saying they had to get it from bribe money! And the police had to pass some of it on to the government themselves. Apparently, it really was that bad! And they were corrupt in other ways, like sometimes they'd beat people up or blackmail them to get confessions, and that kind of thing, so innocent people could confess to crimes while the guilty went free.
"The new government wanted to change things. First they paid the police more; but they still wanted to take bribes. So then they sacked the entire traffic police force, about thirty thousand members, and recruited a new one! The new police were trained by experts from America, and they were paid a much higher salary than the police had been paid before, so they wouldn't have to ask for bribes.
"Another thing the new government did was reform the education system, since it was difficult for bright students to get a good university education and go on to use their skills to help the country, since students' parents would be expected to pay big bribes if they wanted their children to be admitted to university and get good grades, and students who didn't deserve them could get them for bribes. So people from poor families couldn't get qualified, while even people who didn't have any talent for the subjects they supposedly went to university to study could come out with really good grades. And a lot of the lecturers weren't very good at teaching, so any students who actually wanted to learn would find it hard. That made a real difference when it came to the most important subjects, like medical training!
"There were so-called universities that students who didn't come from such wealthy backgrounds could go to, but a lot of them weren't very good at all.
"It wasn't really any wonder the professors wanted bribes, since when there was a recession in the early 1990s, their salaries fell so much that a lot of them were only half of what people really needed to have a decent living standard. But there were some who made loads of bribe money! And a lot of them got their jobs in the first place not because they were any good at teaching, but because they were relatives of people already there, or they themselves paid bribes to be given jobs!
"The new government actually sacked the entire education ministry, and got new people in. Then I think they sacked all the professors in the top universities, and made them apply for their jobs back if they wanted them, and only ones who'd actually been good at their jobs were given their jobs back. Other ones were pensioned off on full pay for five years, which meant they didn't kick up too much fuss about being sacked. The government increased the pay of the ones they employed again, so they wouldn't feel the need to ask for bribes any more. And a lot of new better ones were employed as well.
"And they gave training licenses to the better universities, and refused to give them to the private universities that weren't much good.
"They got help from international consultants and the World Bank to create a far better entrance exam system, and took responsibility for admitting students to university away from the universities themselves, and gave it to an independent body.
"There were quite a lot of protests from former lecturers and students who were no longer considered to be good enough for university, or were having their courses disrupted while all that was going on; but the government stuck to their plans. It's possible they wouldn't have been able to get the reforms through if it hadn't been for the fact that the vast majority of people supported them.
"The entrance exams were done under strict security, and marked anonymously, to prevent people's papers being tampered with or the grades being biased in favour of students whose parents were willing to pay bribes, and also so the public would be sure that wasn't happening.
"I don't think the new system worked perfectly, but it was a lot better than nothing. And the whole thing just shows that ways can probably be found of getting rid of corruption in other parts of the world too."
One student said, "It would be nice if there was. But a lot of dictators really wouldn't want to get rid of it, so it would be difficult. I remember reading quite a lot about dictators, and how it actually benefits them to keep their countries poor!
"It turns out that it's not actually in a dictator's interests to do a lot for the welfare of the people they're governing, if they're fond of power, because if they do, it means they'll have less money to give their supporters who are helping to keep them in power, like their military leaders who could get the army to put down uprisings for them, and so on. Dictators stay in power by giving them gifts and doing them favours. They know that if they haven't got the money to do so much of that, their supporters might turn against them and start supporting other people who might overthrow them and give them more gifts and favours than they themselves can.
"So as strange as it sounds, the more they spend on public welfare, the more they can be concerned about being overthrown, because that's money their supporters will know could have been spent on them. So helping to keep them in power will seem less worthwhile than it will if they're the ones getting the money.
"Dictators often don't have to worry that the common people will rise up and overthrow them, because if a lot of those can't read very well, so they haven't got so much chance of finding out about how much of their hardship in life has to do with the policies of the dictators, or how much luxury the government leaders live in compared to them, and how things could be different, or who's got a chance of successfully opposing them if enough people support them, and if they haven't got the time and energy and skills to do anything very significant for any opposition anyway, because they have to work hard all the hours they can just to make enough money to live on, or they're too poor to even be able to buy enough food for their families to eat enough, they're not going to have the time, energy or knowledge to take part in organising a rebellion.
"It's actually in the interests of dictators to keep most of the people in their countries really poor and uneducated, too illiterate to be able to read much about what's really going on, such as that they could have better healthcare if their leaders were willing to spend more money on it instead of on luxuries for themselves and their supporters, and so poor they have to spend all the hours they can working, because then they'll be less likely to rise up and overthrow them.
"Another thing that deters people from trying to overthrow a dictator is that dictators can recruit lots of people around the country as spies and informers, or at least start rumours that they have, so a lot of people are going to be too scared to try to find people to plot to overthrow them with, or even to speak out against the government, in case they're found out and taken away and tortured or killed. People can praise their leaders enthusiastically so they're not suspected of disliking them.
"And one reason dictators like to employ thugs to torture people who protest against the government is that they actually want word of any horrible torture to get out, to scare other people off opposing them.
"Dictators can do good things for their people too, but often not for good reasons. Even the nastiest of tyrants does need to finance a basic level of education and healthcare, so the people are at least fit enough to work and pay taxes he and his supporters can benefit from, unless his country has a source of wealth like oil that he can make money from, employing companies from outside the country to extract it, and to employ troops to keep locals who might disrupt the work away. So it can be that as a ruler gets richer from things like oil extraction, the ordinary people can suffer more, because he doesn't need to provide services to keep them fit enough to work so he can make money from taxing them.
"A lot of those countries are very rich in minerals, like oil or diamonds or gold or other things like copper, which could make those countries a lot of money that could provide good education and health services and other things that would help the public; but dictators like to use it to live luxurious lifestyles and reward their supporters so they'll continue to help keep them in power instead.
"And then because they don't need taxes so much, they can feel free not to invest in projects that would help people make a living, like having good roads built that would help farmers bring what they produce to big markets where they could sell a lot of it, and so on.
"Civil war can sometimes be caused by bands of rebels rising up to try and get more of the money that's made by exporting precious minerals for themselves. I heard that the West banned imports of diamonds from one African country, because a lot of suffering was being caused to civilians by armed groups fighting over them; but they got around the ban by selling them to another African country instead that then exported them from there."
One student said, "That must be the kind of thing people mean when they talk about the 'resources curse' - like when they say it can cause problems when developing countries find they have a lot of minerals they could get rich by selling.
"I was on a forum where a man started this thread asking if he should get his girlfriend an expensive ring when they got engaged, and it turned into this big argument where someone was insisting it would be immoral of him to get her a diamond ring, because it might be a 'blood diamond', - one from a country where they're fought over, - and he was saying it wouldn't necessarily be, and that he wanted to get her what he felt like getting."
One of the group said, "You know, listening to all this depressing stuff is thirsty work! I think I'll just go and get another drink."
Several of them did the same.
When they got back, the mood had shifted a bit and become more light-hearted, and one of them said, "I was on a forum where I used to have a laugh, but then the moderators decided to suddenly get a lot more strict, for some reason, and they gave me infractions for just little things. Thankfully it didn't last. But I got fed up when it happened, and started a protest thread saying I was going to leave, that got a bit argumentative.
"Someone there mocked me, calling what I'd said a 'teary goodbye'. I joked, 'You thought that was a "teary" goodbye, did you? No, it was actually a declaration of war. If you can't tell the difference between an outburst of crying and a declaration of war, imagine what a dangerous person you'd have been to have in Hitler's government! Oh, if only you'd been there, their communications officer, relaying news to them. Perhaps you would have mistaken Britain's declaration of war on Germany for a teary goodbye, and the German war preparations would have gone more slowly, allowing the allies to have a head start! Oh, the woes of what might have been!'
"Someone else on there accused me of whining, saying there was only one person worth listening to there, almost certainly meaning himself; and someone else who calls herself Ladybird there joked, 'I think it's pretty stupid to whine about whining actually. A bit of a pointless posting if you don't mind me saying. I can finish your post for you.......the only one worth listening to here is Ladybird and you'd better believe it.'
"The title of my goodbye thread was, 'Bye everyone. I think it's time for me to get out of here.' The man who described it as a 'teary goodbye' quoted that and said, 'You said it all.'
"I joked, 'I thought you were the one who just said it. Are you me then? That's funny, I thought I was me. Maybe both of us are.
"'Hang on, didn't people once think you were another person on the board? Maybe you're him as well as me. I'm sure I know of a juicy thread where you were arguing with him/yourself about something like that. Want me to find and post the link?'
"Another thing that man said was, 'You sure take a long time with your exit. Dont let the door hit you on your way out.'
"That was pretty much the same as something the man who accused me of whining, who I'll call Insult Burper, said. So I joked, 'Insult Burper said that. Hang on, I've got it! There was me thinking you're me, when all along, you're Insult Burper! You said pretty much what he said, so that just must mean you're him, mustn't it!'
"A bit later on, one man there said he reckoned I was the sort to want to sweet talk my way out of getting a ticket from a cop. I joked, 'I don't even have to try. People just look at my beautiful golden curls and instantly let me get away with whatever I want ... whether that be stealing all the possessions out of their house, vandalising the telephone boxes, reading people's private emails, and all kinds of things. No one ever objects.'
"Someone else there joked that I was a dominatrix, because of the way I argued with him; and a moderator there joked that he wouldn't fancy being with me, because I'd probably hit him with a baseball bat if he didn't do what I wanted. I asked him for fun whether he'd prefer to just fantasise about that happening rather than having me doing it for real; and he said he'd prefer to fantasise about it not happening.
"I asked for fun if that was a metaphor for him wanting to fantasise about me not posting things on the board, since the dominatrix joke came about because of the way I argued there. I said, 'Are you suggesting my posts are so mightily devastating in their effect that reading one of them is like being hit by a baseball bat? Is that because they're so powerful, or because you're so frail? If it's the former, then what a pity I'm not in government. To think that with just one powerful speech criticising criminals, I could incapacitate them all, provided I first came up with an ingenious way of ensuring they all heard it!'
"Hey, imagine if it was actually possible to get rid of dictators that way!"
The students grinned and thought that would be good.
Then the one who'd been talking about dictators before turned the conversation serious again, saying, "Remember I was saying a lot of dictators don't care about their people living in poverty? I read that the only thing that tends to encourage them to make it easier for the people they rule to make money is if they begin to run out of money themselves, so they have to make it easier for a lot more of the ordinary people to make more, so they can tax them, although not so highly that they give up bothering to work because it isn't worth it.
"It's been argued that forgiving developing countries their debts can actually be a bad idea, because dictators are most likely to make their governments more democratic if they're finding it hard to find the money to pay their supporters, so changing the system to one where they don't have to rely on a small group of bully-boys demanding payment to keep them in power starts to seem more attractive, even if it does mean they risk being voted out of office. Forgiving debt relieves the pressure on them, because they can spend more of the country's money paying them. And it makes it easier for them to borrow lots of money again, because other countries won't be put off lending to them so much if they haven't already got huge debts that they haven't paid.
"And helping them out with foreign aid helps keep them in power too, because they'll have more money to pay their supporters, both because of any money they can get by siphoning off aid to use for themselves, and because they won't be under pressure to spend so much of the country's money on things like basic health services if outsiders are paying for them, so they can keep more of it. And it means they don't have to rely on taxes so much for their money, so they can do things like shut down the Internet more often to stop people organising protests against them, knowing that if it stops a lot of them working because they rely on the Internet to do part of their work, it might well make them poorer, but the leaders at least will benefit by depriving them of it.
"The most successful aid programmes in African countries have been carried out by outside organisations that have vaccinated people and provided primary school education, and things like that. But it's possible, according to what I read, that those things would have been provided by the governments of those countries if the outside organisations hadn't done it, because it's useful to them to have a population that's fit enough to work and pay taxes; and when aid agencies do it for them, it means dictators get to spend the money they might otherwise have spent on getting things like that done on themselves and rewards for their backers, which helps to keep them in power.
"It's a dilemma though, since if aid agencies didn't step in, and those governments didn't help their people much, there might be a lot more suffering in those countries than there is now. Withdrawing all aid might possibly mean those governments would be more likely to be overthrown in the end; but then, there's no guarantee that the ones that replaced them would be any better, and they might be worse; and if those governments still didn't help their people, they'd just end up suffering more.
"I think aid agencies have been successful in preventing famine in some countries for years, and they've prevented a lot of disease by vaccinating people. So who knows, if those countries stopped receiving any international aid, maybe millions more people would die there than do nowadays, and maybe a lot more would try migrating to Western countries to escape all the hardship in their own countries.
"But what I read claims that aid agencies find it far harder to set up sophisticated universities in those countries than primary schools, I think because they're often not allowed to, because the tyrants don't want people going to places where they learn enough and learn to think deeply enough to start spreading ideas about organising a sophisticated opposition or deposing them.
"And apparently there's another question about how effective aid agencies really are, because, according to what I read anyway, they measure how effective they are by how many people they've reached, but that can give them an incentive to work with people in areas where lots of people live, so there are more people around to help, but it means they might not take so much trouble to help people in less populated areas that are harder to reach, who might possibly be in more need. I'm sure they have done a lot of valuable work though.
"Aid agencies often carry out aid projects themselves or provide funding for local organisations that's earmarked for specific schemes; but tyrants still manage to siphon a lot of it off to make money for themselves and their backers, one way or another.
"And there are downsides to outsiders bringing in their own people to do the work instead of employing locals. One is that a lot of the aid goes on things like their salaries, which are a lot higher than the ones in the areas the aid agencies are working in, especially when they're more expensive than they would be otherwise because they include danger money and hardship pay - a compensation for working in places that aren't safe, and where they have to live with hardships like no running water, and no proper roads to make travelling between areas that need help easy, and other things like that. And another cost can be the workers' accommodation in local hotels, when locals doing the work would be living in their own homes. And they have to spend some of the aid money on renting cars, and buying food and so on, plus flying in their workers from other countries.
"But then, outsiders will often have more expertise in various things than locals, such as high-grade medical treatment, although it does seem from what I've read that there are times when local people with skills that could be used are ignored in favour of expensively bringing in people from outside.
"But aid agencies must do a lot of people a lot of good that wouldn't get done if they just left the governments of the countries where they work to it. It's complicated.
"I'm not sure how true it is, but I read an allegation that a lot of foreign aid has actually been bribery for favours to the countries giving it, so the governments that have given it haven't minded it being siphoned off to help finance the luxurious lifestyles of the people in power, such as in the late 1970s, when America wanted peace between Israel and Egypt, which had been hostile to Israel ever since it was created in 1948 after the Second World War, when it was thought that Jews really needed a country of their own. Israel and Egypt had fought a few little wars. America actually wanted peace in the Middle East in those days, it seems, perhaps because they didn't want any disruption to the flow of oil to them from the Middle East, because there had already been problems that had put the price of it up a lot, so loads of things had got more expensive, and that was causing difficulties.
"Egypt and other Arab countries didn't even recognise Israel as a real country with a right to exist in those days, because Israel had taken over land that had belonged to Arabs before. It seems that America offered Egypt a lot of money to make peace with Israel, and they did. America had to pay a lot of money because making peace and recognising Israel's right to exist was very unpopular with the people of Egypt, where there was still a lot of hostility to Israel. So the Egyptian government said it would take a lot to make them do it.
"But then the story goes that there's still a whole lot of hostility to Israel among the people of Egypt, and the government there thinks it's to their advantage not to try to change that, because it means that in future if America wants them to do something that's against their people's wishes, they can say it'll take a lot of money to persuade them to do it because it would be so unpopular. I can't guarantee that that's true; but that's what I read.
"So that kind of thing might be going on in a lot of other places too. And it's a possible incentive for America to support dictators in power, because giving democracies incentives to do things that are unpopular in their countries will likely cost a lot more money than paying dictators will, because the democratic governments can argue that because there would be so many people to please in compensation for accepting something they don't like, if they've got a hope of stopping them voting them out of power, they'll need a lot more money so they can do it.
"And governments in those places can actually like it when their people protest against them for bringing in unpopular policies that America wants them to bring in, because they can point out to the American government that the protests prove just how unpopular those policies are and that bringing them in will cause trouble, to try to persuade them to give them even more money for bringing them in.
"In the same place where I've been reading about things like this, I read that another example of aid for favours is in Pakistan, where America didn't like how much influence the Taliban were getting in the country, so they increased aid to Pakistan in return for them fighting to get rid of them. It seems that the aid didn't go to help poor people, but was used to make some people in the government rich. But according to what I read, the American government weren't that concerned about that, because the aid was just the price for trying to get rid of the Taliban so they wouldn't be so effective at crossing the border into Afghanistan and attacking American troops there.
"They lowered aid when they thought they'd pretty much defeated the Taliban in Afghanistan. But then the Taliban in Pakistan became stronger, with quite a bit of support from lots of people there, apparently, including some in the government. The government thought they'd be opposed from inside Pakistan if they tried to get rid of them, but pressured by America if they didn't. So they demanded more aid from America in return for dealing with them, and when America refused, they supported the Taliban instead, and only when America finally did increase aid did they try to get rid of them. They didn't go all out to get rid of them though, and according to what I read, that was likely because they knew America wouldn't feel the need to give them so much aid any more if they got rid of them, because the problem they were giving them aid to fix would have gone away. So America started targeting the Taliban there themselves with drone strikes.
"Other countries often give aid in return for favours too, such as favourable trading conditions, like that the countries receiving the aid use some of it to buy a lot of things that the countries giving the aid manufacture, which will mean they'll later have to buy spare parts for them from them as well when the things start wearing out. Or countries giving aid can set up factories there which provide jobs, but also pay low wages, and produce things that can be sold for profit by businesses in the countries giving the aid.
"So it seems there's a whole network of people using each other, sometimes with tyrannical or other corrupt regimes dictating how much aid they get from democratic countries to some extent, and sometimes with democratic countries imposing their terms on them in a way that benefits their own countries. I'm not saying all foreign aid's like that. A lot of it might just be well-intentioned, with no strings attached, and might benefit people a lot.
"But according to what I read, aid hasn't done that much to get rid of poverty. Some countries are poorer than they used to be before they became independent from European powers. Mind you, I'm pretty sure that doesn't apply to all of them. I read about a study that found that the poorest countries have benefited from foreign aid, but middle-income countries would benefit most if rather than being given aid, it was made easier for them to trade with richer countries, like if rich countries reduced import taxes on their goods so they could sell more to them because their products would be more attractive to people in rich countries because they'd be cheaper."
One of the students said, "I heard that wealth is increasing in some parts of Africa. I even heard that obesity rates are rising, along with diseases related to obesity like heart disease. Hopefully that's not an unintended consequence of foreign aid. Well really, there might be all kinds of reasons for it. But it does give the impression that at least part of the population of Africa's getting rich enough to afford more food than they used to have, although they might sometimes be eating a lot more unhealthy food. Still, I'm pretty sure obesity rates there aren't anywhere near what they are here."
The student who'd been telling the others before about the teasing matches she'd had with a man from Sri Lanka on an Internet forum whose username was Chess Master turned the conversation zany by saying, "You know I was telling you earlier about the playful insult matches I used to have on a forum with a man who called himself Chess Master, where I call myself Carrot Top? He used to joke about obesity being a British thing. There was one day when I joked that he ought to set up a quality control department to inspect his insults and make sure only high-quality ones came out. And I joked, 'I submitted most of your jokes to the United Nations diplomatic corps. I think I must have been talking to a junior member, because he said they were just about passable. They're monitoring you now though.'
"There was a man on the board who neither of us liked, who I'll call Creepy Muppet. Chess Master often made typos, and one day he said, 'This keyboard is trying my patience to the limit! I think I'll nickname it "Creepy Muppet".
"Around that time, I said I might leave the forum. Chess Master said he might as well leave too in that case.
"The next day, I joked, 'Chess Master hinted yesterday that he was going to retreat from the board. That's a shame. I can only conclude he must be the victim of a horridly successful dastardly scheme by the Muppet to chase him from the forum. Come back Chess Master; don't let him win!'
"Then I said, 'If I knew how to play the violin, I'd compose a sad lament for him: How Have the Mighty Fallen at the Hand of the Muppet. But here's some sad and solemn music, that can be a requiem for his departure.'
"I linked to a bouncy happy song on YouTube.
"Chess Master said, 'What? Chess Master's departed? And to think that, all this time, I thought I was Chess Master! Well, well, goes to show how deceiving impressions can be! Of course, it's just possible I was Carrot Top all this time, and that I was giving my own self a verbal mince-meating. It would be out of sheer patriotism of course, in honour of that Brit Custom you see during the football world cup, in which they give their opponents a kindly smile and go, "That's allright, mates. You can have the victory. We turn the other cheek!" Amazing generosity - an epitome of the Brit citizen ... we should all try to learn from you all. What say you, Carrot Top?'
"I thought the thing he said about a 'verbal mince meating' referred to the supposed power of his insults, and I joked, 'Verbal mince meating? Is that the way you're describing your insults? Have you gone to sleep at the computer and started day-dreaming of heights of glory you will never attain?'
"He said, 'Ah, but it isn't a bad thing to dream, Carrot Top! Ask Bill Gates. Or Warren Buffett. They'll all tell you that to achieve anything, you need to dream ... unless, of course, you happen to belong to a class called "Male Brit parliamentarians who dream of becoming a finalist in Miss Universe". It wouldn't work for them, of course. After all, their massive girth alone would give them away as pure-blooded Brits!'
"I joked, 'Their massive girth will come in handy when it comes to taking over Sri Lanka. All they'll have to do is parachute in, and they'll squash the opposition flat in an instant. Sri Lanka will be ours!'
"Chess Master said, 'I know, its pleasant to dream of things like that, of a sultry summer evening, with the scent of daffodils in the air, is it not? and no, when I spoke of scents of daffodils, I was referring to the real thing, not to Tony Blair's aftershave.'
"I teased him, saying, 'Do they have daffodils in summer in Sri Lanka? We only get them in spring. Do they have other anomalies in Sri Lanka, like the leaves falling in spring and the grass growing down from the sky instead of up from earth?'
"Chess Master said, 'There's supposed to be just one anomaly, actually. It's known in private circles as "the Brit ambassador to Sri Lanka", though no one knows if this strange and wonderful freak of nature is myth or fact!'
"I made an even more politically incorrect joke, which maybe I should be ashamed to admit to, but his were just as bad. I said, 'Is it true that people in Sri Lanka all have daisies growing out of their heads instead of hair? They're like that from birth? Also what's this strange thing I hear about how in Sri Lanka, the sun comes out at night and it's dark during the day, so everyone has to go about their business in pitch blackness?'
"He said, 'That's true. Some of them come out of the womb with a full beard, Armani suits, and very bad cockney accents! In fact, last week, there was this baby who was born deformed, missing an arm. He complained to the nurse that he'd lost it in a scuffle with an SAS soldier who'd been hiding inside his mum's womb!'
"One day Chess Master said something about picking on me, and I said I'd be happy for him to do that some more, since then I'd have a good excuse to pick on him. He asked me if I'd even like to fantasise about him 'orturing' me. I think that was a typo.
"Someone else there joked, 'What does it mean to be "ortured"? Is that like torturing a person by not giving them any tea?'
"Chess Master said, 'that's exactly what I meant. For Carrot Top, being a Brit, having to go without tea would be one of her foremost methods of self-inflicted torture.'"
The students chuckled. But then the conversation began to get serious again, as one mused sadly, "It would be nice if instead of doing cruel things, anyone who felt like doing them would just confine themselves to insulting each other like that on Internet forums, ... or just depriving people of tea."
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