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.)
Then the student who'd been talking about dictators said, "Are you interested in hearing me talk more about dictatorships, or are you all a bit worried that if I carry on, you'll all want to resort to binge drinking afterwards to get over the depression it causes?"
They smiled. Some shrugged. One said, "Actually, it's quite interesting, despite being depressing."
So the student carried on, saying, "Another thing is that revolutions are more likely to happen in countries where it's thought that the dictator in power isn't cruel enough to really do serious harm to a lot of the people who rise up in protest against the government; if people think a lot of them are almost certain to be killed or tortured, they likely won't risk it. So the cruellest regimes are likely to often be the ones least likely to be overthrown by revolution.
"And even when revolutions succeed, the leading revolutionaries often become dictators themselves, sometimes worse than the governments they overthrew. It seems it must have been their own well-being they cared about when they fought for things to change, not everybody's.
"And there've been some peaceful revolutions recently, where some countries deposed old dictators after the collapse of communism; but they were allowed to take place because the armies there weren't confident of being paid by the old dictators any more, because they weren't being supported by Russia any more; and other backers of the regimes weren't sure they'd continue to have the power they had before; so they allowed the revolutions to happen. And they only took place because the people were a lot more optimistic that they'd succeed than they were when their governments were strong, partly because they saw successful revolutions happening in similar countries, so they thought they might succeed in theirs.
"What I read said that when people protest, leaders are more likely to give them some of what they want, such as changes to unpopular policies, if they need the people, such as if their money mostly comes from taxing them, than they will if they're getting their money from foreign aid, or from oil or other things their countries are rich in, where they're sharing with a minority of the people in massive profits, so they're less concerned about whether most of their people find work they can tax or not.
"Maybe one reason a lot of dictators don't make policies introducing welfare benefits in their countries is because they want as many people to work as absolutely possible so they'll get as much tax as possible. I don't know. But another reason will be because they want to keep as much of the money the country makes as they can for themselves and their backers.
"Cruel dictators don't like people gathering in refugee camps after natural disasters like cyclones or earthquakes have destroyed their homes, because they know that where loads of people are gathered together, it's going to be easier to organise rebellion against them than it is if people don't normally speak to all that many other people in their communities for long.
"There was a massive natural disaster caused by a cyclone in one dictatorship I read about, where hundreds of thousands of people are thought to have died, and lots of others congregated in places like schools after their homes had been destroyed; but their government refused to allow outsiders to organise disaster relief efforts, saying that if anyone cared, they should just give cash to the government. And they forced everyone who had gathered together to go back to their homes, even though a lot of homes had been destroyed, and it was hard to get food or water there. Starving people were told to just go back and work hard, and eat frogs if they needed food. It seems the government thought that if they died, it would be to the government's advantage, since they wouldn't be able to protest about the government not doing much to help them recover from the disaster, or about not having good enough building regulations to have prevented their homes from being destroyed in the first place.
"The military sold the bit of food aid that was actually allowed into the country on the black market, and made money for themselves.
"In democratic countries, it's far more likely that homes will be built in the first place that are strong enough to withstand things like earthquakes and severe storms, at least partly because the leaders will have to make laws that protect the people, like regulations about how earthquake-proof houses have to be, if they don't want to risk being thrown out of power at the election after an earthquake by masses of angry voters who think they've let them down.
"There are circumstances where living in one of the few benevolent dictatorships could be better for you than living in a democracy, such as where they could introduce policies that would be unpopular with a lot of people, while doing a lot of downtrodden people a lot of good, such as in India, where if it was a fairly benevolent dictatorship, the government could abolish the caste system, where people born into a low caste, or believed to have been born into a class of people not even considered worthy of being in a caste, like a lot of people are under the system today, aren't allowed to get good careers. Mind you, perhaps they'd still have to be quite ruthless, if they were going to effectively put down all the protests they'd get from crowds of people in higher castes who thought their jobs would be under threat, and didn't like the fact that there wouldn't be so many people around to do the dirty jobs people who weren't thought to be worthy of being in a caste had to do before.
"I don't know much about this stuff, so I don't know how right I am. It's just what I've read, and what I've thought about it."
One of the students said, "What makes tyrants think they've got the right to rule over their countries and treat their people badly? Do you think they like playing God or something? Not that God's supposed to be like that, at least according to the Bible. Then again, maybe some Greek gods were; and some Hindu gods are. Imagine someone saying to a dictator, 'It's as if you think you've got the right to play God! But don't you realise God's supposed to be a God of Love?' And the dictator says, 'Not me; I'm Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction!'"
The students grinned. Then the one who'd been talking before about the banter she'd had on an Internet forum with a man with the username Chess Master, and sometimes his friend Memnon who liked to pretend to be an ancient Greek army commander, said,
"On this forum where I used to chat to Chess Master and his friend Memnon, who pretended to be an army commander of ancient Greeks, there were some people they really didn't like. One had the username Physics Nerd, and another one called himself Snowman. You'll find out why this is relevant in a minute.
"Memnon had named himself after an army commander who in Greek mythology was half-god, half-man, a being whose mother was a goddess and whose father was a king of Troy.
"One day I joked, 'Hey Memnon, I heard that a few thousand years ago, you were so proud of your achievements that you thought you should be recognised as a Greek God. So you went up to where all the other gods were having a conference and tried to join them. But they were outraged that you should dare to think of yourself as a god, thinking you were far too lowly a being, and they hurled you from the meeting, and you fell several thousand feet back to earth. The only reason you survived was because Physics Nerd quickly put a safety net out to catch you. I heard you're still angry about that to this day, so you fly into a rage at the mere mention of one of their names. Do you still think you should be numbered among the Greek Gods?'
"Chess Master said, 'Hello? Of course Memnon can fly; he's a relative of Zeus! And he didn't fly into a rage, he flew into a cage. You see, he regularly patrols this cage, inside which lives Zeus's pet three-headed dog, Snowman.'
"Then I said, 'What's the real story about the other thing I've heard about Memnon and the gods? I heard that he once decided to impersonate Zeus, because he wanted more glory. So he went into a temple of Zeus, and everyone thought he really was him and started sacrificing offerings to him and mobbing him, throwing flowers at him and worshiping him.
"'Then the real Zeus came down. He was very angry with Memnon, and tried chasing him from the temple. But all the people thought the real Zeus must be an impostor, and started stoning him and chasing him away! Eventually another god came down, picked Memnon up by the scruff of the neck, and flew with him to a distant island where he dropped him and sternly told him to make his own way home.
"'Zeus came to see Memnon, and told him he was going to be punished after he died, by being sent to the nastiest bit of the underworld and being made to do the most unpleasant work. So Memnon became afraid to die, and invented a potion that would keep him alive. It's enabled him to live for thousands of years. But he lives in mortal terror that one day it'll run out and he won't be able to get any more, and that then he'll die and have to undergo the horrible punishment Zeus warned him about. Poor Memnon. Is that true?'
"Memnon said it was rubbish, since after all, the god of the underworld was his patron and gave him assistance, so there was no way he'd punish him when he ended up there."
The students grinned, and one of them said, "It would be good if we had superpowers that enabled us to instantly transport anyone who was causing problems in the world down to the underworld, like by just clicking our fingers and saying a word."
Another one said, "It might not work out quite the way you wanted it to though. If you did that to all the tyrants in the world, the places might be left without rulers for a while, and then wars might get started between different factions that wanted to take over themselves. Mind you, I suppose you could instantly transport all the people involved in those to the underworld too."
The one who'd been telling the others about dictators said, "It's a pity we can't do that. Anyway, if you like, I'll tell you the last of what I read about dictators."
The others agreed to that. So the student said, 'I think I mentioned before that tyrants have a bit of a dilemma, because allowing people to have access to things like phones and email can make it easier for them to organise protests, but at the same time, it makes it easier for them to do some kinds of work, which the tyrants can tax them on. And good roads and other transport systems make it easier for people to make money they can be taxed on, since they can much more easily take goods they produce to places where they can sell them; but at the same time, they make it easier for people to travel to meet with other people they can join in protests with, and for people to come and inform them about them so they can join them. It seems a lot of countries in Africa don't have many proper roads and transport systems; and that might well be one reason why.
"There are a few dictatorships that have become democracies under the same governments that used to be dictatorships; but that tends to happen when they need the support of more people to keep them in power, because they're running out of money to pay their backers. Then they have to make it easier for the people to work efficiently, like by increasing access to phones and the Internet and good transport, so they can tax them more, to get more money. But since those things make it easier for people to organise and go to protests, and since the dictators' armies are less likely to put protests down if they're not being paid well, the dictators can give the people more of what they want, to make it more likely they'll support them.
"But like I said, a lot of tyrannical regimes are prevented from running out of money by gifts of foreign aid, and forgiveness of the debts they've built up, which is often called for by well-meaning people in developed countries, who think it'll rid developing countries of a burden that's preventing them from spending money on developing their countries. They seem to assume that's what their governments would spend it on if they weren't having to spend it on repaying money they've borrowed and interest on the loans.
"I did read that there was an international scheme to forgive debts in return for dictators introducing policies that would benefit their people though. I'm not sure how well it worked.
"What I read said that one of the times when dictators are most at risk from being deposed is in their first couple of years in power, since then they won't have had much time to build up their backers' confidence that they'll pay them enough for backing them to mean it's in their interests to. So dictators can seem to be introducing more democratic reforms when they first come to power, which a lot of people think means they're enlightened and care about their people, when it really means they're hedging their bets, wanting the ordinary people to support them if their backers look as if they might not.
"At times like that, it might be possible for democratic countries to stop those dictators becoming more tyrannical if they dictate that continued economic help is dependent on the leaders not reversing the reforms they've made that have made life better for their people.
"I suppose that from what I've said, it might seem that cutting off aid to a dictator and not forgiving their debts will make it more likely that they'll be overthrown, because they might start running out of money to reward their backers for loyalty; but it seems to me that the trouble with that idea is that that doesn't necessarily guarantee that the dictatorship will be replaced by a democracy; what if it's replaced by an even worse dictatorship, like if a rich businessman really likes the idea of power, and tells the dictator's backers that he could give them more rewards for backing him, and when they do, and depose the old dictator, the new one's even worse? And in the meantime, a lot of ordinary people might suffer because they're not being helped by foreign aid.
"But I think I've said a few times that giving foreign aid to the countries of dictators actually helps keep them in power, because it reduces the risk even further that people will rise up against them, because it can increase their quality of life, and it means the dictators have more money to give their cronies, either because they take a lot of the aid themselves, or because they don't have to feel so pressured to spend any other money they have access to on increasing the well-being of people in their countries, because outsiders are doing it, so they can spend more of the money they do have giving gifts to their most influential supporters to increase their loyalty.
"in democratic countries, politicians can't get away with giving a lot of the money they get in taxes to supporters, because they know that if they do such things as making too many cutbacks to the health service and welfare schemes so they can do that, it'll increase the chances of them being voted out of office.
"Dictators haven't really got much incentive to change their dictatorships into real democracies if they really value their power, because they know it'll increase the risk that they're voted out of office.
"Not all dictatorships are alike though. One reason for that is that in ones where the dictator only needs to rely on a small number of people to stay in power, and yet there are lots of people he could replace the ones he has with if he wants to, he doesn't have to pay the people who help keep him in power as much money to support him, because they'll know they have to stay on his good side if they don't want to be replaced, so they can't be too demanding.
"But in a dictatorship where there aren't many people who could easily replace the people who help keep the dictator in power, they can demand more and more expensive things, no matter how much the ordinary people are having to go without things that would actually give them a good quality of life, because the dictator has to rely on them more, so he knows he'll have to give in to them if he wants them to keep supporting him instead of finding someone else to support, and trying to overthrow him. He'll know that if he launches big public programmes to help the people of his country, like a health service and good schools, and spends a lot of money on them, there'll be less money for the people who help to keep him in power, so they'll be more likely to try to overthrow him, if they think they can get a better deal from someone else.
"So dictatorships whose supporters can easily be replaced have more leeway to be benevolent dictatorships where a lot more can be done to help the public. How many of them really are better is a different matter! And in democracies, where politicians have to rely on lots of voters for support, more is often likely to get done to help the public, because the leaders need their support.
"But they can still manipulate things so they can stay in power while they're being corrupt, like by lying about how much they've achieved, or could achieve if they had more time in office.
"I think I might have already mentioned that in a lot of dictatorships, some efforts are made to provide some level of primary school education, but there aren't many universities, or even secondary schools, and one reason for that seems to be that highly educated people are more likely to spread information that opposes the government, or to be able to develop the skills to learn about some, or to be taught about some in classes, than people who've just got a bit of education. So it doesn't matter that universities could turn out talented people who could make the country a better place; what seems to matter to the tyrants is that they do everything they can to stay in power.
"And if a dictator knows he hasn't got the skills to govern the country well, it's actually in his interests to appoint equally unskilled people to government jobs, because ones who really know what they're doing will be dissatisfied with the way he's handling things, and more likely to want to get rid of him. Dictators can even execute skilled people, to make sure that doesn't happen. So there can be really high-ranking government ministers who didn't even go to school for that many years, let alone having a higher education.
"And dictators can get rid of a lot of the supporters who helped to fight to bring them to power too, partly because they believe that people who enjoy getting involved in revolutions are more likely to decide to start one against them one day, because they're more likely than other people to want to start revolutions when they're unhappy with the way things are."
One student said, "Corr this is so sick! ... What if we all feel so sick from hearing all this stuff that we all start actually being sick all around you? You'll have to tread carefully when you leave here, to avoid all the puddles of vomit!"
They laughed.
The one who'd been talking grinned and said, "O well, I suppose that's just the chance I'll have to take ... if you want to hear more about this stuff. I haven't got that much more to say."
Some of them did want to hear more. So the student continued, "When dictators get diseases that are likely to kill them, like cancer, they do their best to hide it from most people, because they know that if the people who help to keep them in power know about it, they'll know that all their rewards for being loyal will come to an end soon if the dictator dies, or sooner if he's too ill to concern himself much with them, so they'll be a lot more likely to conspire to overthrow him with someone else they think will give them good rewards if he gets into power. Armies might stand back and let people start a revolution or demonstrate, or take over themselves, because they're uncertain about how much longer they'll be paid for, when before when the dictator was in good health, they might have brutally crushed any uprising on his orders.
"I think there can be quite a bit more to what makes the difference in the way they behave than that; but I think that's basically the way it works in quite a few countries.
"And if a dictator runs out of money to pay his supporters, they're much more likely to switch to supporting someone who wants to depose him. It's even been said that the real reason the Russian Revolution succeeded in 1917 was something to do with vodka. ... Well, it's been said that the army just stood back and let the revolutionaries succeed, when once they would have crushed them, because they weren't being paid enough, and that was because the tsar, who used to get an entire third of the money that came in to the state from a vodka tax, because people drank it so much, banned it during the First World War, because he thought the troops would fight better sober than they would drunk. He lost so much money in taxes because of that, while the costs of fighting the war grew and grew, that he couldn't afford to pay the army properly. So they just stood back and let the revolutionaries depose him.
"Taxation in dictatorships can be designed to benefit the government and their rich supporters instead of the common people. For instance, farmers can be forced to sell their crops to a government organisation at a low price, and then the organisation sells them on at a higher price, often exporting them. That can eventually lead to food shortages and more poverty in the country, partly since farmers can give up bothering to grow crops if they're hardly going to be able to make much of a living from them.
"Corruption is sometimes a way dictators make things easier for themselves, because instead of actually giving the supporters who keep them in power money, they give them permission to take their own money from the ordinary people by making them pay a lot of bribes for services, such as healthcare, or for getting other benefits, such as if they commit crimes and want to get away with it.
"If more countries in the world were democratic, there might be more peace in the world, not because democratic politicians are more peace-loving, which they're probably not, but because since every country's government would know that a disastrous war might get them thrown out of power at the next election, they might be less likely to want to go to war unless they were certain they could win. The stakes aren't as high for leaders in non-democratic countries, because they know that as long as they're paying their generals well, then even if an unfair war they've decided to fight is lost, they'll still have the support of the people who matter to them, - people who can keep them in power.
"And actually, because that support matters to them way more than the support of ordinary people, because they don't need it, they can put ordinary soldiers at even more risk of being killed than democratic governments do, by, for instance, not bothering to provide them with adequate body armour. They want to keep as much money as they can for rewarding their backers.
"Democratic countries can still go to war with smaller democratic countries they could be sure of beating, as long as they can find excuses to convince the electorate and opposition politicians that it's justified; but they're at least less likely to go to war than dictators, because unpopular wars risk losing them elections. And that's more likely now than in the past, when so-called democracies only allowed certain people to vote, like people who owned their own homes. There used to be a lot of rules about who could vote, that excluded poor people.
"Mind you, considering that some people can vote for parties - or things at referendums - that are bad for this country, it might be better if people had to demonstrate that they understood what each party was standing for and what that could really mean for the country before they could vote.
"Maybe they could be given questionnaires on their policies, or on the pros and cons of choices they were making in a referendum. I've been thinking that maybe people could be given a questionnaire on which parties have which policies when they go to vote at election time, that they have to fill in before they can vote, and they can only vote if they get almost all of them right, so it'll prove they at least know what they're really voting for. I mean, maybe the questionnaire could contain claims, some of which were true and some that were false, about what the main parties stood for, and people would have to tick the claims that they thought were true; and only people who got, say, nine out of ten right, could vote; but anyone who got less than that could Google information about what the parties really stood for, or follow links on the questionnaire to accurate information; and then when they'd found out more, they could take the questionnaire again.
"That way, anyone who was under false illusions about what the party they'd wanted to vote for stood for would get to read more accurate information before they could vote, so it's possible they'd change their minds about which party to vote for. Or if they were in the habit of voting without thinking much about it before they did, maybe they'd think going through that process was too much hassle, and just not vote. So maybe a much higher percentage of people who did vote would end up being well-informed about what they were really voting for.
"... Of course, that couldn't prevent people from voting in good faith for politicians who'd actually made false promises they ended up not keeping. I suppose there could be a section on the questionnaire about each major party's record of broken promises the last time they were in power, so voters could judge how truthful they were. Mind you, I don't suppose politicians would approve of making that the law; and questions would also have to be carefully researched to make sure they were fair, since not all promises politicians don't keep are broken because the politicians lied in the first place; sometimes they might have intended to do what they said they'd do, but then things changed that made it more difficult, such as if a party promised to cut taxes, but then there was some kind of crisis they needed to spend a lot of money on, so they couldn't."
The students thought about that for a little while. Then they started talking in a more light-hearted way, and chatted a bit before going their separate ways.
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