On Human Rights in Poor Countries

On Human Rights in Poor Countries Thoughts on Human Rights in Poor Countries
By Shayne Weyker

[The following was posted in the newsgroup soc.rights.human]

A few people have recently been making the classic argument that
repressive government is needed in poor countries to prevent anarchy. I
don't find this to be a particularly powerful argument, seeming to apply
in a relatively few countries that are especially unstable. An argument
that worries me more, as a supporter of human rights, is the idea that
there may be unavoidable trade-offs between political rights and economic
rights which result in a zero-sum game best captured in the expression
"the amount of evil in the world is constant". I want to look at this
problem from a few different directions and see if anything conclusive can
be said about it. 

As much as most human rights folk don't want to admit it, it is at least
*theoretically possible* that oppression can bring about the most good for
everyone if future generations are considered as part of "everyone".

Theoretically this would be because in order for the people to live better in
the future, many of the people have to sacrifice consumption in the present
so that investments in infrastructure, education, and capital goods can be
made. And the consumption they have to forego isn't behavior like owning cars
or eating in fancy restaurants. Consumption for most people in poor 
countries means paying for stuff people in rich nations have long taken 
for granted: 
having your own home, 
having more than more than one child,
having some diversity in your diet (i.e. being able to eat from a choice of
	vegetables with your rice/corn/wheat, don't even think about meat)
having a social safety net that will keep you from starving and becoming 
	homeless when you can't work and your relatives can't help.
having a 60 hour or shorter work week,
having medical care that will allow you to survive most serious illnesses,
paying judges, cops, and bureaucrats enough that bribery stops being an
     accepted substitute for being innocent or following procedure,

Obviously, these are things most people would want pretty bad and would
try to get them as soon as more money becomes available rather than giving
that money to the government to spend on roads and schools and a telphone
system. In a country where everybody is overcrowded, where most are
constantly staring hunger and disease in the face, and everybody has
vanishingly small hopes of being able to move up in society because of the
small number of spots available for the middle-class/elites, it's going to
be nearly impossible to get these people to sacrifice what little stands
between them and death or severe misery. In fact, short of dictators with
cults of personality, no government can compel its really desperate poor
to go along with such sacrifices without credibly threatening *worse*
misery in a prison or immediate death at the hands of the government if
they resist. And personality cults [like old N. Korea and Romania]
oppress less physically because they compensate by oppressing folks
mentally with socialized brainwashing. And instant, indiscriminant, and
very harsh physical oppression awaits anyone who might possibly undermine
that process with criticism. Either way, in return for giving up the right
to protest against being forced to make inhuman sacrifices by the
government today, the people gain economic progress which will allow
future generations will be less oppressed by hunger, disease, social and
geographic immobility, and ignorance. 

That's the theory. 

Broken down and rewritten it looks like this:

1) The people first and foremost need a better physical quality of life.
2) Getting that *NECESSARILY* requires extracting lots of economic resources
     from the people, no matter how poor they are, and investing it in
     education, infrastructure, and capital goods.
3) Any democracy worth the name can't accomplish number two because the 
     people will vote out any government that tries.
4) The imposition of sacrifices on the people and collection of resources by
     the repressive government with some plan to invest in the future is
     thought to be *SUFFICIENT* (all that is needed) for improving the
     people's physical quality of life.

Now statements 1 and 2 are true (although the amount of foreign aid received
can reduce the amount that must be extracted from the poor). Statement 3
might or might not be true, I will discuss this at the end. But I believe
statement 4 to be false and the ability of repressive governments to advance
the physical quality of life of their people to be just as problematic as
democracies, only for different reasons.

Here's the catch. Those benefits for future generations will only happen if
two big pitfalls along the way can be avoided which will make pointless all
the sacrifices and death and misery imposed in the hopes of bringing them
about.

And those pitfalls are best avoided if the people are not repressed
too harshly and have room to sound the alarm on truly serious corruption and
bad policy decisions in their country. *That's* why having rights like free
speech and free assembly are important even when one wants to give equal
weight to economic rights.

PITFALL 1: THERE MAY BE NO ECONOMIC GROWTH.

There are several ways that a state can oppress the people and successfully
extract economic surplus, but fail to get the desired economic growth and
waste the sacrifice and misery of the people.

A) If the government invests in the wrong kinds of capital goods and
infrastructure and attempts to compete on the world market where they have no
competitive advantage there will be no long-term economic progress (ex.
Romania's failed shipbuilding industry). Similarly, big investments in the
(economically non-productive) military hurt economic progress.

B) If the government invests in industries and powerplants that are so
environmentally damaging that the benefits don't cover the costs, the people
will see no net benefit for all their sacrifice. Sources of environmental
cost include: damage to human health, reduced tourism, destroyed or damaged
farmland/fisheries, poisoned farm animals or fish, and inevitable ultra-
expensive future clean-ups.

C) The government's officials steal most of the surplus extracted from the
people for their own consumption or that of their friends and relatives. They
may also waste the surplus by investing in ways which are clearly ineffective
but which benefit small groups or individuals the official likes or has cut
deals with. In this case the people's sacrifice is for nothing because the
surplus is eaten up by corruption.

D) If the rich nations with most of the power over the global economy fail to
cooperate with one another and thereby cause decades of global recession
and/or depression (or even if they just decide to put up protectionist
barriers against poor nations' goods), then poor nations will see no economic
growth and their people's sacrifices will have been for nothing. Those who
have been paying attention between the early 70s and today can see how this
has already happened. The successes of the newly industrializing countries
and more recently places like China, Thailand, and Chile are the exceptions
that prove the rule. In most cases, people in poor nations are no better off
than they were decades ago. 

[an aside: Of course, rich nations' economists respond to this charge by
pointing to poor nations' past unwise investment polices, OPEC's jacking up
of energy prices, and lack of investment in capital goods/infrastructure/
education with too much going into consumption (like food subsidies for the
urban poor and excessive profits for the elites--which they use to buy
consumer goods like TV's, cars, fancy clothes, etc.)].

E) If it is strongly felt by large groups (tribes, farmers, religious
minorities, etc.) that the pain of sacrifice is being unjustly concentrated
on them, or that, fair or not, it would be suicidal to sacrifice any more,
there is a greater likelihood of civil war/unrest as the group(s) in question
either try to use force to create their own state, join a neighboring state,
or extract a share of the power from the current state. And civil war, aside
from all the other heightened misery it causes, destroys infrastructure and
capital goods and prevents education. It also drives away foreign investment
and causes domestic investors to send their money abroad. Civil wars mean
economic backsliding for as long as they continue. 

Remember that it was said earlier that investing in the military was not
economically productive. Well, in fact it can be economically useful if it
prevents a civil war, but the incremental reduction in the likelihood of war
must be weighed against the incremental cost of failing to invest in
productive goods rather than the military. Also, one has to consider the
dangers of a powerful military increasing the likelihood of the second
pitfall: that of very unjust but stable distributions of wealth.

-----

In each of these cases, more-oppressive governments have worse problems
avoiding these pitfalls than less-oppressive governments. 

In cases A, B, and C the suppression of criticism which is the prominent
feature of all oppressive governments means that environmental or economic
opposition groups within the society which could protest and provide
important warnings about economically disastrous policies will not be heard.
Some of the same criticism may come from outside the nation (via the UN, the
development agencies, and non-governmental organizations), but the very fact
it is from the outside makes it easier to dismiss with arguments like "they
don't really understand our situation" or "they have a hidden agenda to keep
our nation poor and industrially underdeveloped".

Then there's case D. While being oppressive has no link to the wisdom and
efficacy of rich nations' collective economic policy, it *does* have a link
to the likelihood that rich nations will put protectionist barriers up
against their goods. This is because the protectionist political coalition
will, for their own reasons, join up with the human rights coalitions in
pushing for sanctions against rights abusers in legislation on trade policy.
The restrictions of GATT limit this some, but not completely, for the major
economic powers. The same principle can apply to pitfall E. Fighting a civil
war or anti-guerilla war against a group with all the attendant rights abuses
will draw not only votes for sanctions by those sympathetic to the rebel
faction, it will also tend to pull votes from the human rights coalition in
general.

Finally, in case E, civil war caused by too-uneven or excessive sacrifice is
more likely where the government is unresponsive to criticism. Allowing
(within limits), listening to, and responding constructively to the most
serious claims of economic injustice is very good insurance against civil or
guerilla war. There is a problem with this argument however. Some research
into the origins of civil war and revolt have noted that it is a sudden
increase in hope on the part of the people and not the level of level of
their misery, that leads them to take the risk of uniting in arms against
their government. 

Poor governments have a balancing act to perform. If through reforms they get
the people too excited about the chances for short-term improvements in their
condition, the people may revolt when the government decides it must slow
down. This is not to say that the government will be right in calling for an
end to reforms. The government will typically *not* wait and say "no more
reforms" only when reforms begin to cut so far into investing in the future
that everyone will be worse off by their imposition. In fact, because
governments look out for officials' and powerful groups' well-being before
anyone else, threats to these privileged groups from reform will cause the
government to bring the hammer down much earlier than it should. But on the
other hand, it *is* possible that the people could get so agitated for change
that they indeed demand, under threat of revolt, more short-term consumption
(i.e. reforms) than would be in everyone's (including future generations')
interests. This state of affairs is just as undesirable in its own way than
is the government's bringing in the tanks merely to protect the privileges of
high-officials.

Justice costs money, like almost everything else, and the poorer nations may
get caught in a dilemma. They may have to choose between either investing in
the future or having a social structure with sufficient money spent on
consumption so that the powerful rich don't back a coup and the dangerously
poor masses don't revolt. It's situations like this that make bigger foreign
aid efforts by the rich nations morally required. The Chinese and others are
right when they claim it's easier to espouse free speech and elections when
your state is rich enough to be able to buy off and co-opt groups within
society if things get really desperate. They would be right to say that it's
easy to give fairer trails to ordinary criminals when one has 100 times as
much money to spend on each case gathering evidence and putting in
institutional safeguards to protect the defendant.

PITFALL 2: ECONOMIC GROWTH OCCURS, BUT VERY FEW PEOPLE BENEFIT

If you get lots of per-capita economic growth but only a tiny minority sees
improvement in their living conditions proportional to the growth in the
economy as a whole, and a majority see no improvement in their lives at all,
then the people cannot be said to have become better off. Almost all of the
sacrifice it took to get there has been for nothing.

Of course, economists will tell you that economic growth is always unevenly
distributed in free markets. The problem is that oppressive governments
almost always identify their interests with those of the local elites, and
thus they tend to ignore if not actually worsen the problem of a huge and
unjust disparity of wealth. This implies that oppressive poor governments
(especially their security bureaucracy) will be obstacles to the improvement
in social equality and justice. 

Less oppressive governments will allow the protest and eventually the
installation of legitimate and powerful people's representatives in
government which will combine to force reforms both in social policy as well
as at best a reduction and at least a more equitable distribution of the
corruption that now concentrates wealth in the hands only of officials, their
relatives, and the wealthy.

More oppressive governments generally won't allow this and have a more
powerful internal security bureaucracy which will fight very hard against a
more tolerant government attitude to protest. This is true to the extent that
members of the security bureaucracy not only identify their fate with the
rich (or majority ethnic group, etc.), but also want the same things
bureaucrats everywhere want: more mission and more of the government's
resources.

Note that this pitfall is different from the concern about civil war or civil
disorder caused the unjust distribution of wealth. The unjust distribution of
wealth is a bad thing even where it doesn't lead to violence. [Libertarians,
see the note at the end just for you :-)]

The way I've heard it, a lot of the folks who went to Tienanmen, particularly
the non-students, did so because they could no longer tolerate the massive
corruption of the officials and the injustice of how the officials have
distributed social goods based on family connections and bribes. Democracy
was the chosen means to get reform, but if they thought there was some other
way they could get the reforms which wouldn't scare the party leadership as
bad, they might well have adopted that means instead. They may have chosen
democracy as their rallying cry because of the wave it was riding in eastern
europe and elsewhere at the time, but it was probably not just that.

Now the anti-rights folks out there may think I am implying that democracy
isn't important. Actually democracy is important for the things it seems to
be able to accomplish better than any other form of government. 
And these things are indeed of relevance in poor nations seeking to avoid the
above pitfalls.

1) The empowerment of legitimate representatives of the people which is a
     cheaper and more humane (albeit somewhat less stable) way of preventing
     guerilla war or civil war than building a big security force.
2) An environment where public protests and criticism are both tolerated and
     listened to so that unwise and unfair policies can be reversed without
     violence and before the policy has become a disaster.
3) A way to remove corrupt officials who act only for small-group interests. 
4) sympathy from the human rights coalitions in rich nations which might
     help prevent legislation that erects trade barriers or sanctions against
     that poor democratic nation.

And here we come full circle. Because it is precisely the ability of the
people to hold power over government which enables them to resist the
government extracting sufficient surplus from them for investment in things
like education, infrastructure, and capital goods.

The answer to this dilemma was once thought to lie in benign dictators. But
there have been problems with benign dictatorship. Most dictators aren't
benign and like corruption and power for its own sake as much as the next
guy. Most dictators are by necessity more sensitive to the desires of the
army and/or the rich than they are to the masses. Most dictators' policy
efforts suffer from not being able appear weak by changing their mind when a
policy starts to go bad. Similarly, they may often refuse to seek and take
policy advice from outside the government, even though they really need to.

I don't have the answers. But critics of democracy and rights-respecting
government ought to show how other forms of rule can avoid the above
pitfalls. And proponents of democracy and human rights ought to show how a
democratic poor nation's government can extract the wealth from the
population needed for investment in the future, keeping in mind the fact
that there are practical limits on going after the rich. 

I haven't solved this dilemma for myself so far as to what kind of government
is ideally needed. Practically, however, I believe that in poor countries:
1) There is surely more oppression in the world's poor countries than is
needed to extract economic surplus for investment in the future. 
2) There is surely less accountability for public officials than is needed to
avoid the above pitfalls that will waste the people's sacrifice.

For those reasons I have no problem asking or coercing poor governments to be
*less* repressive than they currently are. Maybe someday, if there is sudden
massive improvement in the way governments treat their people and they start
to allocate too much wealth to short-term consumption for the masses, I could
say "Enough! You aren't providing for better conditions for people in the
future", but I just don't think we're there yet. I invite people to use hard
evidence to try and convince me otherwise.

I hope the pro and anti-human rights crowd will read this and ask themselves
if they need to revise their position somewhat. I would very much like to
hear back from both sides, but especially the anti-rights crowd.

If you liked this, you may want to go back read my last two posts on
'HR and foreign policy' and 'Segal's testimony'.


Shayne Weyker


---

And now a special message for all you libertarians:

I realize this *is* the net, and lots of readers out there are white males
with good white-collar jobs, who know no truly poor people, and who grew up
reading Heinlein and Rand. It is for these people I offer the following
thought on massive inequality of wealth in poor nations. The rest of you can
skip this since you likely think my original statement saying such massive
inequality is bad is intuitively true and needs no defense.
 
I personally think massive inequities of wealth are bad because of the
declining marginal utility of wealth. This can be illustrated by arguing
that, on average, $1000 brings about a far far greater improvement in the
life of a person with no money living in the street than it does in the hands
of a millionaire. Now there are reasons to discount *some* of that extra
happiness coming from having the $1000 in the poor persons' hand instead of
the rich. But those reasons are not overwhelming and some are especially weak
in regard to poor countries (the rich in poor countries often consume more of
their wealth and invest more of what's left abroad than their U.S. or
European counterparts, for instance). I also refuse to debate issues like who
merits a greater share of the wealth in the poor nations' cases, as the rich-
poor gap is incredibly wide and the rich could not possibly even begin to
merit the status they have. The higher frequency of inherited wealth and
wealth gained through corrupt action rather than fair competition further
undermines claims of merit. So in countries with really ugly disparities of
wealth there is a plain moral presumption in favor of greater equality than
we are likely to see any time soon.

There were several replies to this essay, the many of which are reproduced here. To read them click on the following links.

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