‘You have fallen into the commonest fallacy of all in dealing with social and economic subjects—the “devil theory.” You have attributed conditions to villainy that simply result from stupidity.”—Robert A. Heinlein, Logic of Empire, 1941.
We humans always want to find a scapegoat. There are a couple of reasons. If we can find an external cause, then we do not have to take responsibility for the problem. “I can’t put this computer table together. The instructions were written by a moron.”
In 2020 and 2021 the great global goblin was China. The pandemic started in China. There were shipping problems from China. Inflation from the supply chain problems was caused by China. Even before 2020, the geopolitical situation was unstable because of China, and we know the debt problems of emerging economies in Asia and Africa are a result of the debt trap from China.
June 9, 2021: “The United States will target China with a new ‘strike force’ to combat unfair trade practices that the administration says are damaging US supply chains.”
Russia, however, owns 2022. President Joe Biden: “What people don’t know is that 70 percent of the increase in inflation was the consequence of Putin’s price hike because of the impact on oil prices.”
The second characteristic is that we tend to try to find a single cause for a variety of problems.
We all have known for many centuries that eating certain foods and in certain qualities can be unhealthy. Chapter 11 of Leviticus says not to eat shellfish, which was a good idea before modern health care since even today as much as 10 percent of a given population depending on ethnicity and location are allergic to it.
But that is not necessarily a reason for the thousands of books, such as Transform Your Health From the Inside Out, and articles like “20 Must-Read Books About Health and Food.”
Combine these two ideas—scapegoating and oversimplification—and we get conclusions such as all the social and economic problems of the Philippines are the result of “a corrupt government controlled by political dynasties.”
It seems as if any discussion of solutions to the social and economic difficulties in the Philippines must include the fact that they would not happen without “government and private sector corruption” augmented by “political dynasties.” It might be valid.
But then again, the Liberal Democratic Party ruled Japan for 40 consecutive years until 1993 and then for 10 of the past 16 administrations. The Kuomintang party controlled Taiwan from 1948 to 2016 less eight years. There is no stronger political dynasty than a political party.
From 1989 to 2009 there was either a Bush or a Clinton as US president and only because Hillary Clinton lost the Democratic primary to Barack Obama in 2008 and the General election to Donald Trump in 2016.
Sri Lanka is facing its worst political and economic crisis in more than 70 years. That country also has corruption and dynasties. So the disaster of 2022 is because of those two variables and of course there is a lesson to be learned by the Philippines, especially with the coming election.
Then again, Sri Lanka, half the size of Luzon with half the population, had a civil war from 1983 to 2009, killing 100,000. Perhaps some of today’s crisis is from that war. But maybe it’s China’s fault since 10 percent of Sri Lanka debt is with China. Except they have been running a large external debt-to-GDP ratio since 2015 at 105 percent (115 percent now) versus the Philippines’ current 61 percent.
Our inflation is 4 percent; theirs is 18 percent. Philippine foreign currency reserves are $108 billion; Sri Lanka has $2.4 billion in reserves. Maybe the lesson that should be learned is by the Sri Lankans: Be more like the Philippines.
Possibly also, it is not evil corruption and dynasties that are the problem. Maybe it is bad management caused in part by those two but unquantifiable as we as nowhere near a Sri Lankan disaster. Further, “Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity”: Robert J. Hanlon.