REPORT #458 December 2001
POLITICAL IDEALOGIES AND THE PRINCIPLES FOR BELIZEAN STUDENTS ( Course 101 )


Produced by the Belize Development Trust

The young don't listen! Most young have to re-learn old lessons the hard way. Our Prime Minister, Said Musa is like that. I am like that also! So are two of my daughters.

That said, it is the duty of older people to pass on their experiences to the young, to shortcut the learning process, whether they listen or not. Here is one very short analogy that cuts to the PRINCIPALS of different political idealogies and how they work in real practice, rather than the high faluting wind blown academic theories. This analogy is called the TWO COW ANALOGY of Political Idealogies.

THE TWO COW PRINCIPLES

COMMUNISM Idealogy as a governing system: You have two cows. Give both cows to the government, and they MAY give you some of the milk.

FACISM idealogy as a governing system: You have two cows. You give ALL the milk to the government, and the government sells it for a profit for themselves.

SOCIALISM idealogy as a governing system: You have two cows. Give one cow to your neighbor!

NAZISM as a governing idealogy system: You have two cows. The government shoots you and takes both cows. Communism often does it this way sometimes.

ANARCHISM as a political idealogy system: You have two cows. You keep the two cows. Shoot the government agent and steal another cow from your neighbor.

CAPITALISM as a governing political idealogy: You have two cows. Sell one cow and buy a bull.


Our Belizean Prime Minister flirted with Communism in his youth. Whether from a basic lust for power, or a real idealogical bent is open to debate? Needless to say, he reached some sort of maturity and adopted the rapacious, exploitive, political party organization British governing political system, quite different from Communism.

Unfortunately, I do not have a set of analogies to compare with equivalent economic theories. But our Prime Minister just wasted three years of the PUP party collective capability and intelligence re-learning economic truths. "There is no free lunch!" and "You don't get something for nothing!" Using a foreign loan borrowing economic theory distorted and presented as Growth Economics. A bit like Osama bin Laden and his fundamentalists presenting murder and war with the rest of the world as a distorted version of true Islamic teaching.

There is no substitute for living within a government's income. There is no substitute for making budgets within that income. There is no substitute for limiting your government loans to a percentage of your annual cash flow income by law. There is no substitute for savings, as in Foreign Exchange Reserves. There is no substitute for creating Trust Funds to deal with Hurricane disasters, that are untouchable by any government otherwise by law. There is no substitute for underestimating your income cash flow and overestimating your expenses and operating costs. THERE IS NO FREE LUNCH !

If Belizean students can learn something at all from Prime Minister, Said Musa's life history it is this. Understand your political ideaologies and how they actually work and perform in practice. Understand that Conservative Economics is also Growth Economics, except it is too slow apparently for the youthful wishes of impatience and instant gratification of youth. Over time, re-investing in capital improvements, savings set aside for the unexpected, compounds national wealth and fights poverty. Basically it is the Boy Scout motto! "BE PREPARED!"

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