Who Wants to Rule the Third World?
The leaders of the Third World are infamously grasping and corrupt. They live in luxury while ruling over societies mired in poverty. The worst of the worst openly treat their people like cattle — or slaves. Most of the rest pay lip service to the ideal of “serving their people” while skimming off billions of dollars from the treasury (or foreign aid) for their patronage networks, their extended families, and of course themselves.
Yet on reflection, this is a Faustian bargain. While the leaders of the Third World live high off the hog, the poverty that surrounds them is too ubiquitous to avoid. Every time they leave the palaces — private and “public” — where they live and work, they come face-to-face with severe human misery. Hungry faces. Begging kids. Shantytowns. Streets lined with garbage. Every time they look at their long-suffering people, they know that a sizable minority would, if the opportunity arose, gladly tear the leaders and their entire families limb from limb. Never mind the political enemies — open and closeted — who dream of replacing them “by any means necessary.”
Leaders commonly respond by sending their children and other loved ones to the First World. To countries where they can enjoy their vast wealth in peace. Without having to look at daily horrors. Without having to fear for their lives.
If I were in their shoes, I’d definitely do the same for my family.
But I’d also go one big step further. After sending my children and other loved ones to the First World, I’d follow them. Leave my country behind and never look back. While most citizens of the Third World have no hope of legal migration to the First World, their top elites have plenty of good exit options. With a little planning, they can start living safe, comfortable, horror-free lives of luxury.
And the only major thing they have to give up in exchange… is their political power.
If you’re not puzzled, you should be. Suppose a genie came to you and offered to make you the dictator of South Sudan. Morality aside, wouldn’t you be terrified to accept? And if you ever got over the fear, what about the sheer disgust of looking out the window of your limousine and seeing the human misery all around you?
What then is the difference between you and those who rule the Third World? Extreme power-hunger is the theory to beat. The leaders of the Third World stay where they are because they would rather rule in near-Hell than live pleasantly in near-Heaven. They love lording it other other humans. They wants it. They needs it.
The charitable story, granted, is that the rulers of the Third World remain for the sake of their people. But that’s laughable in the vast majority of cases. If the rulers really care so much about their people, why do they keep bleeding them dry? “I rule with an iron fist to keep the peace” isn’t crazy. But “I need a dozen palaces to keep the peace” is.
Many economists, I suspect, will try resolve my puzzle by appealing to some version of “the Dictator’s Dilemma.” Any dictator who contemplated fleeing to the First World with a big bag of money would face two horrible problems. First, his domestic rivals (plus plenty of his supporters) would smell weakness and pounce. Second, once he abdicated, the ex-dictator would no longer be useful to his fair-weather First World friends. So instead of living in peace and luxury, he’d just end up being extradited back to a Third World prison.
These are not crazy fears, but they’re still overblown. Impulsively abdicating is dangerous, but why not gradually groom a successor and exit gracefully? Worried your host country will ship you back home in handcuffs? Flee to one of the First World countries with a strong reputation for protecting their friends. Remember what Carter did for the Shah? If I were a Third World dictator, I’d know his story forwards and backwards.
Morality aside, normal people wouldn’t want to rule a Third World country if they had the option to live comfortably in the First World. The job is too ugly and too scary. When you see Third World elites murdering each other for political power, the right lesson to draw is that these are not normal people. Their decision to stay when they have a choice to leave is a testament to their extreme power-lust. Sure, almost any ruler of the Third World will loudly proclaim that he’s making terrible sacrifices to give his country a brighter future. But his actions tell a different story: That, as Varys said of Littlefinger in Game of Thrones, he “would watch the Realm burn, if he could be King of the Ashes.”
Ironically, I think you approach this question from the naively egalitarian viewpoint of westerners. The only kind of westerner who would take the job may be a power hungry sociopath (though I think you underestimate how many would take it because they think they’d do a good job), but in many third world societies it’s accepted that the ruler has a right to live a life of opulence; in some the ruled wouldn’t respect the rules if he went about wearing sackcloth. Similar to old European kings. They weren’t all sociopaths, in fact many were clearly fairly conscientious. They just lived in a world where acute inequality between ruler and ruler wasn’t considered a moral problem the way it is in our society.
In short I think you lack moral imagination. Consider an extreme example: human sacrifice. You might look at a society where this is normal and note that no westerner would murder someone like that unless they were a deranged sadist, and conclude that this must be true of members of this society who do it. But really, in such a society you would find people who engage in human sacrifice but are also loving fathers, dutiful husbands, and law abiding citizens. The particular rules of the human conscience are largely socially constructed, so the correlation between one’s ’moral temperament’ and the morality of one’s behavior - according to any particular moral philosophy - tends to break down as you evaluate more dissimilar cultures.
Are you kidding me? I would LOVE to rule a "third-world" country. (I prefer the term "poor country". It cuts to the chase and doesn't refer to obsolete cold-war alignments). But maybe I'm not a normal person! 😅😅😅 As my Californian wife says: "Abno ka!" But being normal is laaaaame. Say, didn't you write a book about that? https://www.amazon.com/You-Will-Not-Stampede-Non-Conformism-ebook/dp/B0CRGRMLZV
I spent a year living in the Philippines and have travelled to many other poor countries as well. I didn't feel "sheer disgust" looking at the human misery around me. I felt compassion. And, I saw human misery. I saw grandmothers washing their grandchildren's clothes in dirty gutters. I saw children sleeping on sidewalks. I saw plenty of shantytowns. etc. I also beautiful people with beautiful souls. Who would invite you into their homes in the Shanty towns to sing Karaoke or eat Pancit or chicken Adobo. At least, if you were the ruler, you could do something about the misery and make life better for these people. And, as an expert economist, Dr. Caplan, at least you'd know what to do. I would probably go to you for advice, like all the time. Heck, send some students to me as interns. 😃 Let's have the "Virginia Boys" fix the Philippines! 😁
Have you never played SimCity, SimCity Societies or Tropico? (I just revealed my Steam Library! 😛) If you WENT to South Sudan or the Philippines and you SAW all the problems, wouldn't you kinda wish they would just give you a chance to fix them?
As I've mentioned before, I actually do think a lot of dictators are well-meaning. They just hold on to power for too long because their ideas aren't working ... yet. It's true that even good ideas take time to work. Generally longer than the 4 to 6 years until the next election. And bad ideas will never work. I think in the case of a lot of these dictators its the latter. A lot of them aren't the sharpest tools in the shed. Maybe it doesn't take that much intelligence to be a dictator. And most people aren't that intelligent. At least, relative to you, sir, or me, or your typical substack subscriber.
But, people like you, sir. Or me. People like us... Imagine... If we were given the chance, we could probably fix the Philippines. We wouldn't kill anyone or disappear anyone. We'd take a modest salary and, yea, hire several bodyguards. We'd allow free speech. And listen to those hwho disagree with us. But then calmly explain to them hwhy they're wrong. We would be benevolent dictators. We'd bring in free trade, end price controls, import quotas, zoning restrictions, licensed professions, etc. And hwhen the world is clamouring to move to the Utopia we've created in the Philippines or South Sudan or hwhatever, we'd let them in! We could really make a difference. We wouldn't hold on to power for some "giddy little jollies", we could really make a difference in the lives of millions!
This is hwhat makes us different than Stalin, Rocketman (Kim Jong Un) or Ferdinand Marcos. We'd actually be competent!
And you wouldn't want to take that opportunity if offered to you???
(Note: For the record, I am NOT planning to take over ANY country forcefully or unconstitutionally. Just wanna make that abundantly clear to anybody reading this. My point is: IF somehow, I were to become leader of any country, I am pretty confident I would do a damm good job. With Dr. Caplan's advice!)