The Siren Song of 'People Power'

Reading an article today about the newest middle east protests, Bahrain this time, I was drawn into the author's obvious emotional bias in favor of the protesters.  When I read about the Bahraini King going on TV to apologize for the deaths at the hands of his security forces, I felt that rush of blood to my head, that welling of liquid in my tear ducts, that strength of conviction that comes only to the ideologue whose cause is invoked.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/02/15/AR2011021500617.html?hpid=topnews

Here's the problem:  My emotional response to these kinds of demands is a product of socialization and indoctrination.  I know, I know, for somebody who calls himself a lover of liberty, I am wandering way off the reservation right now.  I can't help it.  The situation demands some self-reflection.

You see, the protesters aren't just demanding less restrictions on internet, TV, and who can run for parliament.  Those I agree with, at least to the extent that the civil society in Bahrain is able to cope with those kinds of freedoms without collapsing into an anarchic madhouse.  But they are also demanding social justice.  More precisely, "I demand that every Bahraini have a job and a house," said one protester. 

The best interests of society are served by economic freedom because the rules of functioning capitalism encourage everyone to earn a profit from their contributions to society.  Capitalism succeeds by providing the correct incentives to maximize each individual's contribution to society.  However, since human beings are evolutionarily programmed to seek individual gain and most individuals are too stupid, too uneducated, or simply unwilling to perform the serious introspection required to understand the benefits of property rights and minimalist government, the masses often do not seek the system that is beneficial in the aggregate and conducive to progress (capitalism), instead seeking a simple payoff. 


Having no unifying ideology other than anger, anti-government mobs are rarely vehicles for sustainable economic reforms.  Instead, because they are protesting poverty and have no positive goal other than expressing anger, anti-government mobs have a strong tendency to turn into socialist or religious zealots.  Hence the government response in Bahrain, offering $2700 dollars to every Bahrain family.  This smacks of the political payoffs that keep psuedo-socialist governments in power (and debt) across the Western world.  In case you are wondering, the U.S. is a primary offender...Bush's Medicare Part D (a buy-off for senior votes) comes to mind. 

If the results of popular uprisings across the Mid-East are new or 'reformed' governments that buy loyalty through socialist-style payoffs, then the popular uprisings will not result in a better world.  Just because the masses want something doesn't mean that they should get it.  What they need is an independent judiciary, a rule of law, a respect for property rights, and the easing of media restrictions.  What they want is an immediate end to poverty.  In other words they want a payoff. 

But their leaders have been confiscating wealth, manipulating the rules, and giving opportunity only to cronies...what's wrong with the people demanding they get some money back?  There's nothing wrong with it per se.  I do believe that the criminals who are running these dictatorships should be forced to make whole everyone whom they have wronged (which is likely every citizen without government connections).  But what happens after the government makes this payoff?  The protesters go home, and guess who stays in charge, rewarded for their years of corruption and incompetence?  That's right, the dictators.  If not these, then whoever runs to the front of the protests and screams the loudest, thereby earning himself the right to be the next corrupt regime who will then pay the citizens to hold their tongue.  The cycle continues. The problems are not solved.

Only systemic pro-market reforms can solve the underlying problems.  These mobs are not demanding those kinds of reforms.  In fact, as we've seen in China, India, Brazil, and many other formerly communist governments, incremental pro-market reforms are often most successfully implemented by reforming the existing government without popular uprising.  So why I am getting emotional when reading about the small successes of these protesters?

Simple, I've been indoctrinated into a worldview that always roots for the 'little guy', even when the little guy shuts down the economy, gets people killed, and at best installs a government of equal incompetence, at worst leaving the same people in charge with a slightly lighter checkbook.  The message here:  Check your emotions at the door, and hope against hope that whoever hijacks the next protest is one of the few people in the world who understands the importance of market forces in the march of history. Without the uplifting market growth enabled by economic freedoms, the seemingly noble goals of these protesters are nothing but the tempting song of tens of thousands of sirens.