Here is another example of the myth of good government.
When political leaders are faced with the risks of losing their power, they will abandon or put to risk the lives of their constituents.
In fearing the ripple effect from the Arab Spring (wave of recent uprisings), the North Korean government has responded by refusing to repatriate her citizens stranded in the chaotic Libya.
The Foreign Policy reports, (bold emphasis mine) [pointer to Mark Perry]
In mid-February, as Libya shook to the incipient revolt against Muammar al-Qaddafi, around 200 North Korean migrant workers found themselves stranded. Like their compatriots in other parts of the Middle East, they had been brought in to work as cut-price doctors, nurses, and construction workers. But with a popular uprising unfolding, their government now refused to repatriate them.
According to reports, Pyongyang ordered the workers to remain in Libya out of fear that what they witnessed -- a full-blown popular rebellion against Qaddafi's dictatorship -- could lead to a copycat rebellion back home. "The fear was obviously that these 200 would have a kind of a viral effect, bringing news and information about what was happening in Libya," said Tim Peters, founder of Helping Hands Korea, which aids North Korean refugees.
Mass popular uprisings, so often a contagious affliction, pose problems for any dictatorship. For North Korea, the outbreak of revolts in Egypt and Libya -- two steadfast allies of the hermit regime -- has prompted swift moves to head off a similar outbreak of democracy on its own turf.
And it’s not just that, leaders will even turn to repress on their people when their political interests are at stake such as what has been happening in Libya, Yemen, Syria or elsewhere.
In the North Korean experience above, part of the crackdown against the prospect of a People Power revolt has been to seize possession of cellphones and to clamp down on access to foreign media, because...
(from the same article; bold emphasis added)
"What the authorities fear the most is in fact information," said Hyun In-ae, vice president of NKIS, which smuggles USB sticks containing entertainment and political materials into North Korea...
In recent interviews with North Korean refugees, Noland has detected what he calls a "market syndrome," suggesting a link between participation in illicit market activities, foreign news consumption, and negative views of the regime. Black markets, he said, have the potential to turn into a "semiautonomous zone of social communication" and a possible space for political organizing. "In short," Noland said, "information and markets are linked."
That’s why governments abhor free markets, because free markets are the epicenter of information that coordinates people’s actions. And such actions may include the power to neutralize the political interests of tyrannical leaders.
But one might be tempted to object:
“but that is North Korea and should not apply to the US or the Philippines.”
As the great Friedrich von Hayek reminds us, (The Road to Serfdom) [bold emphasis mine]
Collectivism means the end of truth. To make a totalitarian system function efficiently, it is not enough that everybody should be forced to work for the ends selected by those in control; it is essential that the people should come to regard these ends as their own. This is brought about by propaganda and by complete control of all sources of information.
In short, control of information, which leads to mind control or indoctrination for political subjugation, is the essence of totalitarianism. And this has universal application.
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