Quote Of The Day: What will Ruin Us? Is it What we Love or What we Hate?

Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression. But in Huxley's vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think. What Orwell feared were those who would ban books.

What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.

Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

This is from author and media theorist the late Neil Postman in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business 1985

Have we become zombies? (hat tip zero hedge)

Infographics: The Internet of Things and Our Mobile Future, Lessons from the Matrix

The internet of things will likely be one of the major technological advances from the information age that will have significant influence in the shaping of the future. 

The Visual Capitalist writes: 

By the time you finish reading this infographic, there will be 3,810 new devices connected to the Internet of Things.

That’s because there are 328 million devices being connected to the internet each month. It’s also why researchers estimate that there are going to be 50 billion devices connected by 2020.

In fact, the future looks very different as we adopt to these technological trends. Already, 71% of Americans using wearable technology claim that it has improved their overall health and fitness. Imagine what will happen with more immersive analytics, a preventative mindset, more metrics of useful health functions, and integration into the health system.

The connected lifestyle means that there could be 500 devices in each home connected to the web by 2022. Every lightbulb, lock, thermostat, appliance, and item with an electronic circuit could be networked together, finding synergy. As strange as it may seem, by 2020 researchers even expect 100 million lightbulbs and lamps to be connected to this grid.

Entertainment and convenience are driving the “smart home” concept, which is expected to be worth $56 billion in 2018. However, there is also the benefit of creating a more energy efficient world. It’s already expected that street lamps could save energy costs up to 80%, so why can’t that be the case in the home as well? Self-adjusting thermostats, lights, and appliances will increase the efficiency of homes to make a big impact on net efficiency.

Internet of things should be something to look forward to.

But as tools, they can be use for productive or non-productive activities. By non-productive, this can even enhance the government's repression of the public. The internet of things may even pave way for the realization of omnipresent surveillance society ala George Orwell's 1984.

John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute analogizes the internet of things with the trilogy movie the Matrix:

Make no mistake: the Internet of Things is just Big Brother in a more appealing disguise.

Even so, I’m not suggesting we all become Luddites. However, we need to be aware of how quickly a helpful device that makes our lives easier can become a harmful weapon that enslaves us.

This was the underlying lesson of The Matrix, the Wachowski brothers’ futuristic thriller about human beings enslaved by autonomous technological beings that call the shots. As Morpheus, one of the characters in The Matrix, explains:

The Matrix is everywhere. It is all around us. Even now, in this very room. You can see it when you look out your window or when you turn on your television. You can feel it when you go to work… when you go to church… when you pay your taxes. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.

“What truth?” asks Neo.

Morpheus leans in closer to Neo: “That you are a slave, Neo. Like everyone else you were born into bondage. Born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind.”

Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

China Politics: The Price of Security or Safety: More Repression

In the name of public security and safety, the Chinese government has waged an implicit war against her constituency.

Photos from Wall Street Journal

From the Wall Street Journal

Already difficult commutes in China’s capital became even more punishing this week, as Beijing beefed up subway security checks in the wake of deadly attacks targeting civilians.

Hundreds of unhappy commuters stood in long lines across the city Wednesday morning to undergo enhanced security screenings, which now include body checks as well as bag screenings in several stations. At stations in the city’s north, subway staff said passengers had to wait between 20-30 minutes to get through the security line, up from about 10-15 minutes prior to the new screening requirements.

Why is this? (bold mine)

Security measures have stiffened across China in recent weeks, following a series of violent attacks since the start of the year. In the most recent incident, 31 people were killed last week in an attack at a market in northwest Urumqi. In March, dozens were killed in an assault by knife-wielding assailants at a train station in southwest Kunming. Authorities have labeled such episodes terrorist attacks and attributed them to separatists in northwestern Xinjiang.

Additional security measures in Beijing now include helicopter patrols, while cities across the country have been further arming their police forces, as well.

So treating the average citizenry as suspects have been responses to the growing internal political troubles plaguing the alarmed Chinese government.

Yet if the Chinese government can’t respect her own people what more the neighbors? 

And as her asset bubbles deflate which should mean an acceleration in economic downturn, more incidences of social upheavals is to be expected which will be met by even more political 'tyrannical' repression.

The above seem as more signs that the Chinese government has been preparing for the worst.

So the next thing that Chinese government will be exporting will hardly be goods and services but social turmoil.

All these reminds me of Benjamin Franklin who once said,

They who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

But don't worry be happy. Stocks will always go up.

Edward Snowden statement: "It was the right thing to do and I have no regrets"

In Moscow, whisteblower Edward Snowden lashes back at the US government.

From the Guardian (hat tip lewrockwell.com)

Full transcript of the statement made by Edward Snowden, in which he accepts all offers of asylum he has been given

Statement by Edward Snowden to human rights groups at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, posted by WikiLeaks:

Friday July 12, 15:00 UTC

Hello. My name is Ed Snowden. A little over one month ago, I had family, a home in paradise, and I lived in great comfort. I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications. Anyone's communications at any time. That is the power to change people's fates.

It is also a serious violation of the law. The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive, pervasive surveillance. While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice – that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.

I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945: "Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

Accordingly, I did what I believed right and began a campaign to correct this wrongdoing. I did not seek to enrich myself. I did not seek to sell US secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.

That moral decision to tell the public about spying that affects all of us has been costly, but it was the right thing to do and I have no regrets.

Since that time, the government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression. The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists. It demanded Hong Kong return me outside of the framework of its laws, in direct violation of the principle of non-refoulement – the Law of Nations. It has threatened with sanctions countries who would stand up for my human rights and the UN asylum system. It has even taken the unprecedented step of ordering military allies to ground a Latin American president's plane in search for a political refugee. These dangerous escalations represent a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America, but to the basic rights shared by every person, every nation, to live free from persecution, and to seek and enjoy asylum.

Yet even in the face of this historically disproportionate aggression, countries around the world have offered support and asylum. These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless. By refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world. It is my intention to travel to each of these countries to extend my personal thanks to their people and leaders.

I announce today my formal acceptance of all offers of support or asylum I have been extended and all others that may be offered in the future. With, for example, the grant of asylum provided by Venezuela's President Maduro, my asylee status is now formal, and no state has a basis by which to limit or interfere with my right to enjoy that asylum. As we have seen, however, some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law, and this behavior persists today. This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights.

This willingness by powerful states to act extra-legally represents a threat to all of us, and must not be allowed to succeed. Accordingly, I ask for your assistance in requesting guarantees of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel to Latin America, as well as requesting asylum in Russia until such time as these states accede to law and my legal travel is permitted. I will be submitting my request to Russia today, and hope it will be accepted favorably.

If you have any questions, I will answer what I can.

Thank you.

Infographic:Is the US government preparing for a civil war?

Is the US government preparing for a civil war or a bloody revolt?  

The Criminal Justice Major through the following infographic thinks that the seeds have been sown and that the risks are high...

 

Image compliments of Criminal Justice Major Degrees

Guns Acquisition Spree by US Government: For Whom The Bells Toll

Retired Major General Jerry Curry in an OpEd asks to whom has the massive gun buying spree by the US government directed at? [via Prof Gary North at the LewRockwell.com]

Mr. Curry at the Daily Caller:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) confirms that it is purchasing 174 thousand rounds of hollow point bullets to be delivered to 41 locations in major cities across the U.S.  No one has yet said what the purpose of these purchases is, though we are led to believe that they will be used only in an emergency to counteract and control civil unrest. Those against whom the hollow point bullets are to be used — those causing the civil unrest — must be American citizens; since the SSA has never been used overseas to help foreign countries maintain control of their citizens.

What would be the target of these 174, 000 rounds of hollow point bullets? It can’t simply be to control demonstrators or rioters. Hollow point bullets are so lethal that the Geneva Convention does not allow their use on the battle field in time of war. Hollow point bullets don’t just stop or hurt people, they penetrate the body, spread out, fragment and cause maximum damage to the body’s organs. Death often follows.

Potentially each hollow nose bullet represents a dead American. If so, why would the U.S. government want the SSA to kill 174,000 of our citizens, even during a time of civil unrest? Or is the purpose to kill 174,000 of the nation’s military and replace them with Department of Homeland Security (DHS) special security forces, forces loyal to the Administration, not to the Constitution?

Read the rest here

Could “tea parties” be the object of the US government’s gun buying spree? Or has the US government been anticipating and preparing for a massive civil unrest?

Graphic of the Day: When History Repeats….

This striking chart demonstrates why there have been patterns of similarities in history…

Writes Simon Black at the Sovereign Man (bold mine)

But it’s not just debt burdens that are problematic. ‘Rich’ countries in the West are also rapidly debasing their currencies, spawning tomes of regulatory impediments, restricting the freedoms of their citizens, aggressively expanding the powers of the state, and engaging in absurd military folly from Libya to the South China Sea.

Once again, this is not the first time history has seen such conditions. In our own lifetimes, we’ve seen the collapse of the Soviet Empire, the tragi-comical hyperinflation in Zimbabwe, and the unraveling of Argentina’s millennial crisis. Plus we can study what happened when empires from the past collapsed.

The conditions are nearly identical. Is our civilization so different that we are immune to the consequences?

Probably not. And the cycle that has befallen so many great powers before us– decline, collapse, turmoil, and reset– will likely happen in our time too.

But it’s not the end of the world. Not by a long shot.  It’s a complete reshuffling of the deck. A brand new game with brand new rules. And the old way of doing things (like printing money backed by nothing) will be resigned to history’s waste bin.

One of the things that we see frequently in history is that this transition occurs gradually, then very rapidly.

Think about the Soviet Union, which you may recall. One day, they were the greatest threat to the planet. The next day, the wall came down. It happened so quickly. It’s like what Hemingway said about bankruptcy– it happens slowly at first, then all at once.

Unfortunately we don’t know where we are along this path. And we won’t know until we’re over the cliff on the way down. Everything will feel normal until then.

The repetition of crises had been the outcome of the short term obsession of attaining political goals mostly through economic and political repression.

Thus it is equally nonsense to assert debt by itself creates all these troubles.

For instance this self-contradictory claim by populist analyst John Mauldin…

As an aside, it makes no difference how the debt was accumulated. The black holes of debt in Greece and in Argentina had completely different origins from those of Spain or Sweden or Canada (the latter two in the early '90s). The Spanish problem did not originate because of too much government spending; it developed because of a housing bubble of epic proportions. 17% of the working population was employed in the housing industry when it collapsed.

…who earlier admits that

Debt (leverage) can be a very good thing when used properly.

The reality is that debt can be distinguished through productive and consumptive activities where debts from consumption (welfare, government spending) and malinvestments (for instance convergence of interest rates and moral hazard from policies in the euro which brought about a bubble) have all been a result of interventionism or emanates from political policies that leads to business cycles or bubbles.

In a paper submitted to the classical liberal organization, the Mont Pelerin Society, which recently held a meeting in Prague, Terry College of Business University economics professor George Selgin gives a terse but insightful dynamic of the Euro crisis, (bold mine) 

Philip Bagus (2012) explains the particular course by which Greece was able to take the European Monetary Union hostage. Banks throughout the Eurozone, he says, bought Greek bonds in part because they knew that either the ECB or other Eurozone central banks would accept the collateral for loans. Thus a Greek default threatened, first, to do severe damage to Europe’s commercial banks, and then to damage the ECB insofar as it found itself holding Greek bonds taken as collateral for loans to troubled European banks.

In short, in a monetary union sovereign governments, like certain banks in single-nation central banking arrangements, can make themselves “too big to fail,” or rather “too big to default.” As Pedro Schwartz (2004, p. 136-9) noted some years before the Greek crisis: “[I]t is clear that the EU will not let any member state go bankrupt. The market therefore is sure that rogue states will be baled [sic] out, and so are the rogue states themselves. This moral hazard would increase the risk margin on a member state’s public debt and if pushed too could lead to an Argentinian sort of disaster.

Indeed, the moral hazard problem as it confronts a monetary union is all the worse precisely because sovereign governments, unlike commercial banks, can default without failing, that is, without ceasing to be going concerns. This ability makes their ransom demands all the more effective, by making the implied threats more credible. A commercial bank that tries to threaten a national central bank using the prospect of its own failure is like a suicide bomber, whereas a nation that tries to threaten a monetary union is more like a conventional kidnapper, who threatens to harm his innocent victim rather than himself.

Next, it is not debt alone, but rather attempts at the preservation of the status quo which has been founded on unsustainable political-economic premises through political and financial repression which makes conditions all the worst.

This means that the popularity of absolving culpability of those responsible for them, the “inattentiveness” to genuine conditions and or the cognitive fallacy of selective perception out of political bias or economic ideology signifies as principal reasons of the recurrence of patterns in history. 

This block excerpt from philosopher George Santayana gives as some useful lessons; from REASON IN COMMON SENSE Volume 1) [bold mine]

Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. 

In the first stage of life the mind is frivolous and easily distracted; it misses progress by failing in consecutiveness and persistence. This is the condition of children and barbarians, in whom instinct has learned nothing from experience. In a second stage men are docile to events, plastic to new habits and suggestions, yet able to graft them on original instincts, which they thus bring to fuller satisfaction. This is the plane of manhood and true progress. Last comes a stage when retentiveness is exhausted and all that happens is at once forgotten; a vain, because unpractical, repetition of the past takes the place of plasticity and fertile readaptation. In a moving world readaptation is the price of longevity. The hard shell, far from protecting the vital principle, condemns it to die down slowly and be gradually chilled; immortality in such a case must have been secured earlier, by giving birth to a generation plastic to the contemporary world and able to retain its lessons. Thus old age is as forgetful as youth, and more incorrigible; it displays the same inattentiveness to conditions; its memory becomes self-repeating and degenerates into an instinctive reaction, like a bird's chirp.

Argentina's Government Openly Promotes Poverty

Poor Argentinians. The Argentine government does not only want to subtly confiscate savings of ordinary folks through inflationism, their government openly promotes poverty for the Argentina’s population through economic fascism and political repression.

From Nasdaq.com 

The president of Argentina's central bank has affirmed the government's policy of eliminating the U.S. dollar as a transaction and savings medium in the South American economy.

"De-dollarizing the economy is a challenge" and Argentines "have to save in local currency like [people] do everywhere else in the world," Mercedes Marco del Pont said in a speech late Friday night.

Argentines have long viewed the U.S. currency as a haven in times of economic uncertainty because of their country's long history of high inflation and periodic devaluations.

Mrs. Marco del Pont wants Argentines to save in pesos amid a backdrop of one of the highest rates of inflation in the Americas.

Annual inflation, which most economists say hovers around 25%, has eroded faith in the peso and fueled demand for dollars. The interest rates banks pay on deposits are well below inflation.

The government's data--which has been widely criticized by economists and the International Monetary Fund--put 12- month inflation at 10% in August.

Inflationism has only been part of the overall strategy of financial repression which has been coursed through fascist policies of nationalization, currency controls, strangulating regulations, civil liberty proscriptions (e.g ban on imported books) and more…

Since late October 2011, the government has severely restricted the public's access to the foreign-exchange market to stop capital flight that was slowly draining the central bank's international reserves.

The currency controls have dented economic activity, especially in the real estate sector where most transactions were done overwhelmingly in dollars.

Property sales in the capital city Bueno Aires plunged 35% on the year in August.

Argentina, aside from Venezuela, are likely or potential candidates to join Iran as models for modern day hyperinflation.

Will the US Military Be Used Against Tea Parties and Americans?

Are “tea parties” and the average Americans target of the coming political repression?

From the Offthegrid.com (source Charleston Voice) [bold original]

A theoretical report about the future use of the military as a police force within the United States is causing a firestorm of controversy. The report, Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A “Vision” of the Future, was written by a retired Army Colonel and describes how future warfare will be conducted on American soil. The report depicts a scenario where the U.S.  Military will have to use its power against the American public. 

The study begins by laying out how the U.S. Army’s Operating Concept 2016-2028 will include military operations throughout the United States. The outrageous report goes on to describe a theoretical situation where the U.S. Army is sent in to a city that has been taken over by Tea Party “insurrectionists”. 

The report starts in an eerie almost prophetic tone and then goes on to demonize tea party members and “immigrant-bashing by right-wing demagogues”… 

“The Great Recession of the early twenty-first century lasts far longer than anyone anticipated.  After a change in control of the White House and Congress in 2012, the governing party cuts off all funding that had been dedicated to boosting the economy or toward relief…” “…. By 2016, the economy shows signs of reawakening, but the middle and lower-middle classes have yet to experience much in the way of job growth or pay raises.  Unemployment continues to hover perilously close to double digits, small businesses cannot meet bankers’ terms to borrow money, and taxes on the middle class remain relatively high.  A high-profile and vocal minority has directed the public’s fear and frustration at nonwhites and immigrants.  After almost ten years of race-baiting and immigrant-bashing by right-wing demagogues, nearly one in five Americans reports being vehemently opposed to immigration, legal or illegal, and even U.S.-born nonwhites have become occasional targets for mobs of angry whites.”

Read the rest here

If the above account is accurate, then this represents signs of paranoia by the political class.

Currency Controls: My Nightmare at the Airport

Not only has government paranoia almost cost me and my family a vacation, worst, I had to endure a traumatic episode from bureaucratic harassment from local officials.

My basic mistake was to leave my wallet and instead brought my peso cash allotted for our travel expenditures packed into a white business envelope.

At the immigration pat-down, I was asked what the lump in my left front pocket of my pants was which I promptly disclosed.

The inspector told me to step aside from the line and wait for the immigration official, stating that I had exceeded the maximum amount cash (P10,000) allowable for each local citizen to bring abroad, who would decide on my case.

The immigration official arrived and lectured me on my supposed offense. And the officer further said that in breach of the regulation, I was subject to penalty in accordance to the regulations of the Bureau of Customs.

I replied that I DID NOT know about any disclosure procedures, or of any currency exports regulations by individuals.

And prior to the pat-down all I did was to fill up a form where I affixed my signature which DID NOT contain any information about required disclosures.

The immigration departure document looked like this.

Looking back I found the said regulation from IATA’s website

Residents and Non-residents: local currency (Philippine Peso-PHP): up to PHP 10,000.-. Exceeding amounts require authorisation from the Central Bank of the Philippines. foreign currencies : up to USD 10,000.-, or its equivalent. Amounts exceeding USD 10,000.-, or its equivalent must be declared.

Information must be furnished on the source and purpose of the transport of such amount. Violation will be subject to sanctions under Philippine customs law and regulations.

This means I have to apply with the central bank for any amount exceeding 10k pesos to bring abroad! Gadzooks, what onerous red tape!

Back to the airport, the officer suggested that to circumvent the regulation, I could go out of the area and have my (slightly) excess pesos changed into US dollars or other foreign currencies.

However, because of time constraints, doing so risks that we could miss our flight, which would translate to financial losses on our flight tickets compounded by the psychic losses from our frustrated plans.

I pleaded to the officer that the marginally excess pesos (less than 5,000 per head) had been meant for my mom, who is an overseas resident, as a Christmas present. After a few minutes, the officer relented and allowed us through.

Of course, I am thankful to the officer for his ‘generous’ gesture in spite of the hassle.

But such event only reinforced my understanding of how unilateral or arbitrary laws corrupt a system.

-I became an alleged offender for bringing my personal property without knowledge of any breach of the law, and importantly without aggressing upon anybody else (except in the eyes of the enablers and implementers of the regulation, again whose regulations I didn’t know).

-For not enforcing the law, the officer can be construed as being remiss of his duties and equally culpable transgressor.

Yet he did so perhaps in the understanding of the law’s unreasonableness, in my opinion.

The officer knew such law has been repressive, selective in enforcement and would hurt citizens in good faith, thereby perhaps conscience dictated the tolerant decision.

Or it is possible too that the officer has seen enough of our mental and emotional anguish.

-The officer offered an alternative to go around the system (change excess pesos into US dollars), again for the same reasons.

-I was lucky to have that particular officer attend to me. For the outcome would have been different if someone else with malice adjudicated my case. Such regulations could have been used to mulct and extort on us.

And come to think of it, just how can one enjoy a vacation with only 10,000 pesos (USD 227 @44 pesos per USD) in the pocket, especially when visiting a country whose cost of living has vastly been higher than ours?

And considering the millions of local travellers abroad annually, I am quite certain that such regulation have hardly been implemented except for a few instances.

The implication is that such currency control regulation has not been only repressive, selective and arbitrary in implementation but also impractical.

Yet to whose benefit these regulations accrue?

One the political class.

By imposing capital controls, the political class does not want people to vote with their money, or for the markets to expose on their abuses to their constituencies.

The attempt to restrict money outflows, in the guise of preventing money laundering (applied mostly to political opponents rather than to the incumbents and their clients) and blame-the-speculators (not the policies of local politicians and bureaucrats) signify as symptoms of government repression, who coldheartedly would penalize the innocent for their upkeep.

Two, the banking class.

Obviously putting restrictions on cash movements has been designed to bring transactions to the politically privileged banking and finance industry, which have been under the ken or supervision of the political class.

Yet the unintended consequence has been to foster more underground activities, using loopholes (e.g. change to US dollars) or etc., while simultaneously breeding corruption of the bureaucracy.

Let me add that I brought spare cash as insurance from the untoward experience I had 5 years ago, where the failure to access my bank’s overseas ATM network almost left me helpless.

And I have to admit while I have some credit cards, I am an averse or an infrequent user where my credit cards have been meant for emergencies.

Yet another possible unintended consequence would be if there would be an emergency while in another country (say natural disaster), without enough CASH or access to credit cards or ATM, one will be left to suffer an undeserved fate because of such feckless regulations.

I have been reluctant to travel mostly because of my aerophobia, but now I have developed a new phobia: fear of bureaucracy-bureauphobia.

Political Repression: Sacrificing Lives of Constituents and Mind Control

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.