In a couple of weeks we will be making a speech to the advanced classes in my middle school, and I have tied in my subject, Idi Amin, to Austrian Economics to instigate thought in my peers. But, due to various reasons I am forced to keep it pragmatic (hence the Friedman and minarchist themes). Please tell me your thoughts, and here is the wall of text (REMEMBER IT IS A ROUGH DRAFT):
Rough Draft
Idi Amin versus Freedom:
How Uganda can Better Itself from the Totalitarian Regime’s Effects
A burst of fire penetrated the air. Petrified birds flocked away; the gun’s staccato of sounds resonated throughout the town’s arid, scorched streets-the bullet emphatically and strenuously drove itself into the gagged and bound Asian’s head. Men with clothes covering their head slipped the dead man into a trash bag and dumped him into the back of a deteriorating black jeep like a sack of potatoes. They disposed of his body and were rewarded handsomely for their heinous crime; later that day they drunk themselves into a shadowy, grimy oblivion. This is a totalitarian nation, its own citizens coming under the undiluted, concentrated watch of its omnipresent, omnipotent dictator; and Uganda had this with Idi Amin. The nation of Uganda has lead such a tumultuous life-being faced with turmoil and violence, being shaped by imperialistic Britain, which eventually gave rise to the iron fist of Idi Amin; yet by utilizing the free market system, there will be hope for this poverty-stricken nation.
Nonetheless, before one makes any assumptions, if one is to see why it is that Uganda had swayed towards subjugation under Amin and other dictators, one must see that it was just ricocheting against the racism and exploitation by Imperial Britain. Firstly, the Ugandans problems were propagated by the British when they imposed taxes in the 1920’s, when there was a decrease in crop value. The young people of Uganda protested against this, but they were silenced-and taxes rose from 3 to 8 rupees. In times contemporary to those aforementioned, Britain also changed Uganda’s official currency to the Paper Florin and later to the Shilling-these changes in currency made much of the Ugandan’s wealth dissipate. Yet, this was not all; Britain also imposed a policy of racial discrimination against the Africans. This point can be backed by the word of Theodore Roosevelt, who had proclaimed, and hence implied that there was no real justice for Africans, “Remember that righteousness and our real ultimate self-interest demands that blacks be treated justly. (NYTimes, Pg.3)” Yet, that is not all, racism is also visible when one contrasts the British Empire’s school expenditures of Africans, Indians, and Europeans-the Africans only garnering £1 per African, while the Indians amassing £19 per Indian, and the Europeans being bestowed £22 per European. Also, in Africa, the British pursued a policy of bolstering a race’s power, which lead to an increase in authority among the Asians, whom as a race were gifted the control of most industries-this sowed the seeds for violence in future decades and thus the reason that Africans were unilaterally racist against Asians by 1922. But, social abuse was not enough the British’s policy also included control over the entire economy, mimicking that of what the USSR had done with its satellite nations. Most importantly, the British enforced price controls to attain cheap goods for themselves, which can be enormously damaging to the other people. For example, if the government were to place price ceilings, then sell goods would be sold because it would be unprofitable to even produce them-and this would lead to unemployment. On the other hand, if there were price floors, then people who were dependent on lesser valued goods would hence forth be unable to survive-this can all be portrayed by the failed US price controls of the 1970’s. In clear dissent of such price controls, the Ugandans revolted in 1949. Sadly, this was not the end of it, the starving Ugandans were in need of more money to pay for the goods and discovered cotton ginning-yet the British enforced a defacto monopoly in this sector, which they attributed to Asia. Once again Uganda had been suppressed by Britain, and hence swayed towards dictators who promised miracles-independence.
Obote’s rule, the dictator before Amin, was embedded with failures-socialism-and in massive discontent the people a coup was established in January 25, 1971, which gave rise to the bumbling idiot, Idi Amin. During this dictator’s rule, no liberty was palpable-no man was safe. This inept idiot was illiterate and his rule lead to the death of approximately 300,000 people-deaths which he financed through foreign aid; and, when that ran out he crawled to Lydia and other Islamic countries-using the religion of his forefathers, Islam-to attain funds. He proposed that they must end their dependency of the Asians (within the country) and other nation’s wealth-they the Asians held 0.8 percent of the GDP, though they were only eighty thousand among a total of ten million people. With that, he led what is known as an economic war, expropriating the capital and property of the Asians-this began in September 1972. This forced many men and women out of work, destroying a large amount of white collared jobs as well, seeing as how the flocked out of the country-taking their wealth with them. The effects of such capital destruction made their production decline by thirteen percent from 1971 to 1986. This violence lead to embargoes being placed by other nations, such as the EAC (East African Community) embargo, which destroyed their telecommunications and rails industry. This increase in production costs and embargoes lead to prosperous black and gray markets, as well as infinitely increasing prices. Nonetheless, that was not all Amin did-he also began various wars with neighboring nations, and with increasing production costs and embargoes he was forced to inflate the currency-the Shilling-to cover the insane costs, increasing prices even further. In contemporary times, the effects of Amin’s military expenditures in the Shilling-every one dollar is worth 1658 shillings. This was the epitome of terrible, Amin using the wealth of its people to kill them-and as the proverb goes, people should not be afraid of their government, government should be afraid of their people, and only then is freedom possible.
In spite everything, even after all the blemishes in Uganda’s history, freedom can still, as it can always, allow them to flourish in an economic sense. Empirical evidence of how liberalization of industries can lead to rampant growth is everywhere, yet the prime example is the Miracle of Chile. Chile, before the reforms under the military junta of Pinochet, had a socialist dictator, Allende, who had nationalized the banking, mining, and various agricultural sectors-yet when Pinochet entered into rule he had to battle a drowning economy caused by the previous administration. This was the beginning of what would become a temporary technocracy, Pinochet hand the economy to a few economists of the Chicago School of Economics, also known as the ‘Chicago Boys.’ The now famous ‘Chicago Boys’ denationalized over five hundred companies leading to what became one of the most prosperous nations in South America-and a representative democracy. As Milton Friedman had said on the subject: “[On Chile’s Miracle] Oh, very well. Extremely well. The Chilean economy did very well, but more importantly in the end the central government, the military junta, was replaced by a democratic society. So, the important thing is that the free markets did work their way in bringing about a free society. (Friedman, Pg.15)” There were many criticisms of the ‘Chicago Boys’ plans, Hernan Buchi, one of the original ‘Chicago Boys’, retorted: “[on the various criticisms]…the higher social cost is being paid by countries that followed other policies.” From such one can adopt the idea that through allowing the free market work a nation can expand and thrive on an international scope due to the fact that nations will always be in search of the most cost effective place to produce. Obviously, as had been beforehand stated, price controls are ineffective-yet the same ideas are true for wage controls. The logical fallacy of minimum wage controls is that it increases wealth, yet in fact it only increases wealth for those whose skills are above that control and the rest are involuntarily forced to become unemployed, and in a country with a highly unskilled labor force-such as Uganda-it would be irrefutably calamitous to impose such a regulation. Aside from this, deregulating everything would lead to increased foreign investment and growth due to reduced production costs. Another policy that would increase foreign investment and inflow of capital is free trade. Yet, before one thinks of this subject, one must remember that-unless there is government debt-imports will eventually equal exports. Free trade (not to be confused with a free trade agreement) would lead to lowered costs of products, hence lower costs of production, and consequently-when one couples this with a deregulated market-increased investment from foreign companies. Also, if there is violence or crises, these such factors would work to help alleviate them. Next, there is banking policy, which would encompass the most essential policies that must be put forth. Yet, before one understands the reasons for such policies, one must understand the postulation that credit expansion inevitably leads to recession, this is primarily because various forms of credit expansion, such as lowered interest rates or the multiplication factor created by fractional reserve banking (hence when interest rates are lowered it is known as cheap credit) leads to making unprofitable investments seem profitable-yet this eventually collapses. This is backed by the words of Nobel Laureate Maurice Allais: “…All major crises…stemmed from an excessive expansion of credit (Desoto, Pg.23)”. Also, the increase of a monetary supply increases consumption, which inevitably leads to dependency of other nations. To prevent such problems the government should set the Shilling at approximately to 170,000 Shillings per ounce of gold, or its contemporary equivalent to gold. The need for gold is obvious-it is self-regulating; due to its stability there would be decreasing costs in production due to increases in technology; and the people would have reason to save (which is postulated by many economists to be the driving factors in an economy, not consumption) due to the fact the yields would be higher than the inflation factor. The last of the important banking policies would be enforcing a one hundred percent reserve requirement to end the multiplication factor that occurs in fractional reserve banking (loans would still occur; the one hundred percent reserve name is a misleading term). From such ideals, Uganda-a nation riddled with violence and poverty-would be able to grow exponentially.
Obviously, economic freedom is synonymous with social freedom-Uganda has never had either. From that it must be theorized that only freedom could alleviate Uganda’s problem-increasing the wealth and hence decreasing the tribulations of its society. As nations walk a road towards serfdom, Uganda to could become the shining beacon of freedom and become the society that is envied by all.
All constructive criticism is welcome. 