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Revolution Costs

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It’s obvious that we might sometimes have the impression the freedom has no price on it. But, think again. It certainly might not have a price, but it definitely has a cost. Revolution costs a lot of money it would seem and the recent reports and analyses by the British bank HSBC show that the Arab Spring cost a total of roughly $800 billion. That’s the cost that will be incurred by the countries that have been the most affected by the Arab Spring, namely Egypt, Tunisia, Libya, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and Bahrain. Each of those countries will have seen a fall in their Gross Domestic Product that is roughly equivalent to 35%. Had there not been revolutions in some of those seven countries and had the others not felt the knock-on effects, the people would have carried on as they were before: living in dictator states but maintaining some sort of status quoi in society. Although the money went in to lining the pockets of the omnipotent leaders (and still is in some cases).

Freedom has no PRICE, but Revolution COSTS


Freedom has no PRICE, but Revolution COSTS

Post-Revolutionary Effects

The report by HSBC stated: “The combination of a severe fiscal deterioration, and a decline in government effectiveness, security and the rule of law will weigh heavily on policymakers' efforts, even to bring employment back to pre-revolution levels”.

  • Gross Domestic Product for the region of the Middle East and North Africa stood at 4.9% in 2011.
  • It fell to 4.5% in 2012 and stands at 4% this year.
  • It is predicted to rise slightly to 4.2% in 2014.

But those are the figures that are for the whole region and individual countries are far worse off than that. The overall regional figure allows for the benefit of the oil-rich nations that have not been affected to be taken into account in the 4.2% predicted for next year’s GDP. Oil-rich states such as the United Arab Emirates have benefited from the uprising by seeing their exports in oil increase. But, there are some that are far worse off economically-speaking than others.

  • Egypt for example is well below that figure and is expected to grow by just 2.2% this year and by 3% in 2014according to forecasts being made.
  • That figure will be insufficient to reduce unemployment at the present time according to economists as there is currently too much pressure on the state budget.
  • That figure may be revised even further in light of recent events that have taken place with the military coup and the ousting of former elected President Muhammad Mursi.

Economic Downside

Unemployment was one of the major factors that incited these populations to revolt. Yet, nothing has been done in those states to rectify the situation. Spending has been increased massively on social welfare and health to pacify the people. But at the same time there have been delays experienced because of the replacement of the administrative departments and the handing over from the pre-revolution period to the post-revolution one. As a result, there has been a drop in tax revenue and a slowdown in tax collection.

  • Unemployment has not been reduced and in fact in the aftermath of the revolutions, the people are even worse off than they were before.
  • Egypt had an unemployment rate that amounted to about 9% between 2007 and 2010.
  • It now stands at 13%.
  • Libya will only see a 0.7% expansion in economic growth this year.
  • Some had forecast that growth to be a staggering 15.9% just three months ago.
  • But uprising and protest strikes reducing oil exports have resulted in that figure dropping.

The Arab Spring caused the toppling of two leaders in Egypt if we count Muhammad Mursi. Muammar Qaddafi was ousted and killed in Libya. Bahrain suffered from unrest but the monarchy maintained its position. Syria has since2011 been plunged into civil war, with the ensuing problems of chemical-weapons accusations and East-against-West heated stand-offs.

  • Output from the seven nations that are mentioned in the report will fall over the four-year period after the revolutions of 2011 from $2.9 trillion to just $2 trillion.

The Arab Springs unleashed a political turmoil that spread across the region. It unseated the autocratic leaders of the countries that had been in power for decades and it made life difficult for the strongmen that managed to stay in power such as Bachar al-Assad. The HSBC reports states just how difficult it will be to turn that situation around now: “Nearly three years on, the economic and human cost of the Arab Spring continues to mount. In the post-revolution states, the impact is obvious: we estimate the value of lost output will top USD800bn by the end of next year. In the [Gulf Cooperation Council], it is more indirect — increased dependence on energy revenues, rising breakeven oil prices, and a stalled reform programme. For both groups, it will be hard to reverse."

Perhaps HSBC might be right that it will cost billions to those economies. But, it doesn’t seem insurmountable.

  • When the Cold War ended with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 the estimated cost of re-integrating countries that had been excluded from Europe meant that the West had to pass on between $1.5 trillion and $2 trillion(equivalent currency) to the taxpayers.

Today however, it is not purely financial worries that are stalling the economies. These countries clearly need structural reforms to change the way their societies are run. The only problem is that it would be irrational and foolish for the leaders of those countries to run the risk of seeing the people take to the streets again because of structural reforms that will result in nothing more than the suffering of the people in the immediate short-term.

Freedom has a cost. The cost is economic and it’s paid by the living standards of the populations that have worsened since the revolutions. But, sometimes it’s the price to pay when you want to oust a leader that has reduced your country to servile bondage and feudalism-like existence. Mao Zedong once said that “Revolution is not a dinner party”. Well, it might just be, but if it is, it’s an expensive one.

No revolution is free. The American Revolution cost over $14.8 million, with the Americans ending up $25 million in debt to other countries in addition to that sum. If it had assumed its debts to the private individuals that had loaned money to finance the war, then its national debt would have been $79 million. The US was overspending even back then.

Originally posted: Revolution Costs

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Wed, 10/16/2013 - 12:09 | 4060808 williambanzai7
williambanzai7's picture

Are we really interested in what HSBC, of all crooked/biased institutions, has to say on these matters?

Wed, 10/16/2013 - 09:51 | 4060054 rsnoble
rsnoble's picture

Maybe we should consider the price of NOT having a revolution.

Wed, 10/16/2013 - 08:31 | 4059824 shovelhead
shovelhead's picture

Ergo, we can conclude from the above article, that bread helmets do not boost the economy and may, in fact, make it worse.

This confirms my suspicions that this is indeed the case.

Wed, 10/16/2013 - 07:50 | 4059747 DOT
DOT's picture

Blood is the currencyof Revolution.

Wed, 10/16/2013 - 07:43 | 4059733 paint it red ca...
paint it red call it hell's picture

a bargain at any price

Wed, 10/16/2013 - 07:45 | 4059732 mvsjcl
mvsjcl's picture

Did they shed their Central Banks? If not, there were no revolutions, just a shuffling of the puppets.

Wed, 10/16/2013 - 09:41 | 4060007 SWRichmond
SWRichmond's picture

I dont think there is another pre-revolutionary state on the planet, other than the US, where the masses are almost sufficiently aware that the central banks are exactly the thing which controls them, using politicians and corporations as intermediaries.  Expect the coming US unpleasantness to include much much much "venting" in the direction of the banksters.  In spite of their efforts to build and maintain "safe" zones and enclaves within CONUS (gun-free zones such as NYC and DC), there will be nowhere where they cannot be reached out and touched.

The signs are already visible in the growing civil disobedience by the single most oppressed minority in the US: middle class whites.  They pay for literally everything in the country, and are despised and hated for it.

We've been here once before in recent memory: the post-Waco Patriot movement, culminating in the OKC attack and the public's reaction to it.  While questions over the actual origins of that attack remain, people today are MUCH more skeptical of government and any such attack by alleged "Patriot" elements would quickly be dismissed as a false flag by a large portion of the public.  Post Waco one could still go into a store and buy ammunition.  5 years post- the election of Obama, ammunition is still scarce and expensive.  The fucking sociopaths in DC can build all the mfing drones, spy balloons, and NSA centers they want.  Recall, the mighty US military could barely occupy and subdue a land area the size of Texas, called Iraq.  And, significantly, as soon as they start pulling out, the violence returns.

The thing that cannot be crushed is the will to political self-determination.  It can be bought, temporarily, with a modern welfare state, but paying the price destroys the underlying productive economy, forcing the sociopaths to resort to lying, trickery, phony accounting, printing money, etc.  The system collapses, as can plainly be seen it is.  The Europeans have gotten away with it only because we subsidized them by paying their military needs.  Their system, too, is now collapsing.  Burden-shifting is at and end because there is nowhere left to shift it.  Math reasserts itself.  Build or die, once replaced with "borrow or die", then with "print or die", is once again inevitably becoming "build or die".

Human memory is but a generation or two in length.  We must needs relearn all of the truths of human existence.  Some authors posit cycles in human history, and if they are true they are driven by the power of human forgetting, and of needing to find out for one's self.  You can NEVER trust anyone who rules.  The sociopaths ALWAYS rise to the top, driven by their avarice and lust for power, and freed by their amorality.  Lie / cheat / steal / kill comes naturally to them.  Such men are always among us, and they will NEVER admit it.  They will ALWAYS say they want to serve us, but we must know it is their own motives they serve, and none other.  Read history.  Get your kids out of the public schools if you have to and teach them history yourself.

We ARE at a turning point.  While I do not believe even the US government is powerful enough to fight and subdue the entire country, I AM certain they WILL try, and they WILL use all of the violence they can muster.  Violence, it seems, is the only language they understand.  Government attracts those violent personalities and so it becomes something mostly violent, willing to use violence, seeking violence, worshipping violence, elevating it above all else.  I'd change that if I could, but alas...

The OP worries about the hit to GDP.  Is slavery preferable?  Make no mistake, that is what the future holds.  This government means to take over everything and everyone, implementing a neo-feudalism globally.  We will pitch into an even more powerful government than the one we suffer under now, or we will reinstate a system much more characterized by voluntary rather than violent cooperation.

Wed, 10/16/2013 - 11:53 | 4060629 El Vaquero
El Vaquero's picture

...I AM certain they WILL try, and they WILL use all of the violence they can muster.

 

Which is akin to bombing their own supply lines. 

 

But I don't think that the people are really aware of the corruption inherent in the banking system.  Oh, I do think they're vaguely aware that there is something that they ought to be pissed off about, but it's murky and they don't understand it, so they're not really that pissed off.  They feel a bit of a draft due to the lack of wool on their hides after having been sheared, but the butcher hasn't arrived yet.  Rather, I think that many are pissed off about the draconian LEO tactics used for things which pose less of a threat to an individual's safety than simply getting in a car and driving.  I think people are starting to wake up to the fact that sending a paramilitary force into somebody's house to shoot his dogs and possibly him as well because he might have some weed is not making society any better.  I know people are pissed off about the blueshirts in the TSA.  (Blue is the new brown these days, it seems.) 

 

Most people understand tyrrany in simple terms.  Being told that they cannot use a public facility because some assholes are playing politics.  Having their doors kicked in because of some perverse war on drugs.  Being spied on because some paranoid fucks just have to know everything.  Simply being told to do by some roided out cop who has no legal justification to make people do anything, but he will lie his ass off on the stand if you don't do what he says.  Hell, even having the best Congress that money can buy will be uderstood to be bad, but not really why it is bad.  But, the people will not understand the subtelties of how a currency which arises from debt can be used to ensalve and control them until after the system has gotten so bad that it causes death and distruction within our own boundaries on a massive scale.  And even then, many will look to some leader to tell them what is wrong and why it is wrong. 

 

http://www.policestateusa.com/2013/chicago-marathon-featured-warrantless...

Wed, 10/16/2013 - 06:45 | 4059649 Hobbleknee
Hobbleknee's picture

"Freedom has a cost. The cost is economic and it’s paid by the living standards of the populations that have worsened since the revolutions."

Who was freed in these staged revolutions?

Note also the Egypt's current/projected (2.2/3%) growth rates are still better than the Land of The Free's ® (1.6/2.6%).

Wed, 10/16/2013 - 10:57 | 4060425 Doubleguns
Doubleguns's picture

What were the benefits of our first revolution. I bet they post better than this authors examples of just the costs.

Wed, 10/16/2013 - 08:46 | 4059857 Dick Buttkiss
Dick Buttkiss's picture

Regime change is not change at all but perpetuation of the status, as in statist, quo. The only real revolution, then, will be devolution — from the central state to the constituent states to county federations and city-states — and finally dissolution, as "the market for liberty" — http://mises.org/books/marketforliberty.pdf — finally renders all territorial monopolies on the use of force null and void.

This will not be possible, however, without a truly free Internet and the crypto-currencies that will assure genuine freedom of communication and financial privacy, respectively, thereby unleashing the full power of the individual in concert with his fellows worldwide.

The univeralization of the Global Citizen, in other words, unobstructed by political boundaries and the myirad "tax farms" they comprise, reducing the world's populations to sheep to be sheared, cows to be milked, and pigs to be slaughtered.

Fortunately, the state, by its very nature, is bringing about its own demise, having so plundered society that it has little left to live on than the Monopoly money it must conjure up in ever vaster quantities.

As Jim Rogers recently said, this will "end badly," the first question being how bad, meaning to what length the state will go to perpetuate itself.

The answer is that it will go to any length, up to and including nuclear annihilation — "If you can't fuck it, kill it" — the second question being whether humanity can wrestle enough power from it to avoid this horrific outcome and move on to realize its all but limitless potential. 

I have to think that it will. And I therefore do.

Wed, 10/16/2013 - 08:55 | 4059886 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

Excellent!

Wed, 10/16/2013 - 07:51 | 4059749 Ying-Yang
Ying-Yang's picture

A surprising statement from one of Texas’ top leaders:

President Obama should be impeached. This came from Texas Lt. Governor David Dewhurst, who is running for re-election and appeared at a Tea Party candidates forum.

http://dfw.cbslocal.com/2013/10/15/lt-gov-dewhurst-says-president-obama-...

Wed, 10/16/2013 - 08:51 | 4059873 Anusocracy
Anusocracy's picture

I'd be willing to bet that the ongoing cost of government plus the government created economic collapse in Greece, Iceland, Italy, etc. is much more.

The cost of government is above 50% in most countries and is antithetical to freedom, which adds another cost if you want to be free from it.

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