A simple method for estimating extent of evil influence in governments
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This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
Unported license.
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It was mentioned in the previous note how some countries in the world have become so chaotic that they have become failed states. When a state fails, it does not necessarily mean that its government has become bad or evil. There can be other historical reasons that lead to such a sad situation. Conversely, when a country is extremely stable, it does not necessarily imply that there is no evil within that government, but how does one assess or estimate evil if any?
Things like evil, good, happiness are all abstract things
that can be felt but not measured. Nevertheless they produce symptoms and
effects that can be measured that may be used to assess such things. In an
earlier note, this principle was used to assess happiness levels of various
countries on the planet using measurable data such as infant mortality and
homicide rates etc. The results that emerged were highly realistic and in line
with general assessments. A similar methodology may be used to assess extent of
evil in governments too. In fact, it requires only simple arithmetic and some
easily available data to do so. Usually this blogger reserves mathematics and
science for his scientific publications but some simple parts of it are used in
this blog at times as we shall do now. All it needs is knowledge of simple
multiplication and square root of numbers, something that is available on
simple calculators.
While things like corruption in governance is a measure of
bad and degenerate behavior and its indirect effects are evil, it may not be
evil that is something far more sinister. However, let us first understand what
evil is as different from merely bad.
Good is measured by the golden rule of doing to another as one would
have done to oneself and bad as its reverse. However, it becomes evil when one
is willing to profit even from much suffering and possible death of another human since
nothing could be more sinister. Evil may go even further than that when it not only profits from suffering of others but derives a false sense of satisfaction, pleasure and power from it. Causing the death of other humans can at times be death of criminals
or in self defense, but when it
comes to things that lead to suffering and possible death of human children and
profiting from it, nothing could be more clearly evil. Therefore, data
connected to misery of children in nations is useful to quickly assess evil in
governance of different countries of our world
The idea for the present note emerged from some data
published by a US
senator Bernie Sanders on twitter on child poverty rates of different
countries. He is expected by many to be the next President of the USA. The data
is shown below.
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| https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/650452495320416256 |
The data is from UNICEF at the link given on the photo. The interested reader may refer to that source for an idea of the methodology used for obtaining child poverty rates, this being a brief note that is omitting details. This data can be used to assess evil in governance through a
simple thumb rule hypothesized by this author by reflection and mathematical
knowledge on a heuristic basis as an approximate and rough indicator of an otherwise abstract thing to quantify. It is this:
Percentage evil influence in governance of a country = ten times the
square root of child poverty rates
Or stated as a formula,
EG% = 10 X (Child Poverty Rate) ^ (1/2)
Thus if a country exceeds a child poverty rate of 25 percent
the percentage evil would come as excess of 50% by this formula. Exceeding this rate implies
that there is more evil than good in the government of that country. If child
poverty rate is 1 percent that result would be 10% evil i.e. even if one child
in a hundred has to go to bed hungry as a rule in a country, there is at least
10% evil in that country even though in the main, 90% of it is good governance. At
the other extreme, if there is near 100% child poverty then the government is
near 100% evil by this formula.
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| Evil in Governance related to child poverty rates |
Two of the countries in this list, UK and USA both have in
excess of 25 percent child poverty rate and thus also unfortunately more than
50% evil as per this calculation. It is unfortunate because both of these
countries have a very significant influence on world affairs. As had been
mentioned earlier, evil implies even profiting from possible death of fellow humans and
such deaths are affected for example when one profits from sale of arms abroad and uncontrolled sale of guns at
home that may kill innocent humans, even children; this is only one example and their are numerous other ways of profiting from possible death of fellow humans and children. Another is permitting makers of life saving medicines to make obscene profits, making feeding the homeless illegal, denying medical care to poor etc. The various methods that could lead to snuffing the life out of sweet innocent children and fellow humans and make a profit out of that for one's pleasure and mansions are endless.
The question that some may wonder about is how did these two wonderful countries, US and UK, that might have messed up the world to some extent yet contributed so much good to it too get into this sorry state? The source of that seems to be first that power corrupts not just individuals but nations too, a power these nations acquired due to their economic progress first and next from a victory in WWII. The next is greed that prosperity causes because greed fuels more greed and this has led to undesirable policies at home and abroad leading for instance to a rise in economic inequalities over the last three decades. These two nations are not the only ones to which such a thing has happened. It has happened to all from the beginning of civilization including Sumeria, Greece and Rome.
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| Text superimposed on an archive photo of author's Grand Ma |
However the good news is that both these countries have now
exceedingly good humans who are expected by many to lead these nations in the
near future. This will reverse the tide of greed and evil that may have entered
these countries. They are Bernie Sanders of USA and Jeremy Corbyn of UK. Both are
senior citizens with a long history of political action, therefore one can make
such statements about them. One cannot about young politicians who can easily
pull wool over eyes of people with their false words as many have done. At times a young leaders is good to begin with but there is much truth in the adage that power corrupts. The young are corrupted soon after coming into power and the world is full of such examples, while the old are too set in their ways for this to happen in brief periods of their governance, moreover they have less future and family life ahead and therefore less reason to become corrupt.
Interestingly both these politicians had strongly opposed an action of USA and UK in recent decades that has
caused a huge amount of suffering in the world, The Iraq war.
UPDATE October 2016: Since this note was written Bernie Sanders was either pulled out or dropped out of the race and no longer remains a hope for USA. It is sincerely hoped that Jeremy Corbyn also does not meet a similar fate.
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Jeremy Corbyn, the labour party leader, next expected by many PM
of UK, was in Social Bite today for breakfast
and pre-payed for some of "suspended meals" for the homeless
https://twitter.com/SocialBite_/status/649998422284480514/photo/1 |
Note: Since the child poverty rates are also dependent on general poverty rates of a country the child poverty rate has to be viewed in a relative manner. For simplicity, adding more factors for that have been kept out of the present formulation that works fairly well when comparing countries with similar order of magnitude per capita incomes, of the highest levels as prevail on the planet. For lower per capita income countries the multiplying factor has to be adjusted and that complication is presently not included here. making the multiplying factor ten a function of per capita income (not GDP) and cost of living index would make it more widely applicable. This further work has been left for future or another socio-spiritual scientist who may wish to pursue the present approach further. If someone does it would be appreciated if informed as a comment here.
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