A simple method for estimating extent of evil influence in governments

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https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Children_games_Louvre_Ma99_n2.jpg
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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.

 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.

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.
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.


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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