The Colonel and his problems

The Colonel has problems when they shouldn't.

By taking his country's oil wealth under tight control, the colonel gave the people almost everything the people could dream of.

He said: “Home is the basic need of the individual and the family, and should not belong to other people. To live in someone else's house, for rent or without it, means to be subject to restriction of freedom. And these were not just words. The colonel gave the people housing.

When he came to power, a sixth of the country's population lived in slums. Now there are no slums at all, and 92.6% of housing in the country are private houses and apartments in which their owners live. This is the highest level of home ownership in the world. Higher than in Norway (there 80%) - the most "proprietary" country in Europe, higher than in Singapore (there 85%), higher than in the American Midwest (74%).

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And if the colonel is frankly crazy, and this is noticeable not only to his audience at the UN, when he condescendingly calls Barack Obama "son" from the podium? What to do if some inadequacy of the colonel is obvious to his subjects?

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The colonel said: "Society should provide education of all kinds and give its citizens the opportunity to choose the kind that is more in line with their nature." He promised that he would give the people a universal free education, including higher education, and he did. There were now 10.2 pupils per teacher in his country's secondary schools; in the United States, 11. And 99.8% of his country's residents aged 15 to 24 are literate. World level - 90%.

The colonel promised that there would be no poverty in the country. He almost kept his word. In his country, 7.4% of the population lives below the poverty line. In the USA - 12% (in both cases, the data is American, from the CIA directory of countries of the world). Yes, there is a lot of unemployment in the country, but you can not work here so as not to die of hunger.

There are disgruntled people in every country. But in the country of the colonel there is a civil war. His capital passes from hand to hand, like some kind of Odessa under the Reds and Whites. No one even knows where the colonel is, only, perhaps, his sons. But it is not always clear where the colonel's sons are.

Does this happen when the majority of the population is well-fed, satisfied, lives better than in all neighboring countries? Here it is customary to say that satiety, which came to Russia along with our own lieutenant colonel, hinders the development of protest moods and civil society in general: well-fed people are indifferent.

But here, anything can happen. When the Colonel himself and his children earn extra money consulting on oil projects, when one of his sons has a mansion in London with a pool and a cinema for 10 million pounds, life in the country rests on bribes no less than on the official system of government. Even well-fed people do not really like this.

And if the colonel is frankly crazy, and this is noticeable not only to his audience at the UN, when he condescendingly calls Barack Obama "son" from the podium? What to do if some inadequacy of the colonel is obvious to his subjects? At some point, they stop laughing and think about what problems a leader who is not completely oriented in reality can create for them. Moreover, they may even have doubts that he will leave the right legacy on the day when oil inevitably runs out, and housing, education and all kinds of social benefits will begin to be sorely lacking money, like neighbors. Indeed, in a country where the colonel is the only authority, and at the same time law, constitution and freedom are all rolled into one, there is no one else to take care of the inheritance.

No, I do not want to say at all that instead of the words "Libya" and "Gaddafi" one can even conditionally enter "Russia" and "Putin". In no case is it possible. The social achievements of our authorities are more modest than those of the Libyan ones.