Boy band mogul sentenced to 25 years

Boy band mogul Lou Pearlman, who launched Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync, was sentenced to 25 years in prison Wednesday for swindling investors and major U.S.banks out of more than US$300 million, in a news article that I read today. This guy provides a prominent example of a psychopath in action. He defrauded his family, his close friends and people in their 70s and 80s who have lost their life savings.

This quote from his cousin Lois Nevler says it all:

Lou Pearlman was robbing me of my savings, while smiling and saying everything was great, with full intent of what he was doing," she wrote. "Any human being that can intentionally do what he has done is a horrible, evil man, without a conscience and definitely without a soul.

Obviously, having managed such famous bands he should have been comfortably off financially and yet he carried on a scam for two decades, amassing more and more wealth at the expense of his victims. He set up two sham companies that existed only on paper and managed to attract investment even from banks, so clearly he was persuasive and convincing as many psychopaths are. I would think the percentage of psychopaths in the ranks of leading entrepreneurs would be well above the level in the general population.

The problem is that people will read about Lou Pearlman and dismiss him as an aberration, clinging to a belief that human beings are basically good and that there's only a few rotten apples amongst us. The reality is that maybe 5% of the apples are rotten, that's 1 in 20, and that is unsettling.

Psychopathocracy

I just love my recently discovered word psychopathocracy, which means rule by psychopaths, because to a large extent it helps to explain the state of the world. A psychopath can lie, cheat, manipulate and charm the people about him without feeling the slightest glimmer of conscience or guilt. I say him because the majority of psychopaths, about 80% or more, are male and given their superficial charm and inner ruthlessness, it's not surprising that they rise quickly in politics, business and the judiciary. They are attracted to power because they then have more opportunity to indulge their utter self-centredness.

The term psychopath has been widely misunderstood and misapplied. There is a tendency to think of the screen character Hannibal Lector as the archetypal psychopath but in fact this character is rather atypical. The great majority are not murderers and never attract the attention of the police. Psychopaths are far more likely to manipulate than to murder. It is their shameless and skilful scheming that helps them rise to the top of whatever profession they enter. Non-psychopathic personalities cannot conceive of such deviousness and are always at a disadvantage.

Psychopaths can never admit that they are wrong and will always find an excuse for their behaviour or someone else to blame if their schemes are uncovered. The percentage of psychopaths in the general population is estimated to be around 5% but their concentration is likely to be far higher in the upper echelons of the military, government, medical profession, legal profession and the CEOs of large corporations. They live amongst us, dominate our institutions and yet they are an alien race that has remained undetected for the larger part of human history. Only in the last one hundred years has their existence been recognised but even today, their numbers and influence are vastly underestimated.

I'll have more to say on this topic of course and I'll quote from some corroborating sources (the idea is not just in my head) but today I'd like to congratulate myself on reaching prime day number 21599. Saturday is also a prime number day (21601) and so I'm especially happy to be enjoying twin prime days.

Handouts to the Poor

Who says SBY doesn't care about the peasants? He's getting ready to hand out US$1.55 million to 19.1 million households (or 76.4 million people) of the nation's poor to offset the forthcoming fuel price increases. During the first phase of this scheme, each household will receive Rp100,000 per month until December. Dire threats have been issued against "any officials found to be hindering the flow of funds to rightful recipients" but as usual this will be a relatively common practice. Typically, some of this amount will be cut by the distributing official, let's say Rp20,000. If the recipient complains then some bureaucratic impediment will be invented to stop any money being paid at all.

Many genuinely poor people don't qualify because they don't have the necessary documentation. The documentation costs money and so it's a Catch 22. Even those poor who do manage to get the full amount will find that it doesn't go far. Eventually the handouts will stop altogether, so it's only a temporary expedient at best. People are hurting and it's interesting that The Jakarta Post, that sad excuse for a national daily, carries very little news coverage of the real impact this is having. From other reliable sources, I've heard that suicide rates caused by financial stress are soaring but statistics on this are hard to come by. Crime rates are climbing as well and again there's very little coverage given to this. I guess they don't want to be seen to be panicking the expats.

Blogging Back from the Brink

Is there anything sadder than a dead blog? Someone has actually started a Graveyard of Dead Blogs, a site where people can drop off links to dead blogs (defined as blogs that have been inactive for more than three months) so that they have a final resting place. Here is the link.

I don't want my blog to end up there and so it must live on, at least while I remain in Jakarta. There's no shortage of interesting news, that's for sure, and the most interesting is a plan to raise the price of fuel by 25 or 30% in July. The fuel subsidy within the country in blowing the budget out of the water because of the soaring price of oil but reducing the subsidy will be deeply unpopular and a rash of demonstrations can be expected over the next couple of months in the lead up to it. Electricity prices are also expected to rise shortly and food prices have been soaring all year. More and more people are slipping below the poverty line and the government seems oblivious.

The Vice President recently got annoyed when questioned about rising poverty rates and countered with the observation that all the malls were still full of shoppers. Indeed they are and more luxury malls are being built and more are planned. These ground water guzzling, electricity hungry, green space swallowing malls are lasting monuments to rampant corporate greed and environmental irresponsibility. Needless to say, the Vice President is a businessman. Away from the shopping malls however, all is not well and these monuments to Mammon may end up as smoking shells if the peasants decide to revolt.

The VP is also a politician of course and lately he's been seen almost daily in photographs on the pages of The Jakarta Post, doing the sorts of things politicians do to get noticed. Clearly, he has an eye on the presidency but his popularity is low and he is unlikely to be a serious contender. The President remains the most popular choice for voters by a long margin in spite of a demonstrated lack of leadership and a well-established reputation for indecision. The run-up to next year's election should be interesting with the VP and his Golkar Party desperate to regain the glory days they enjoyed under Suharto. To this end, they are certainly working on "strategies" but further speculation on this subject is subject to self-imposed censorship.

Climate of Fear

I'd actually prepared a post several days ago but hesitated to publish it. On further reflection, I realised the time had come to cease commenting on events in Indonesia. A climate of fear is taking root in this country and I for one no longer feel comfortable publicly broadcasting my views on the political and social situation here. Enough said.