Cash on the Barrelhead Gets You Anything

(First published in Bali Advertiser, Jan. 27, 2010)

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand."
                                                           -- “The Rich Boy” (1926), F. Scott Fitzgerald

There is nothing wrong with my life that a few hundred thousand euros wouldn’t fix.

I am not particularly venal, and don’t especially believe that money can buy happiness. But the extra cash would go a long way toward relieving immediate anxieties about keeping the wolf from the door, and maybe the wife and I could start up that little organic farming operation cum hotel on our land in the north.
 I could walk off the day job, the daydream of every working stiff since the Israelis were stacking up pyramids for the pharaohs. (I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that there are Chinese, Thai and Lithuanian counterparts to that old Johnny Paycheck country classic, “Take This Job and Shove It,” or that a Friday night standard on every Russian jukebox is the Soviet-era “Comrade, I’ll Be Party to This No More.”)

Then, once the most pressing bills are paid off and pipe dreams set in motion, I could start thinking about more reliable, flashier transport, where to put the pool, what countries to hit on our next round-the-world cruise. Therein lies the problem of money. Spending plans tend to increase with the budget, all the more so if costs are hidden and the money comes without any pain.

That is one reason why Indonesia’s systemic corruption is so hard to eradicate: Other people’s cash is just too-easy pickings for any official with a stamp and an inkpad. How can you expect a person to give up the easy path to the good life if everyone else in the office is already discussing which options are de rigueur on the 2010 Kijangs?

Money – earned, inherited or stolen – also has a way of making people feel they deserve or are worthy of more respect, attention and privilege than the next guy over. And this feeling of deserving more is what is targeted in several European countries by a beautiful legal concept that has them charging wealthy drivers more for breaking the speed limit. Such a law had a Swiss court recently fining a Ferrari driver nearly US$300,000 for driving 100 km/h through a town posted with a 50 km/h speed limit, according to an Associated Press article.

In Germany, France, Austria and the Nordic countries, income-based traffic punishments can reach into the millions, with the top fine in Germany potentially US$16.6 million, the article said. Last year in Switzerland, six men from Hong Kong were given fines of up to US$90,000 each for driving through the country at speeds over 200 km/h in rented Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Aston Martins and Audis.

Granted, some experts say that the deterrent effect of the laws is questionable. They say that people normally don’t do a cost-benefit analysis before commit such crimes as speeding. Or that the law could lead to poor people paying “ridiculously” small fines for infringements such as drunk driving.

Still, this is the kind of populist law that a confessed slow-freak, pedestrian and bicyclist could really get behind, and if such a law were enacted in Indonesia, it might end the fantasies I have of building meter-high speed bumps to stop Land Cruisers from driving 60 km/h on the narrow roads through our village.

Alas, the law in Indonesia seems to be predicated on the concept that the rich really are different from you and me, that they really do deserve better treatment, and that those who can afford to pay the least, must suffer the most. Just ask 76-year-old Kliijo Sumarto and the 19-year-olds, Supriyono and Sulastri, all apparently desperate banana thieves so dangerous that their potential threat to society demands that they be locked up for a period of years.

And while there might be some understanding for the youngsters, a poor couple who stole a bunch of bananas hoping they could sell them for 7,000 rupiah and buy some rice, the case for Kliijo looks especially bad. Police in Slemen in Yogyakarta, according to a report in the Jakarta Globe, say the old recalcitrant is a serious repeat offender who stole a chicken four years ago.

Meanwhile, the rich and influential steal whole forests, disregard green space, traffic and environmental laws as they please, and pay off any authorities that have the temerity to challenge them.

I tell you, it is no way to run a country. Thus endeth the sermon.

Copyright © 2010 Lee Roy LeRoi