Stabilizing Unrest or Fattening The Calf?

Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah

Let’s imagine for a minute that you’re one of the most fantastically rich men in the world, and you run a small oil-rich country in the Middle East. In the past two months, two guys (both lizard people) that you’re acquainted with have been thrown out of similar jobs (Tunisia) or are about to be (Egypt), and are on the run from their own population. What do you do?

If you’re Sheikh Sabah al-Ahmad al-Sabah of Kuwait, you write a check to each of your resident citizens in your country in hopes that it will help keep them quiet and happy. No surprise, there’s no hints of riots or mass dissent in Kuwait now that this law has been passed. On the other hand, Kuwait also doesn’t have some of the same symptoms that Tunisia and Egypt (and many other nations in the Middle East) do. Many of the nations currently experiencing unrest also face truly epidemic unemployment, a lack of basic social services that would make even the GOP here in America cry, and overwhelming corruption in the public sector.

If you are the lizard person leader of an country, is paying off your citizens in return for not rioting stabilizing potential unrest, or just fattening the calf so that when the day comes that you begin eating your citizens, they are well fed?