The Lessons of Pinochet

Former President Auguste Pinochet of Chile, who died last week, was a dictator who toppled a would-be Marxist dictator. With all this dictator-ology going on, his life offers many lessons to us, writes Peruvian Alvaro Vargas Llosa.

• “The first lesson is that social utopias always end in tears.”
  
• “The second lesson is that there is no such thing as an ‘emergency’ dictatorship.”
  
• “The third lesson is that free markets and dictatorial governments are ultimately incompatible.” Dictatorship is about power, and the free market is about the regulation of power.
  
• “The fourth lesson is that human rights are not an invention of human rights groups[.]” The rule of law was developed for a good reason, that all power corrupts and usually results in a reduction of the welfare of the people.
  

The story of Chile and General Pinochet had a happy ending. Pinochet gave up power and returned democracy to Chile.

But as we tut-tut about the abuses of Pinochet let us not forget the unhappy people of Cuba, still under the rule of the ruthless dictator Fidel Castro and still getting poorer by the day.