One tragic consequence of Indonesia’s unregulated laissez-faire economy is that people live unprotected lives; many die prematurely, the society’s infrastructure (such as it is) is collapsing, and poverty grows evermore severe.
“Hunger and malnutrition remain the most devastating problems facing the majority of Indonesians,” festering in some form in almost every district of the country, according to one Indonesian health official. “At present, about one-half of the population is iron-deficient and one-third is at risk of iodine deficiency disorders. Vitamin A deficiency still affects around ten million children.”18
Indonesia’s state hospitals are in dire condition, reports Vltchek. Medical service is so dangerously substandard and open to corrupt practices that most Indonesians avoid hospitals and clinics.19
Indonesia also is beset by manmade disasters. Poorly maintained airliners disappear in flight or careen off runways. Worn ferry boats sink or break apart on the high seas. Ports are in ruinous conditions. Trains crash or are derailed on the average of one a week. Dilapidated buses regularly end up as roadside wrecks. Cheaply constructed and neglected houses collapse and kill their occupants. There are no occupational or consumer protections to speak of. It is buyer beware and worker watch out. Communities of garbage scavengers are accidentally buried alive under massive illegal foul-smelling dumps. Landslides push makeshift dwellings into ravines. Floods and tidal waves destroy unprotected villages. Life is cheap in this free market paradise. In less than three years, Indonesia lost some 200,000 people in disasters, not counting automobile accidents and military actions.20 The country’s news media report these tragic mishaps but without reference to the corrupt, unregulated laissez-faire governance that does nothing to prevent such catastrophes and much to make them happen.
Indonesia has plenty of materiel to build safe homes and communities, notes Vltchek, plenty to modernize rail lines and buses, construct walls and levies to protect against floods, and reinforce the hills around towns that are in danger of being crushed by landslides. But there is no profit in such ventures. The free market has no interest in human needs that are not backed by commercial buying power. Instead, construction goes into dozens of new shopping malls in Jakarta and mansions for corrupt officials.21
Public spaces that might be used for parks and playgrounds are turned into golf courses and luxury clubs for the very affluent. Indonesia’s economic elites, the free market’s winners, are little concerned about how the impoverished masses might fare. They themselves reside in grand comfort, served by an underpaid and obedient labor force of nannies, maids, drivers, gardeners, and cooks.22
Vltchek describes the misery and squalor that free market imperial power brings to the common people:
One turn [off] from the main streets and the real Jakarta exposes its wounds: filthy narrow alleys, channels clogged with garbage, makeshift stores selling unhygienic food, children running barefoot; thousands of big and small mosques, but not one decent playground for children. Garbage accumulates at every corner and polluted air penetrates throat and eyes. Little girls are offering themselves for a pittance, while boys are sniffing glue from plastic bags.
Each year, Indonesia destroys more forests than any other country in the world. Deforestation causes landslides, and as a result thousands of people die annually as their houses slide into ravines.
The train system has not been overhauled since the Dutch colonial administration (circa 1942). Trains are regularly derailed. Passengers trying to save money on fares occasionally fall to their death through the rusty roofs on which they are traveling. No Indonesian city has an acceptable public transportation system. Some, including Bandung (with three million people), are served only by a few dilapidated buses and private minivans.23
Indonesian elites retain fond memories of Suharto. After destroying Sukarno’s government and slaughtering the egalitarian popular movement in 1965–1966, Suharto imposed a corrupt reactionary rule, backed by an Indonesian military that was—and still is—in service to the US empire and its transnational corporate clients. He claimed he was saving the country while sacrificing it on the altar of laissez-faire plunder. “Since 1965,” concludes Vltchek, “we have been told that oppression is democracy, that poverty is development, that censorship is freedom of expression, that a collapsing nation is not collapsing at all, and that everything is forgiven and the nation is grateful to Suharto— the departing king of Java who saved capitalism, the nation, and this entire part of the world.”24