by Fred E. Foldvary

From 1925 to 1963 there used to be signs along American country roads advertising " Burma shave." The Burma-Vita company sold a shaving cream, which it advertised with a series of highway billboard signs where a rhyming humorous message was read one sign at a time. For example:

A peach
looks good
with lots of fuzz
but man's no peach
and never was.
Burma-Shave

and

Don't take a curve
at 60 per
we hate to lose
a customer.
Burma-Shave

The country of Burma is in turmoil. Its dictators changed the name of the nation to Myanmar, just like the Congolese dictator changed its country name to Zaire. After the dictator was deposed, the name was changed back to Congo. Likewise, when the present dictators of Burma are finally overthrown, the new regime will probably restore the previous name. We don't want to call Burmese cats "Myanmar cats." The people are proudly Burmese.

There are reports that the government of Burma has used slave labor. In 1994, the Associated Press wrote that Burma's military rulers used thousands of enslaved workers to build a railroad. Another report on August 2007 stated that thousands of Burmese workers in one of the Burmese islands are prohibited from riding motorcycles and using mobile phones, and they may not go out after 8 am unless accompanied by their employer.

The Santa Cruz Sentinel forum had some Burma-Shave type rhymes about the "Burma slaves" of today. The military dictators have enslaved the entire country, and recently brutally repressed protests led by Buddhist monks. There were previous protests by students that were squashed. But this time, I think the regime is doomed to failure. When a regime shoots into crowds, it is a signal that its demise is coming soon. When the people are so angry that they have lost their fear of the regime, the game is finished. That's what happened in Romania, Iran, Russia, and other countries that deposed the autocrats.

The Santa Cruz "Burma slave" rhymes were criticized in the forum as bringing a serious problem - people in Burma getting killed - down to the level of Burma Shave ads. But often people who are oppressed have themselves used humor as a tool of coping with the pain. With sympathy, respect, and admiration to the people of Burma, here are some signs that could appear on the road to Mandalay:

Shooting into crowds,
a sign
of a lying,
dying
line.
Burma slaves

Brave monks
have lost their fear.
Elephant trunks
will squeeze the rulers.
The end is near.
Burma slaves.

Myanmar?
A nation marred.
It burns with fury.
The Burmese cats
Will be the jury.
Burma slaves.

This article first appeared in the Progress Report, www.progress.org. Reprinted with permission.

Dr. Fred Foldvary teaches economics at Santa Clara University and is the author of several books: The Soul of Liberty, Public Goods and Private Communities, and the Dictionary of Free-Market Economics.