When our electoral race is a bidding war between two parties promising cash hand outs to voters, that

is when my country becomes a beggar society where no private business can survive. I am a Mongolian student who wants to start a spare parts manufacturing company in my home country. I apply to an American university far from home; clearly I assume that it is by being better educated and by working harder that I can reach my goal. Simply put, I believe that success will, or at least should follow merit. Meritocracy, the type that I believe in and the type that makes society as a whole better, is rendered irrelevant by the populist political environment that characterizes Mongolian democracy. Handouts, such as the overnight 50% increase in public sector wages passed in November, would end my business. As a private employer I would have to match that increase just to retain my staff. While labor costs have risen 50%, it is absolute nonesense that worker productivity has risen by an amount even remotely approaching that figure. To me, a future business owner, that would mean margins slashed to a sliver and an inflationary environment in which funding costs would rise dramatically ahead of runaway inflation. A government that raises wages arbitrarily is a government that competes against private enterprises by essentially bribing the workforce to demand higher compensation for no reason. Its a bribe for a vote that I would be forced to match at the cost of being strangled by the price of it or else lose talent. I would not lose employees because my company would be uncompetitive but simply because I would not have firepower comparable to the government's coffers. In short my hardwork, or my expertise, would be irrelevant. Before private enterprises, society is the first casualty. The political parties of Mongolia continue to compete in terms of hand outs simply because the country can now afford to. Mongolians are aware of their country's mineral wealth and have grown to expect that parties vie to offer them the most handouts for simply having been born in this particular part of the world. It is no coincidence that every single citizen is given the equivalent of 18 Dollars a month unconditionally, is offered about 800 Dollars' worth of shares in a state owned enterprise and that foreign companies are forced to pay exhorbitant wages. Yet the same funds could be spent on improving the nation's woeful infrastructure, improving education or social security mechanisms. Instead funds are directly handed out unconditionally, by which the population inevitably learns to take our wealth for granted and even expects such periodical payments to be made. Competition is stifled, cash handouts are given for no reason, meritocracy becomes a memory. It first of all would become extremely difficult for me to compete against government inflationary policies, and second of all it would be senseless if I can always expect a loaf of bread to fall out of the sky.