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Olivia sat at her desk and wrote studiously at her essay for class presentation. After the regulated hour was up, each of the students had to get up and present a 5 minute summary of their essay and then hand their essay in. The teacher was very strict and harsh, but each of the students got along well and had mutual empathy for the torture being inflicted.
Olivia's turn came up.
"My essay was on why I want to go and live in a Banana Republic."
The teacher looked up at her - failing one of her smarty-pants students was always a bit of fun (she was a bit of a sadist at heart). "And prey explain why you would want to do that Olivia? Do you know what a Banana Republic is?"
Olivia could see her teacher turning on the hard-nose - ready for the dive. She countered:
"A Banana Republic is a country that that is either politically or economically unstable. It is usually dependent on a limited resource such as the exportation of bananas, to manage financially."
"Oh - OK." The teacher realized this wasn't the fail she wan't anticipating. "So why on earth would you want to move there? Humanitarian work"
"No. Although that would be an excellent career choice. I would simply like to move off the grid to a country that has no underlying world debt and has not been touched by commercialism. It would be interesting to see what life would be like to move back to the basics and remove technology; at least for awhile. Because Banana Republics have an unstable economic development, they have devalued currency and the country is ineligible for international credit. By default, they're actually richer, because they haven't gone into debt."
Everyone thought about that. There must be a flaw in that argument somewhere, but the teacher was tired and decided to go outside for a cigarette and deal with it later.
"OK Olivia, hand it in and lets all go to break."
As they walked out, the teacher looked at Olivia and realized she never identified which country they were talking about. A lot of the Banana Republics were in Massive Debt - but she never said which one. Smarty pants!!