Mauritius: A Glimmer of African Freedom
mises.org
mises.org
(I realise that attracting tourism can be a double-edged sword)
Regarding rubbish and immigration, the largest population group there are indians, the most disregard to rubbish seems to come from their culture (have you been to India?). But they're also the largest contributors to growing tech sector for example.
People who visit on holiday say how wonderful the place is, beautiful beaches and clear blue seas. But move to other areas of the island and it's a completely different place. Walk 5 minutes down the road from the fanciest hotel and there's a shanty town.
Mauritius certainly has a great opportunity and is probably better than a lot of the other African countries, but it still has a long way to go.
But that's the "freedom" Mises Institute applauds - freedom for foreigners to invest in local industries but not contribute much back besides employment.
Okay, taxes are lower there than in Germany or France, government spends less - but what are the effects? Do people live better there than in Europe? Are there any companies that prefer to do business in Mauritius rather than in Germany because of lower taxes?
I understand that libertarians see low taxes and governmental nonintervention as good things, but his point would be much stronger if he showed any positive effects of these factors.
http://blog.mises.org/7128/the-rule-of-law-without-the-state...
BTW, I love Mauritius!
With anything like this, you have to balance it with other indicators like life expectancy and quality of life indexes to get an overall picture of what it is like to live in the country.
Somalia is a tribal country with institutions that provide legal and judicial support for resolving disputes peacefully going back centuries. I'm sure they do have private roads, for which you have to pay a toll, but you have toll roads in many countries.
I read one report that the pirates who were operating off of the somali coast operated like startups. One guy would put up some guns, others would put up labor, another the boat, some would stay ashore and provide financing or support. The profits would be divided among them according to their shares. The system works because the desire to go out again keeps them honest.
The "pirates" effectively operate as the somali coast guard, going after ships that are in their states waters. These pirates were previously fisherman until china decided that they could start overfishing the area. So they go and collect tolls.
I guess it is romantic to call them pirates, and it certainly serves the interests of the west to characterize somalia as a hellhole.
But the primary problem facing somalia is not that they don't have a functioning society-- they do-- but that the western interests, specifically the US and the UK, keep making war on them.
The UN created schools but the teachers are unmotivated, and so the somalis, who are generally relatively wealthy, set up private schools of their own.
I have a friend who has been there and who worked on a proposal to put in a port and a road across some of the territory into ethiopia. However, the investors were scared off when an american general promised to "bomb the hell out of it" if they built the road and the port. So, my knowledge of the situation on the ground is dated a few years and mostly relevant to the north.
But Somalia is actually a relatively safe, stable society, it exhibits a fair bit of success in free market principles and in operating without a state. They are able to provide security, and repel invasions for the most part, without a central government.
Your assertion that Somalians are generally relatively wealthy does seem a huge stretch for a country with such a large population living in abject poverty.
It is unfortunate that ideology causes americans to believe propaganda over the reports of people who have been to somalia and somalis themselves.
Oh, I see now. In western propaganda the ethiopian invaders you armed and sent to take over our country are really somehow "Somalis" and your illegal and immoral invasion is somehow our civil war?
Yeah, someone is smoking something!
I'm surprised to hear you're willing to back extortion even outside Somalia because the pirates use capitalist investment techniques and divide up the spoils "honestly" though. Irrespective of the merits of claims of foreign overfishing, I think you'd have a hard job arguing that the "coastguard" have a legitimate right to collect "tolls" sometimes in excess of $1million from unarmed ships making the mistake of operating in these areas. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Somalian_Piracy_Threat_Map... I'm sure that, much like operating a Mogadishu roadblock, it's one of the few lucrative revenue sources open to desperate people but this isn't exactly indicative of the "safe, stable ... free market" you describe. I'm not sure why you're accusing me of being the one depicting their actions in a "romantic" way.
It's not even that Somalia doesn't have any form of government (The Mises Institute will be disappointed to know that the relatively stable de facto republic of Somaliland does have formal taxation). It's just that none of the governments' bounds of authority are recognised by each other, never mind the outside world, and the official government proudly considers their ability to establish military control over only 60% of the capital to be a measure of success http://www.hiiraan.com/news2/2011/Jan/statement_by_h_e_moham...
If you sincerely believe that there is no civil war and Somalis are being killed today by the intervention of UK and US phantoms and not by factional infighting then I don't think it's going to be very productive to continue this debate.
It is quite ironic that you would use these acts of aggression as an argument that the country is in a civil war. But simply by calling them the "official" government you have advocated the imposition of slavery on an entire nation at the hands of thugs.
I find it quite disheartening to hear americans repeat propaganda as fact, and use it in argument when they have no actual knowledge of the country, as I have.
So, no, there is no productive debate when you can essentially make shit up based on the impressions you have from propaganda, or regurgitate propaganda.
America is a curious place. The neocons hate somalis on the principle that they are mostly muslim and thus must be evil. The liberals hate them because they are free and well armed. Trying to clear up misconceptions is like trying to argue with a citizen of the USSR who believed everything pravda said. You can always quote pravda.
For instance, you assert that the tolls I mentioned in somalia were not collected by the people who built and maintained the roads. This is a flat out lie, which I now understand you simply made up because it fits your image of the country.
Further, you assert there are "armed opportunists" who are collecting the tolls, this is also a lie, and absurd to anyone who knows anything about somalia. Only in america are highway travellers disarmed. In somalia such bandits would not live long.
Oh, and in america there are "armed opportunists" who take "tolls" in the form of "traffic violations" without much regard for whether they were actually committed or not. They know that it is nearly impossible to get a hearing on such a low level offense and certainly will cost more than simply paying the fine. Therefore, for many if not most americans there is no justice system at all.
That's bad enough, but they also are in the habit of stealing any significant quantities of cash or valuable property they find in the cars they stop. They are able to do this under what's called "asset forfieture" where they merely need a pretext-- an unsupported assertion that the property was used in a crime-- to steal it. This money does not go to road maintenance, but to the personal enrichment of the cops who steal it.
In somalia, if you have been wronged, in order to get compensation, you have to get a ruling from an impartial judge. In america, no judge is needed, the highway robbers just take your property and file some paperwork. I'm not aware of any such property ever being returned, despite most of the victims never being charged, let alone convicted of a crime.
And you think you have "innocent until proven guilty"?
Think that is all just and good? fine, that may be a valid opinion. But every characterization of somalia you make has a parallel in the USA.
Only when you talk about somalia you act as if it is some sort of moral tragedy, but in the USA the same actions are above reproach?
This is the "magic of government" that I believe your schools indoctrinate you into from a young age. If a man were force another man to work for him and take %60 of his wages, you'd call that slavery.... but if the government does it, as the government in the USA does, then somehow, thru the magic of government this is no longer slavery, but taxation.
One thing you can't dispute about somalis. Since we got rid of barre, we have not been enslaved.
Despite your many attempts.
Previously americans invaded when they discovered yellowcake on old british survey maps.
Nobody in somalia was even mining the stuff, but the americans showed up in force and took it away.
I believe part of the reason the americans are attacking us now is to prevent the economic growth from getting to the point where somalis can adequately defend against their many incursions.
This paper compares several indicators between the current situation and the time when they had a government.
Live expectancy is up. Physicians per 100,000 is up. Infant mortality is down dramatically, and the percentage with low birth weight is down dramatically. Sanitation, access to health facilities are both improved. Extreme poverty has declined. Radio ownership is up dramatically, as is Telephones and Television.
Adult Literacy and School enrollment are both down, but given the rise in private schools I suspect this might be due to the way the data is collected. The same thing can be said about all the other statistics, as they always should bear some analysis.
But I don't think it is the slam dunk that it is popularly assumed.
From the paper: "The data depict a country with severe problems, but one which is clearly doing better under statelessness than it was under government. Of the 18 development indicators, 14 show unambiguous improvement under anarchy. Life expectancy is higher today than was in the last years of government’s existence; infant mortality has improved 24 percent; maternal mortality has fallen over 30 percent; infants with low birth weight has fallen more than 15 percentage points; access to health facilities has increased more than 25 percentage points; access to sanitation has risen eight percentage points; extreme poverty has plummeted nearly 20 percentage points; one year olds fully immunized for TB has grown nearly 20 percentage points, and for measles has increased ten; fatalities due to measles have dropped 30 percent; and the prevalence of TVs, radios, and telephones has jumped between 3 and 25 times."
and: "Importantly, the indicators in Table 1 also do not measure the substantial increase in personal freedoms and civil liberties enjoyed by Somalis since the emergence of anarchy. The Somali government ruthlessly suppressed free speech, censoring newspapers, radio and television. Most forms of free expression were punishable by death and foreign travel was severely restricted. Today, in contrast, Somalis are free to travel as they please (restricted only by governments of other nations) and enjoy greater freedom of expression, both privately and publicly. 20 private newspapers, 12 radio and television stations, and several Internet sites now provide information to the Somali public (Freedom House 2005). Satellite-based televisions enable the transmission of international news services, including CNN (Little 2003: 170-171). Authorities in Somaliland and Puntland have attempted to interfere with media providers in their territories, but freedom of expression remains improved compared to its status under government. This constitutes an additional important, though unmeasured, increase in Somali welfare under anarchy."
On the education issue: "Only two of the 18 development indicators in Table 1 show a clear welfare decline under stateless: adult literacy and combined gross school enrollment. Given that foreign aid was completely financing education in Somalia pre-1991, it is not surprising that there has been some fall in school enrollment and literacy. This is less a statement about the Somali government’s ability to generate welfare enhancing outcomes for its citizens than it is a reflection of foreign aid poured into Somali education by the international development community before government collapsed.9"
If you're looking for objective rankings of economic freedom you'd be distinctly better served on the right by the Heritige Foundation http://www.heritage.org/index/ranking or Reporters Without Borders's Press Freedom reports leaning slightly left.