Doubt it, but I would love for it to happen. I see this as criminal theft by the USMS.
289 karma · joined February 10, 2011
I suspect that MDMA and related are somewhat physically harmful but is it more neurotoxic and has a greater addictive potential than legal drugs like alcohol? I don't think so.
That's a vacuous non-argument and appeal to popular opinion. Not compelling as well.
The article is using the following sources as mentioned therein: "statistical data from the United Nations Development Project, World Bank, CIA, and World Health Organization"
You obviously have some sort of state apologist agenda by your intellectually dishonest statements here.
If you are going to start spitting out statistics, you better provide a source as well.
"Physicians per 100,000:4 (this is tenth lowest and FYI the CIA uses per 1k)"
Where are you getting 4 per 100K from? The CIA factbook says 4 per 1,000.
"Infant mortality: 3rd highest 100 Afghanistan highest at 114."
"Maternal morbidity: 1,000 3rd behind South Sudan (2,000) and Chad (1,100)"
Meanwhile the the facts are: 'Infant mortality per 1,000 births fell from 152 to 114.9' and 'Maternal mortality per 100,000 births fell from 1,600 to 1,100'
The point is there was improvement, not that Somalia is a great place to live based on first-world country standards, so saying, "Oh that is still the 3rd worst in the world!" is utterly irrelevant.
"Sanitation Down to 23%"
After an increase in the period discussed, the first 5 years of anarchy. The CIA Factbook currently says 23.6% for improved sanitation facilities, versus 26% mentioned in the article. Is this 3 percentage points of decrease that important?
The fact remains that things have generally gotten better for Somalia despite the terrible military and economic intervention.
My response to the rest is below ----
See Spencer Heath MacCallum's The Rule of Law without the State here: http://mises.org/daily/2701
>Imagine any part of the globe not being dominated by a central government and the people there surviving, even prospering. If such were to happen and the idea spread to other parts of Africa or other parts of the world, the mystique of the necessity of the state might be irreparably damaged, and many politicians and bureaucrats might find themselves walking about looking for work.
>If the expectation was that Somalia would plunge into an abyss of chaos, what is the reality? A number of recent studies address this question, including one by economist Peter Leeson drawing on statistical data from the United Nations Development Project, World Bank, CIA, and World Health Organization. Comparing the last five years under the central government (1985–1990) with the most recent five years of anarchy (2000–2005), Leeson finds these welfare changes:
- Life expectancy increased from 46 to 48.5 years. This is a poor expectancy as compared with developed countries. But in any measurement of welfare, what is important to observe is not where a population stands at a given time, but what is the trend. Is the trend positive, or is it the reverse?
- Number of one-year-olds fully immunized against measles rose from 30 to 40 percent.
- Number of physicians per 100,000 population rose from 3.4 to 4.
- Number of infants with low birth weight fell from 16 per thousand to 0.3 — almost none.
- Infant mortality per 1,000 births fell from 152 to 114.9.
- Maternal mortality per 100,000 births fell from 1,600 to 1,100.
- Percent of population with access to sanitation rose from 18 to 26.
- Percent of population with access to at least one health facility rose from 28 to 54.8.
- Percent of population in extreme poverty (i.e., less than $1 per day) fell from 60 to 43.2.
- Radios per thousand population rose from 4 to 98.5.
- Telephones per thousand population rose from 1.9 to 14.9.
- TVs per 1,000 population rose from 1.2 to 3.7.
- Fatalities due to measles fell from 8,000 to 5,600.
You can verify any of these statistics yourself through sources like the mentioned CIA Factbook: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
----
>I am genuinely interested in seeing these statistics because the picture you paint of Somalia is much rosier than the picture painted by the people at the Somali-Bantu Community Center in my county. I am trying to keep an open mind but I have to admit my skepticism about the situation in somalia meant that I read your comment as:
>"All of the core metrics [except education but everyone knows education is a useless metric for judging living conditions] in Somalia have increased [from zero] because it has been hellish in Somalia for twenty years.
>There is a functioning economy and rule of law in Somalia [if you exclude the south where there is not a lot of positive things to talk about except that the government official targeted in yesterdays car bombing was not among the 11 people killed]."
Bantu in Somalia are part of the chaotic southwest. The southwestern provinces such as Bay and Bakool have recently either declared autonomy from Mogadishu or have started to discuss it.
The port city of Kismayo had been a pivotal stronghold for al-Shabaab who held it for the past few years. Al-Shabaab has lost a ton of ground in the past year whereas it had controlled the majority of south Somalia for the three years or so prior.
There was a shit ton of military action and natural disasters such as the drought affecting this area, so certainly this part of the country is no utopia.
The other parts of the country is like another world. As al-Shabaab has lost ground in the south, they have moved some operations to the divided city of Galkayo. 1/3 of the city is controlled by the south and whatever Transitional Government is ruling now while the other 2/3 of the city is part of Puntland. This is about the extent of violence in Somalia. Coincidentally, the 2/3 of the geographical area of Somalia besides south of Galkayo.. the Horn and Somaliland, are relatively peaceful with only a dash of violence spreading from the UN conflict zone.
Education matters, I was just mentioning the truth that all metrics have improved besides schools. You can make of that what you want. There was no real widespread schooling system before and there isn't one still. The UN-backed Transitional Government is having a hard time keeping terrorist bombings out of Mogadishu, so it isn't anywhere near spreading schools around the country.
You obviously have no clue about the real happenings of Somalia. The standards of living, core metrics like life expectancy, all of them really except school enrollment, have increased despite being anarchic for the last 20+ years. In comparison to neighbors like Ethiopia, Somalia is doing well. If you look at mobile adoption and access to tech, the improvement in Somalia outshadows most other African countries.
There is the rule of law where Xeer is used. Xeer is suppressed only in the area of the south where war is being waged between UN insurgents and al-Shabaab fighters. The rest of the country beyond Galkayo (Puntland and Somaliland) is not a "failed economy" by any measure besides the faulty assumption that an economy requires strict intervention in a western-progressive style.
See also Zomia: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/14/the-undiscov...
Medieval Iceland: http://mises.org/daily/1121
and Ireland (page 3): https://mises.org/journals/lf/1971/1971_04.pdf
People are waxing about the superiority of "British common law" while its roots are a system of the Anglo-Saxons extremely similar to the Xeer.
This is an incredibly ignorant statement. The source of bloodshed in Somalia is foreign governments via the UN/AMISOM and their largely Kenyan/Ethiopian troops trying to prop up a government in Mogadishu, as well as the foreign-funded al-Shabaab they fight. This is not some noble jihad for democracy, just various factions struggling for the benefits a monopoly backed by strong foreign powers will bring.
The political climate and level of violence in south and southwest Somalia is vastly different than the rest of the region. Beyond Galkayo, there is pretty much no war. In Puntland and Somaliland, Xeer and customary law trumps the weak governments of the autonomous regions.
You falsely equate Xeer to the mafia and where the Xeer legal order reigns there is peace in Somalia. A mafia system is identical to a state except a state has public acceptance of the hegemony. The Somali people want Xeer and not state rule. Even during the Barre regime they would not recognize decisions of state courts and would handle the bulk of disputes their own way and ignore state rulings.
The decades of bloodshed come from a minority group of western-educated democracy lovers and psychopath "warlords" who have been waging war on the Mogadishu area for the prize of UN recognition and the trough of foreign aid money it brings.
No, there is the other option called full reserve banking.
Apparently this clown did. Real chocolate is bitter, so it is no surprise he might like the inferior Hershey's version.
Some others like WePay and Balanced allowed it for a while and ended up changing their ToS but grandfathering vendors in. So, I have been waiting for a new payment service to come about.
Anyhow, among hardcore libertarian circles there is actually pretty wide agreement these days that IP laws are unjust. The work you want to look at for the sea change is Kinsella's Against Intellectual Property free online here: http://mises.org/document/3582
The fact that you mention labor as some sort of success shows that you buy into the common narrative and haven't really looked at the situation. The 2002 study by Vedder and Galloway put the damage to the economy over the previous 50 years at $50 trillion dollars by unionism. Unions increase wages where they can restrict entry or have special privilege to intimidate employers but help to reduce wages overall.
Libertarians aren't actually opposed to unions if all a union is doing is organizing to protect rights of workers, but that isn't in truth how they operate. You can find more details on the study I mention and many more reasons why unionism is destructive here: http://mises.org/daily/1685
The US government is also the worst polluter on Earth, yet somehow you believe it has accomplished some triumph of environmentalism?: http://ivn.us/2012/04/18/the-number-one-worst-polluter-on-ea...
The government fails in its own task of enforcement in notable cases like the BP oil spill. There was legislation before this spill limiting liability for accidents like this. I think this was then sidestepped because of the severity of this spill, but it is an example of legislation actually protecting corporate interests and aiding their ability to pollute. When companies pollute, more often they end up paying a fine to the government rather than compensating victims. The common law mechanism whereby people can sell off their claim to a tort, no matter how minor, has been destroyed in modern, authoritarian systems.
The US government makes illegitimate claims to large areas of land and then takes money for leases on mineral/timber/other rights. This temporary ownership creates an incentive problem. When a company has no long-term stake, the tendency is to strip mine or clear cut a forest. Where instead a system of ownership is upheld, you see a tendency to have more sustainable treatment of land because there is a stake in the long term value of the property.
The same sort of structural incentive problem exists for democracy in general vis a vis systems like feudal monarchies (which, note, I do not advocate still either). When a king permanently "owns" his territory, there will often be some restraint in over-taxation or overly aggressive military adventures because the king is interested in passing on the kingdom to his heirs. In a democracy, temporary rulers have the incentive to make use of their power and "get in while the gettin's good".
The Iraq War may have been popular when Bush started the new salvo but this was based on false information crafted by this administration in order to plunge them into war. It's a problem that the system you advocate even puts a person in the position to manufacture terror like this. Public sentiment was at 2/3rds+ since at least 2006 against the Iraq War and the pullout could have happened swiftly long ago. The idea that these politicians are basing military policy on public opinion is ludicrous. You are clearly totally blinded by your worship of democracy. BTW, there are still at least 20-25K military and contractors in Iraq.
Look at the history of opinion on Afghanistan: http://www.gallup.com/poll/116233/afghanistan.aspx
That's 65-82% opposed every year except the dip to 54% in '05. I guess in your world of doublethink, this would be an example of democracy accomplishing the "pleasing of the most number of citizens".
Elections are mere popularity contests. These politicians do not represent you in the same way I would represent you if you handed me $5 and sent me to the store to get something specific. At times, politicians will react to public opinion or there are very slow movements towards ending their criminal policies like the Drug War. If pot was legalized at the federal level, would you add this to your list of great accomplishments? I'd list it as a failure due to the years of unjust policy previously, the millions of captives kept for victimless crimes now, the families and neighborhoods which would still be destroyed by the prohibition on other drugs.
Your statist ideology is outmoded. Information now flows more freely and the crimes of states will be laid bare. Once the "great western democracies" fully implode, people will question these types of systems and look for new solutions. That is what we are building now with things like blockchain-based tech, libertarian legal scholarship, etc.
What you are advocating is what you then go on and complain about; it's total akrasia. You are suffering from Stockhom syndrome in believing freedom from your serfdom would be serfdom. Democracy is a very persuasive idea because it seems like you have choice, but then in reality the political elite rule. 2/3rds of Americans oppose the Iraq war; would you say this is an example of having a say in policy?
Governments are, across the board, a failure and a drain on society. Every service, including things like providing a "social safety net" can be better provided through market processes.
If all the libertarians who are into bitcoin suddenly cut down the rhetoric, you think that this will "make bitcoin legitimate technology"? What does that even mean? You mean that governments are going to suddenly be more friendly to bitcoin users? That seems like an incredibly naive belief, sorry.
In general, it is disappointing that people still hold to backwards and primitive beliefs such as democracy and state worship. Statism is institutionalized violence and injustice writ large. I totally understand how your perspective on this can be different, but please understand that what you are calling garbage I see as a call for justice.
http://letstalkbitcoin.com/bitcoin-and-the-three-laws-of-rob...
http://letstalkbitcoin.com/dacs-that-spawn-dacs/
The use of the word "corporation" is kind of wonky to me and the whole concept took me a little time to wrap my head around it, but these are the types of things we can expect to see with blockchain technology and hopefully IMO eventually the abolition of states worldwide.
You seem to be partially accepting my argument that "intrinsic value" doesn't exist but trying to win by redefining "things having intrinsic value" as "things necessary to sustain human life". Okay, things that humans need to survive are "intrinsically valuable" to that end but that isn't what we're talking about.