Saturday, October 02, 2010

Regulation Vacation Celebration: "Somalia: Libertarian Paradise"

9 comments:

Lord Keynes said...

Oh my god!
That is awesome! (And I don't usually resort to that kind of "teen" speak).
Who made this? Do you know?
I think I need to link to this on my blog.

Joanna Liberation said...

This is pretty funny, I love funny, even if simplistic. After all, Somalia is also a socialist paradise, what with no corporations and no courts protecting private property.

Somalia is essentially Europe 10,000 years ago so if you want to "prove" there exists economic system based only on the fact that it lacks something, then Somalia can be "proven" to have ANY economic system.

Just another good example of your "logic".

Mike Huben said...

Joanna, apparently you have no clue of what socialism is (beyond "I don't like it!")

Somalia is as close to anarcho-capitalist as any nation has been. Keep in mind that anarcho-capitalism is in part defined by what it lacks.

Joanna Liberation said...

Mike, yes, Somalia is pretty much anarcho-capitalist paradise, but the spot speaks of _libertarian_ paradise, which, since most libertarians actually believe in the strongest government possible (in protecting private property), it is NOT.

Still, as I've written in the other Somalia post, even if we really had libertarian Somalia, it would probably still be way poorer than say, european communist countries. Economic system does not create wealth by itself, people do, which means culture, work ethic etc.

In other words, good ceteris paribus comparison is South vs Nort Korea:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/dprk-dark.htm
and not Somalia and say, Sweden.

Mike Huben said...

Oh, I see. Libertarianism is what YOU dictate it to be. And if Somalia isn't fascist enough for your tastes, too bad for all those other libertarians who disagree.

Joanna Liberation said...

Mike, imagine if I spent the rest of my life criticizing communism for its anarchy just because there exists some anarcho-communist minority. After all, Marx always wanted the state to wither away. Wouldn't that be stupid? Wouldn't that miss the point of most communist planks?

Go to www.lp.org and see if they want the state to wither away. Quite contrary, overwhealming number of libertarians have in fact always believed in much stronger state than any other political platform, but the term "minimal" has always been misinterpreted as "weak", whereas in reality, only minimal state can really be the strongest in protecting private property.

Mike Huben said...

Somalia is an existing libertarian nation, which is a major advantage over (and much more instructive than) your fairytale libertarianism.

The LP can yammer about whatever it wants: that doesn't make it representative of more than some unspecified fraction of libertarians.

Joanna Liberation said...

So you say LP planks are not representative of libertarian majority, LP being the largest libertarian american party. The two smaller smaller libertarian Boston Tea Party and Jefferson Republican Party are also minarchist, not anarcho-capitalist. In fact, no libertarian party in the world is anarcho-capitalist.

But looks like you know better what the libertarian majority wants.

Anita said...

Libertarianism is based ENTIRELY on the notion of protection of private property. In Somalia there is no private property in objects such as land AND there is no property over ones body. In a society where gangs VIOLATE private property and rape happens frequently you cannot possibly believe that the basic tenents of libertarianism hold. Now if you can provide me with any proof that people in Somalia have any kind of property rights in objects or any kind of self ownership you will also have to find me a libertarian writer that argues that gang violence and tribal warfare are a successful way of protecting liberty.