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Bringing back the Somali shilling

jpkoning.blogspot.com

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Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#61

Post by afpx »

afsina wrote: post #60
afpx wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bush Administration, under Paul Bremer, tried to build The New Iraq as the ideal capitalist state. They even implemented many things that could never get full traction in the US, like very low, flat taxes [1]. I can't say that I followed much of it closely, but at least Iraq was inspired by right-leaning principles and ideology. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/11/02/u...

What libertarians would probably want first in Iraq is to let ethnic and religious groups to have the control of their own territory and abolish or weaken the central government as much as possible. Honestly this approach would at least alleviate the current turmoil there. Consider Syria, Iraq and Yemen for this.

I don't know enough about libertarianism, to be honest. (I'm not sure many people do.) But, is libertarianism something that only works when all tenets are followed? Or, does it work in piecemeal and incrementally? Like, for example, is there a priority list of things that should be implemented first and the set of measurable, expected results?

This is probably not the best place to ask these types of questions, but 'libertarianism' seems to come up on here so often, I had to ask.

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#62

Post by grecy »

abarrettjo wrote: post #28
jordanb wrote: post #12

As an aside: I've been waiting for Libertarians to declare Somalia to be heaven on earth. I wonder why they've never picked up on the obvious real-world example of a nation with no central state government with a monopoly on violence?

Or the even better example of Somaliland, which is perfectly safe. I lived and worked there for a few months last summer, and loved it.

Awesome, where abouts were you exactly?

I am driving around the entire continent now, and a friend said I must visit Somaliland, so it's on my radar when I eventually make it up that way (I'm moving South on the West Coast now)

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#63

Post by dragonwriter »

afsina wrote: post #60
afpx wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Bush Administration, under Paul Bremer, tried to build The New Iraq as the ideal capitalist state. They even implemented many things that could never get full traction in the US, like very low, flat taxes [1]. I can't say that I followed much of it closely, but at least Iraq was inspired by right-leaning principles and ideology. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/11/02/u...

What libertarians would probably want first in Iraq is to let ethnic and religious groups to have the control of their own territory and abolish or weaken the central government as much as possible. Honestly this approach would at least alleviate the current turmoil there. Consider Syria, Iraq and Yemen for this.

> What libertarians would probably want first in Iraq is to let ethnic and religious groups to have the control of their own territory and abolish or weaken the central government as much as possible.

Except for the Kurds, that doesn't seem to be want the groups in Iraq want. I wasn't aware that libertarians were generally in favor of imposed religious- and/or ethnicity-based balkanization against the will of the people.

I suspect that would actually work against libertarianism, also, because greater ideological uniformity in the constituency would support more authoritarian government (light touch is a way of accommodating divergent interests which would be eliminated).

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#64

Post by semi-extrinsic »

wyager wrote: post #56
beefield wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have never quite understood why libertarians think that is the precise optimum for the amount of government activities and their "theft" of my money via taxation. Don't libertarians understand or accept that there are market failures that government is needed to solve? Or do they think that in every case government makes more bad than good when trying to solve market failures? Or is it just that freedom of individu…

Libertarians don't posit a precise optimum. They are generally of the opinion that the optimum is quite a bit lower than what we have right now. > Don't libertarians understand or accept that there are market failures that government is needed to solve? The only credible "failure" I'm aware of is the need to internalize of public externalities, which can be achieved in a number of liberty-friendly ways. See, for exam…

> See, for example, the Coase theorem

Which only holds when transaction costs are negligible, i.e., never. Which was precisely Coase's point in that work - he showed that mathematically, it doesn't matter what initial distribution you put on something (his example was radio broadcast frequency allocations), since the final Pareto-optimal distribution is independent of initial conditions. This is the Coase theorem. But as soon as you include transaction costs, the theorem fails to hold, and initial distribution is important.

A few obvious market failures:

* Microsoft monopoly in the late 90s

* Too little being done to reduce CO2 emissions, since emission costs are externalized and delayed

* Broadband providers in the US

* EpiPen pricing

* Essentially every Health and Safety regulation ever exists to fix a market failure. In the small government world, employers see no cost of workers dying of lung cancer in their 60s from breathing asbestos, etc.

I could go on.

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#65

Post by rljy »

dmoy wrote: post #31
tshaddox wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably haven't looked that hard. Somalia case studies are ubiquitous in libertarian (anarchist-leaning) circles. The general claim seems to be that, yeah, stateless Somalia is way worse than high-functioning governments like the United States, but better than its neighbor states and better than it was before it became stateless. Leeson's article is probably the best on the topic: http://www.peterleeson.com/Bett…

People actually argue that Somalia is better than it was back when it had a functioning government? Have they talked to anyone who grew up or lived through that? Nobody I've talked to from Somalia (I grew up in Minneapolis, a good chunk of my classmates from elementary and uni were Somali), nobody thinks it was a good change. The amount of death and fear is just staggering. That article reads a little tone deaf, a lo…

It is very common for foreigners to hate their homeland. People who move from Kuba tend to say it sucks. I moved from America to Prague and I tell everyone that America sucks. My Russian friends say Russia sucks. The Ukrainians I know say Ukraine sucks. The Kyrgyzstanies I know say Kyrgyzstan sucks.

I live among foreigners, and the only ones that I've met that actually like their home country are rich ones from totalitarian regimes who somehow benefit from the regime. And as far as I can tell, public opinion of a regime among expats is strongly tied in both directions to how that regime effects them and their families financially, though even well off people such as myself, who have chosen to move away, often find it in their hearts to hate their home country.

The rich Saudis who come to Prague to study all thing Saudi Arabia is heaven on earth. The Russian who's family lost everything in 1998 [1] think that Putin should be hung from a lamp post with his own intestines.

I think that there is basically no knowledge to be gained from talking to expats about their home countries. After-all 75% of Turks in Belgium voted for totalitarian dictatorship at home [2].

[1] https://economics.rabobank.com/publications/2013/september/t... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_constitutional_referen...

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#66

Post by pseingatl »

omegaworks wrote: post #10

>Panama has been using the dollar for decades, and this hasn't prevented it from becoming one of Central America's most successful n̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ tax havens. https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/panama-... Fixed that for you :) Control over your currency is critical for maintaining national sovereignty, and the author waves it away like nothing. Just take what the EU forced upon Greece: https://en.wik…

Panama only ever had its own currency for a few years beginning in 1941. When Panama separated from Colombia, it used dollars. An anti-American president was elected and proposed a national currency. No one accepted it. He was soon deposed later. Panamanian coins are the same size, weight and composition of U.S. coins and are minted by the U.S. mint. Panama retains the Kennedy-size half dollar and did not adopt the new US $1 coin.

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#67

Post by timthelion »

skaplun wrote: post #55
tehwebguy wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is the point you were trying to make?

"that the existence of government is just one small part." I dont think you can qualify government as "just one small part". America would not be in the same place today without the decisions taken over time by its leaders. The same decisions would not be made under a different system of incentives for a leader like a monarchy/anarchy

It wouldn't be the same place, but it would still have enjoyed the highest natural-resource to population ration of any nation in history. Coal, Iron, Oil, Natural Gas, Gold, Wood, Water, Arible land, Uranium, Aluminium, Copper, all in great supply. The only comparable nations I can think of are Australia and Brazil, and their relative wealth is rather well explained by the overall wealth gradient nearing the equator:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_and_wealth

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#68

Post by timthelion »

Grue3 wrote: post #52
jordanb wrote: post #12

As an aside: I've been waiting for Libertarians to declare Somalia to be heaven on earth. I wonder why they've never picked up on the obvious real-world example of a nation with no central state government with a monopoly on violence?

You're confusing Libertarians with Anarchists. As an aside: I've always been waiting for communists to declare North Korea heaven on earth.

There is a large minority of communists who think Kuba is: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/keyword/Americas/Cuba/24013...

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#69

Post by timthelion »

BurningFrog wrote: post #37
jordanb wrote: post #12

As an aside: I've been waiting for Libertarians to declare Somalia to be heaven on earth. I wonder why they've never picked up on the obvious real-world example of a nation with no central state government with a monopoly on violence?

Libertarians typically want a small state that uses its monopoly on violence solely to protect citizens from aggression.

Correction, to protect capitalists from theft.

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#70

Post by thanksgiving »

afsina wrote: post #59
redblacktree wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Somalia is way worse than high-functioning governments like the United States Yet my libertarian friends on Facebook all seem to want to tear the enitre government down.

What many libertarians want is decentralization. As much as possible. They probably want to get rid of all powerful Federal Government but local governments (as small as possible) and confederations are usually fine.

And now we will soon have "separate but equal" restrooms in Texas.

I find state rights advocates to be the worst™ people in the world. They advocate for state rights when it suits them. Absolutely hypocritical bunch.

We've decided as a nation that there are some rights and responsibilities that we have regardless of where we live within this nation. How many times do we have to fight for civil rights?

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