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Bringing back the Somali shilling

jpkoning.blogspot.com

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Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#91

Post by pjc50 »

afsina wrote: post #79
pjc50 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> let ethnic and religious groups to have the control of their own territory This is literally what ethnic cleansing means, and is of course the opposite of any kind of liberty - it creates a place where you can't walk down the street without being of the right ethnicity/religion.

Are implying that, for example, if Catalonia, Bask or Scotland become a country situation will be ripe for killing Spanish or English man living there?

"ethnic and religious groups" are the key words there.

This is essentially what had to be dismantled in Northern Ireland - it was under the control of one "group" usually defined as Protestant. Transferring it to a situation under human rights law where all religions could live with equal protection under the law (including protection from the state and police by means of human rights law) was critical to ending the conflict.

None of the Catalan, Basque (this is the usual English spelling, are you perhaps thinking of the Russian Басков?) or Scottish independence movements have ethnic cleansing ambitions, although these are usually attributed to them by their enemies.

Construction and definition of a nation state is a complex issue not reducible to glib remarks about "liberty".

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#92

Post by throwaway284534 »

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?

I'd really appreciate it commenters stopped bring this up in every time someone mentions Somalia or libertarians. It was hardly clever the first 15 times.

Nobody is claiming Somali is a paradise. It's comments like this that destroy civil discourse with Reddit tier quips.

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#93

Post by ghostDancer »

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.

North Korea is an absolut monarchy not a communist country, even if they say so, they also say they are a people's democratic republic and it's clear they're not.

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#94

Post by tom_mellior »

semi-extrinsic wrote: post #90
tom_mellior wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not a libertarian and agree with you on all points except... > * EpiPen pricing My understanding was that part of the problem with the EpiPen was a monopoly due to patent issues. Patents are monopolies created by the government, so the market failures they cause are in fact government failures.

I agree. But the flipside is that without patents, no-one would be spending money on drug development, since there would be 100% probability that someone straight-up copies your drug that you spent 5 years and $50 million to develop, and can then sell profitably at a lower price and capture the market. I think we can all agree that drug patents in particular are a necessary evil. On other patents (in particular softw…

Necessary evil: yes, to some extent. I didn't say "get rid of all patents", just that they can cause market failures.

I could imagine some models to make them less evil, for example by having a scheme that forces companies to grant fairly priced licenses to their competitors. Or, for drugs whose availability is in society's general interest, a government reimbursing the development costs. For both of these one would need a fair way of determining development costs, but as far as I understand pharma research already has a detailed paper trail to make sure their patent applications are bullet-proof.

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#95

Post by jdavis703 »

throwaway284534 wrote: post #92
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?

I'd really appreciate it commenters stopped bring this up in every time someone mentions Somalia or libertarians. It was hardly clever the first 15 times. Nobody is claiming Somali is a paradise. It's comments like this that destroy civil discourse with Reddit tier quips.

As someone with a curiosity in anarchism as a potentially useful form of government I find these discussions useful. To not look at real world examples is disingenuous, you can simply learn things that will and won't work in a world with limited government. If the evidence contradicts your assertions then you can either change your assertions or realize that your ideal form of government has certain tradeoffs that you and society may be uncomfortable with.

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#96

Post by libeclipse »

rljy wrote: post #65
dmoy wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 total…

The person you're replying to didn't say that the citizens hated their homeland, he/she said that they preferred the older Somalia before it was state-less.

I'm not choosing either side of this discussion, simply clearing something up.

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#97

Post by golergka »

ghostDancer wrote: post #93
Grue3 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

North Korea is an absolut monarchy not a communist country, even if they say so, they also say they are a people's democratic republic and it's clear they're not.

You're implying that there's a possibility for a regime that starts from commumist ideas not to become a monarchy or oligarchy. Can you point out a real-life example where that didn't happen, please?

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#98

Post by omginternets »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #89
skaplun wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If George Washington declared himself king, you might be looking today at 30% unemployment like some of the euros

Most of the European states that have monarchs (Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands for instance) are doing alright, Spain is an outlier.

Let's not forget the UK.

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#99

Post by crdoconnor »

tshaddox wrote: post #14
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 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…

Most of the metrics which he's looking at which improved under southern Somalia's anarcho-capitalism happened because of an increase in remittances. I don't think anybody's arguing that if Somalis didn't have legions of relatives abroad sending them money the humanitarian disaster would have been even worse.

The security implications of living with a system of competing warlords (or 'insurance companies', in ancap terminology) are also massively glossed over.

Re: Bringing back the Somali shilling

#100

Post by anentropic »

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.

i.e. warlords
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