Comments on Poverty, banditry, and traders in Somalia

Good post J.P.


Posted by Paul Marks at June 16, 2009 11:29 AM

Of course aid should be sold. If you give it away, the farmers are unable to sell what little they have, and go bust. Next year there's even less food.


Posted by RayD at June 16, 2009 04:06 PM

Perhaps what Somalia, and much of Africa, needs is to go through a fully fledged industrial Robber Baron phase. As the west becomes ever more socialist and timid, those with the entreprenurial urge may need to take over somewhere like Somalia, corrupt the existing government, such as it is, into giving them free rein to exploit both the workers and any natural resources the country may have, and bootstrap it into the twenty-first, or even twentieth, century.

Ideally, this would be done via new entities, rather than the Nikes and Adidas that drove much of the Asian tiger economies, and better yet, involve new technologies that the West and the rest might deem 'dangerous' or 'polluting', but might drive the technological development of the human race onwards.

The existing local entrepreneurs could be tempted away from their current piracy and banditry and co-opted into the new industrial class, and the middle class could expand enough to give them a major stake in such concepts as the rule of law and respect for property rights.

Eventually, the Robber Barons would evolve into Captains of Industry, though hopefully not into Industrial Statesmen, and the middle class would start demanding such things as clean air and a less polluted environment, and even workers rights, and the entrepreneurs would be forced to move elsewhere.

Probably Titan.


Posted by Kevin B at June 16, 2009 04:29 PM

Have you been reading Hernando DeSoto?

http://www.cato.org/special/friedman/desoto/index.html


Posted by Pa Annoyed at June 16, 2009 05:15 PM

Markets are always at work, because, they are the manifestation of Supply and Demand, regardless of the political system attempting to control them.

Somalia has collectively dug itself so deep a hole that many things need to fall into place before a Pirate Captain of sorts can unite and pacify the country and get predictable commerce functioning again. Once that occurs, then, all sorts of goodies start to crop up without the bother of killing everyone around oneself.


Posted by Darryl at June 17, 2009 04:43 AM
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