… Currency reforms of the sort Diocletian undertook still happen sometimes in the modern era, but they almost always go in the other direction. When a country has in the recent past suffered a bout of serious inflation that’s just come to an end, sometimes the government will choose to put an asterix on the new regime by basically striking a zero or two off the old currency. So in 1960, France introduced a New Franc and announced that one New Franc was worth 100 Old Francs, and that 1 Franc Coin of the old vintage could stay in circulation as one New Centime. You could describe the impact of that switch as a giant one-off deflation, but that’s a pretty misleading way to think about it.
On Government Secrets and “Treason”
“U.S. intelligence agents have been hacking computer networks around the world for years, apparently targeting fat data pipes that push immense amounts of data around the Internet, NSA leaker Edward Snowden told the South China Morning Post on Wednesday. Among some 61,000 reported targets of the National Security Agency, Snowden said, are thousands of computers in China — which U.S. officials have increasingly criticized as the source of thousands of attacks on U.S. military and commercial networks. China has denied such attacks.”—
NSA hacks China, leaker Snowden claims - CNN.com
Snowden just jumped the shark. It’s commendable to let Americans know that they’ve been lied to by their leaders with respect to domestic surveillance. It’s something closer to treason to let a foreign power know our government has breaking into their computer systems. I suspect Snowden thinks that these revelations will help him avoid extradition—that the Chinese government will protect him in gratitude for these disclosures. But if his goal was to change American domestic policy, he’s just made that change far less likely. A good portion of the American public was with him; now they won’t be. I find this incredibly sad. And I feel bad for Snowden, because he’s made a huge miscalculation that’s going to haunt him for the rest of his life.
(via jeffmiller)
I think Jeff has the right of it. I can respect the whistleblower who releases specific information in a targeted manner. As that looks less and less targeted, he looks less and less like the whistleblower and more and more like the guy who should never have been given a security clearance.
(via squashed)
I have to reluctantly agree that Snowden has jumped the shark. By stating publicly that the NSA is spying on foreign countries, Snowden isn’t necessarily revealing anything we couldn’t reasonably infer was already happening. Nonetheless, Snowden is revealing precisely the type of information that his critics can now credibly claim will endanger American lives. And this time, they won’t be entirely wrong. Allegations like this could cause an international incident that will disrupt the relative diplomatic detenté that has existed between the U.S. and China for the past two decades. That is something that actually could put lives at risk.
Furthermore, and more regrettably, all critics of the PRISM program will now be vicariously discredited, despite the genuinely horrifying and outrageous implications of its existence. Snowden has crossed over from the realm of courageous truth-teller to actions that constitute actual, legitimate treason, and all of his supporters and peers who are opposed to government secrecy are the worse off for it.
First, I find “treason” to often simply be a victimless crime; when it is not, there are already crimes with which individuals can be charged. Just laws protect life, liberty, and property of the individual and are thus against the initiation of aggression; they are axiomatic consequences of self-ownership - “laws against theft, assault, battery, murder, slavery, rape, fraud, trespass, destruction of property, and the threats thereof.” Treason simply does not fit. I side with Lysander Spooner in this regard.
Second, we must understand what this exposed activity precisely is. The nomenclature already suggests that hacking is aggression (cyber-attacks, cyber-war, cyber-terrorism, etc.). Therefore, if a government which ostensibly represents a people commits an act of aggression, it must do so with the people’s consent - which cannot be done when the people themselves are unaware that said actions are taking place. Furthermore, to be a morally justified act of aggression, it must be defensive. If these cyber-activities are legitimately defensive then the people must be made aware of the actions that precipitated them and of course that a response would be made. This way, the people can come out in favor or against such a response (putting aside that the political process in place is illegitimate and, by its very nature, ultimately ill-equipped to gauge the people’s response and mobilize/react accordingly).
Let’s consider these actions outside the realm of the digital. If Snowden had leaked that the U.S. was secretly committing physical acts of aggression against another country - say a covert bombing campaign - without U.S. citizens being aware, there is no doubt that civil libertarians (like LTMC and jeffmiller above) would find reason for concern. They would demand to know what provoked such actions, if the reaction was proper, what steps were being taken to minimize collateral damage, if the actions were worth the risk, if there were better alternatives that would induce less blowback, etc.
The gentlemen above may be correct that Snowden has made a grave miscalculation and are likely correct that public opinion may turn against him after this leak. It’s a shame, but it’s probably true that this latest leak may serve to bolster support for the state’s ability to keep secrets (particularly from neo-cons and unprincipled Obama supporters) as well as potentially function to discredit those of us with genuine concern about a powerful and unaccountable government’s actions.
I, however, still think Snowden’s leaks are commendable. If we are to take the stance that exposing secret U.S. actions against foreign nations is wrong because it’s treasonous to inform a foreign power of U.S. government activities against them, then this gives the U.S. cover to commit atrocities so long as they are secret. (Where would the likes of Bradley Manning and Julian Assange fit in this conversation?) And if the counter is that only morally unjustified acts are apt for leaking, then we are left allowing a small handful of potential leakers to make judgements as to what may or may not be morally reprehensible instead of allowing the very public, who the actions are said to represent, judge for themselves. In this circuitous scenario, a leaker could choose to leak only the most grave of offenses so as to not risk losing the public’s protection and in so doing leave countless injustices in the dark (as well as leave himself unable to know beforehand what actions the public would find acceptable).
I think the proper response is in educating the public that essentially all government leaks are welcome (though I might accept that there are scenarios in which a warning before leaking may be justified so as to minimize harm).
To me, Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden are and remain heroes.
Makers And Takers
David Frum makes an important point that often gets lost in the rhetoric of who “contributes” to society and who doesn’t:
America is not a society divided between “makers” and “takers.” Instead, almost all of us proceed through a life cycle where we sometimes make and sometimes take as we pass from schooling to employment to retirement.
…
Receiving is not the same as taking.
You’re falling for that politicalprof trap (here, here, and here) of disregarding the primacy of consent. Though I suppose you must accept the initiation of aggression if you are to believe that the state is a legitimate agent of the people’s goodwill.
The Truth About Diocletian and Inflation →
Yeah, that is a pretty misleading way to think about it. So why suggest it as “going in the other direction”? Coming up with a “new” currency with new denominations is not necessarily any less inflationary if the effect is still the same. If the U.S. government prints brand new money out of thin air, it doesn’t matter if they print five Dollarinos worth $1,000 each or simply five thousand dollars.
I’m not sure I follow your objection. The French monetary exchange didn’t involve just printing new money per se. Under the traditional definition of inflation (an increase in the money supply), the French deflated their currency. The old centime pieces were never circulated widely, and fell out of use under the new system. So under the exchange that took place, the total amount of practically usable legal tender was reduced. …
But it is. They created new money. They didn’t first extract existing currency to then replace it with the new. At least, I don’t believe they did (please, correct me here if this is the case). As I said, creating a new currency isn’t necessarily any less inflationary, particularly if it’s additive. And of course the old centime pieces were increasingly less circulated because their value was exceedingly low in relation to the new money added to the economy, especially since they were no longer being minted to keep up with the volume demanded to keep up with inflating prices. (This phenomenon of one under-valued currency being drawn out of circulation by an artificially over-valued one is known as Gresham’s Law.) When actual inflation becomes price inflation, there is a point in which the velocity of the lowest denominations, especially when said denominations become a smaller percentage of the overall currency, tends to slow down as such denominations become more cumbersome and less practical to use.
… I linked to Yglesias’s article because Ron Paul accused Krugman of supporting the economic policies of Emperor Diocletian. Krugman rejected that accusation, and I think the article demonstrates that Paul was being overwrought: I don’t believe I’ve ever heard Krugman calling for an overnight 100% doubling of the exchange value of the currency, which is what Diocletian did when he issued his final currency Edict. I think we can both agree that such a policy decision would be catastrophic and ruinous. …
This is only a matter of degrees. The point Ron Paul was making (and that I would agree with) is that Krugman’s preferred “tools” and “methods” are, essentially, the same as Diocletian - they only disagree in speed, as it were. One may advocate stabbing someone in the abdomen quickly, and the other may advocate a much more gentle stabbing. But the stabbee would rightly protest to both knives through his gut.
-
[I had to redact much of letterstomycountry’s argument as I only had time for a quick rebuttal of his main points. Please click here if you wish to see his argument in full.]
The Truth About Diocletian and Inflation →
… Currency reforms of the sort Diocletian undertook still happen sometimes in the modern era, but they almost always go in the other direction. When a country has in the recent past suffered a bout of serious inflation that’s just come to an end, sometimes the government will choose to put an asterix on the new regime by basically striking a zero or two off the old currency. So in 1960, France introduced a New Franc and announced that one New Franc was worth 100 Old Francs, and that 1 Franc Coin of the old vintage could stay in circulation as one New Centime. You could describe the impact of that switch as a giant one-off deflation, but that’s a pretty misleading way to think about it.
Yeah, that is a pretty misleading way to think about it. So why suggest it as “going in the other direction”? Coming up with a “new” currency with new denominations is not necessarily any less inflationary if the effect is still the same. If the U.S. government prints brand new money out of thin air, it doesn’t matter if they print five Dollarinos worth $1,000 each or simply five thousand dollars.
And if I regularly took 2-3% of someone’s wealth - just took it of my own volition - would that person call such activity “normal” and “non-ruinous”? Would they consider themselves having achieved “prosperity” as a result? This is what the piece above suggests with regards to ostensibly mild inflation.
Further, the piece above mentions the Roman civil wars but shrugs aside as somehow less of an issue that the reason the wars were particularly adverse to the economy (aside from the fact that, contra to Keynesians, wars are eo ipso destruction of wealth - something the piece above at least seems to acknowledge) was because Rome funded the wars and empire through not only excessive taxation but the debasement of the currency leading to hyperinflation. Money itself was destroyed - and every non-barter transaction used money.
The contortions Keynesians must place themselves in just to defend their philosophy is amazing.
(Source: letterstomycountry)
Cerebral Palsy-Stricken 7-Year Old Cutie-Patootie, Or Ruthless Islamo-Fascist?
Apparently the TSA Can’t Decide:
A 7-year-old girl with cerebral palsy was targeted by the TSA this week when her crutches and leg braces set off the airport screeners at JFK. Dina Frank’s parents claim the screening agents were particularly aggressive during an initial patdown of their daughter. They say the TSA then caused the family to miss their flight by requiring Dina to return to the screening area for additional inspection after they’d already been released to their gate.
“They’re harassing people,” said Dina’s father, Dr. Johsua Frank. “This is totally misguided policy. Yes, I understand that TSA is in charge of national security and there’s all these threats. For her to be singled out, it’s crazy.”
TSA Cares, a program specifically designed to assist airline passengers with disabilities, was launched in December.
[ibt]
To be serious for a moment: this is the problem with the TSA. The mission of the TSA is such that they have to treat even the most unlikely, sympathetic passengers as potential threats. So-called terrorists in Iraq have gone so far as to plant remote-controlled explosives on mentally disabled suicide bombers. Is it really such a stretch to believe that they would do the same with a physically disabled individual, adult or child, to accomplish the same task? When TSA performs these kinds of searches, it is doing exactly what it is designed to do.
This is the choice that America is faced with: we can either to choose to live free of these invasive procedures, and live with the risk of a terrorist attack succeeding, or live prostrate and humiliated by our own government everyday so that we can fool ourselves into thinking we’re safe. And make no mistake: we are fooling ourselves if we think this form of security theater makes us safe.
So one must ask themselves: do you want to live in an America where strangers feel up disabled 7-year old girls to check them for bombs? Or are you willing to live with the relatively low probability threat of another terrorist attack occurring? I’ll take my chances with the lightning, thank you.
False choice. Just because there isn’t a government agency performing security duties doesn’t mean we’d be less safe. In fact, in many ways we’d be more safe. Plus, airlines would be able to cater to both the most paranoid and least willing to be violated alike.
None of us are any safer because my 19-month old daughter’s diaper was checked for explosives.
Gunpowder Kumbaya
“You present a cake to your family. Is it fairer to: a) give everybody a slice of [equal] size, or b) make everybody fight with broadswords, so they all have [equality of] opportunity to win the entire cake for themselves?”—
Comments, Slacktivist: Jason DeParle on Mothers and Their Children
I would give them equal slices of cake and broadswords. But that’s just me.
While certainly a nice sentiment, it’s foolish to extend the dynamic of a family - with its close relationships, genetic bonds, emotional entanglements, and shared experiences - to the world at large. The world at large is not party to my private decisions like my family is. They don’t have the vested interest in my well-being like my family does. They wouldn’t be there when I got a flat tire, or the stomach flu, or to hear my gripes about that unpleasant co-worker - and they needn’t be. The world at large needn’t be forced to make sacrifices for my well-being. And, in turn, the world at large needn’t be forced to suffer the consequences of my mistakes. They shouldn’t have to bail me out because I made bad investments with my time and resources.
I take offense I find it repulsive when people try to dilute the love of my actual family by rhetorically lumping the rest of humanity with them. If I buy a cake for my family, I’ll distribute it in whatever way makes me and my family most happy - even excluding myself from taking a slice. How dare anyone try to make me treat strangers the way I treat my daughters in order to justify their redistributive whims.
If someone wants to treat the world like his family - for religious, or ecological, or for any selfish reason, really - nobody is stopping him. But no one should be forced to do so. No one should be threatened with violence and rape cages if they don’t relinquish portions of his or her life in ways central planners (and their cronies) demand. And that’s exactly what DeParle is arguing.
As Bastiat said, “True charity does not begin with the robbery of taxation…”
Charity is not charitable, it is not noble, when it is forced. When you make giving compulsory, also known as taking, you can no longer claim the moral high ground - especially considering the unintended consequences of government welfare, not least of which is causing the “unable” and “unwilling” difficult to distinguish.
Related:
New #Politics Editors
A much-needed shake-up of Tumblr #Politics editors has taken place today, less than a day after I post this documenting another editor’s (Ryking) penchant for vile behavior (and echoing Jeff Miller’s offer to resign if Ryking would do the same), and a petition to remove the same editor was circulated (and received thousands of signatures in only a matter of hours).
Clearly, the Tumblr staff has acknowledged the problem… though Tumblr seems to have taken the throw-the-baby-out-with-the-bathwater approach, as almost all editors have been replaced. Hopefully this means that the quality of the #Politics tag will improve as most of the bigger offenders are no longer editors.
The composition of the current crop of editors is improved, but certainly not ideal. Letterstomycountry happily remains. Although we disagree philosophically on certain issues, he tends to be fair and smart. Professor Ari Kohen should be a good addition. Our past misunderstandings and disagreements aside, he can certainly be counted on to promote intelligent, relevant, and serious posts. Huskerred is another welcome addition who has evolved over the last year or so to become quite the thoughtful and considerate blogger. However, as far as I can tell, he is the only editor who is neither a leftist/Democrat or corporate (statist) media. Further, every single editor is sympathetic and supportive to the state at least in some form or another. In fact, there don’t seem to be any actual (economic) libertarians or anarchists represented. And as an anarcho-capitalist, I may have been the first, but hopefully I’m not the last completely anti-statist editor of the tag.
Also, motherjones, who was part of the original batch of editors, has returned for a second go.
I think the tag would be more interesting and better served if individual bloggers - and not media entities - with a greater variety of political perspectives were editors.
In any case, I look forward to fewer posts like these making their way onto the #Politics tag and hope that the political discourse among us becomes much more civil.
… In the end, I see and hear in this SOTU many of the same jingoistic platitudes that I can no longer suffer from my elected leaders. Interspliced with the inspiring calls to action, and the seemingly courageous policy suggestions, are carefully selected and curated phrases that are intentionally ambiguous, euphemistic, or lacking in concrete definition; but which nonetheless create vague positive mental images and emotional thrusts that carry little impetus and are hard to disagree with.
And as I end this, Barack Obama has mentioned how he killed Bin Laden again, just to get those few extra votes. He is currently milking the story for everything it’s worth. I really don’t see anything different about this from Rudy Guliani using 9/11 as a patriotic crutch to prop up his political prospects. This is not the Hope and Change I voted for in 2008. It’s unrepentant political Jingoism at its worst.
—
Letters To My Country: SOTU Commentary #3
letterstomycountry and I disagree greatly on the proper role of government (indeed on its sheer necessity and legitimacy)… but I must commend him for his honest and thoughtful take here.
On ‘Denationalising’ Money
Yes, I am with Hayek, and actually, I responded to you in May on this very subject not only expressing my disagreement with Milton Friedman (in which I wrote: ”Free banking > gold (commodities) standard > fiat currency.”), but I also posted a video of Hayek himself disputing Friedman’s monetarism.
Additionally, I said in a previous post (about education, incidentally): “a gold standard would be far superior to the fiat currency of Federal Reserve banking but still inferior to free banking.”
I’ve also, in another instance, explained that, as an Austrian, I disagree with Milton Friedman on monetary policy.
Still, I can agree with Friedman that in a sense, a gold standard would be “a government-fixed price for gold” - but only in relation to the government’s currency. Gold, as a proven asset and historically and independently recognized money, would - just as it does now with completely fiat currency - have a real price, or value, in relation to commodities and other products. And, since on a gold standard any changes in convertibility rates (the aforementioned ‘standard’) must be declared, inflation becomes far more visible and open - unlike our current system in which the fed’s secret circulation of brand new currency constitutes an “invisible tax.” As such, the general populace would be more cognizant of the strength of its currency. And, as Jim Grant explained, a gold standard is the “people’s system - if you didn’t like the currency, you could exchange your paper for gold and that sent a message.” So this, in turn, would put some pressure on the government to maintain said strength in order to keep domestic investments from heading toward greater stability elsewhere.
And without fiat currency fostering malinvestments, the speculative bubbles and booms that ultimately lead to busts and crashes would be smaller, less widespread, and more easily responded to. This is because, to quote Stephen Horwitz, “expansionary monetary policy cannot cure recessions, it is their cause.”
Also, 2011 Nobel Laureate Tom Sargent explained, a government on a gold standard is much more likely to keep balanced budgets (after all, inflation hurts creditors and helps debtors). As Ludwig von Mises said, sound money is “an instrument for the protection of civil liberties against despotic inroads on the part of governments.”
On fiat currency, the gold standard, and Milton Friedman, here’s Murray Rothbard:
[F]iat currency is inherently the money of absolute statism. Money is the central commodity, the nerve center, as it were, of the modern market economy, and any system that vests the absolute control of that commodity in the hands of the State is hopelessly incompatible with a free-market economy or, ultimately, with individual liberty itself.
Yet, Milton Friedman is a radical advocate of cutting all current ties*, however weak, with gold, and going onto a total and absolute fiat dollar standard, with all control vested in the Federal Reserve System. Of course, Friedman would then advise the Fed to use that absolute power wisely, but no libertarian worth the name can have anything but contempt for the very idea of vesting coercive power in any group and then hoping that such group will not use its power to the utmost. The reasons that Friedman is totally blind to the tyrannical and despotic implications of his fiat money scheme is, once again, the arbitrary Chicagoite separation between the micro and the macro, the vain, chimerical hope that we can have totalitarian control of the macro sphere while the “free market” is preserved in the micro. It should be clear by now that this kind of a truncated, Chicagoite micro-“free market” is “free” only in the most mocking and ironic sense: it is far more the Orwellian “freedom” of “Freedom is Slavery.”
*[this was written before Nixon ended Bretton Woods and the gold-exchange standard altogether]
Ron Paul’s The Case for Gold further explains the merits of a gold standard in a more cogent and thorough way than I ever could.
So a gold standard would be drastically, dramatically superior to our current system. But because a gold standard would still maintain even a small element of governmental control, it would nonetheless be inferior to free banking (which would, in most instances, be based on gold).
Hayek explains:
The gold standard requires a constant observation by government of certain rules which include an occasional restriction of the total circulation which will cause local or national recession, and no government can nowadays do it when both the public and, I am afraid, all those Keynesian economists who have been trained in the last thirty years, will argue that it is more important to increase the quantity of money than to maintain the gold standard. …
[T]he gold standard is a partly effective mechanism to make governments do what they ought to do in their control of money, and the only mechanism which has been tolerably effective in the case of a monopolist who can do with the money whatever he likes. Otherwise gold is not really necessary to secure a good currency. I think it is entirely possible for private enterprise to issue a token money which the public will learn to expect to preserve its value, provided both the issuer and the public understand that the demand for this money will depend on the issuer being forced to keep its value constant; because if he did not do so, the people would at once cease to use his money and shift to some other kind.
And Hayek’s masterpiece “The Denationalisation of Money,” which you mention, is crucial reading with regards to the dangers of central banking and the merits of free banking.
With free banking, individuals - not a monopoly currency with its crony banking system - hold the power. As I’ve said, “Imperfect man will never find economic perfection, but by vesting control of economic decisions into fewer hands as central banking does (no matter how intelligent or well-meaning those hands may be), the economy becomes less pliable and self-healing. … [Financial and monetary] risks are better responded to and contained - and thus minimized - when control is dispersed among all individuals making mutually beneficial exchanges as opposed to being concentrated in a coterie of politicians and plutocrats.”
Magic Pizza and Free Market Banking
In what other industry is a business’ primary product/service not only provided by government, but created by it out of thin air?
What if government could magically create pizza out of nothing, and then supply businesses with this pizza for them to sell? What if government provided certain pizza “firms” with more pizza than others? What if every new pizza made every other pizza slightly less nutritious or filling? What if the bigger the pizza joint, the more magic pizza would tend to be available for it to sell? What if the government “guaranteed” the pizza? What if government, in an all its benevolence, promised to pick up the tab of any pizza order sent to a lower income family? And what if these pizza joints, especially the extra large ones, had protections from failure from the government - not only in financial bailouts but even in immunity from wrong-doing?
Would we be surprised, then, when these businesses would find little reason to treat its customers, who don’t play much of a role in the business’ success, as prized consumers? Would we be shocked when pizza joints would merger in order to both acquire more magic pizza and help guarantee their protection from failure?
Further, would anyone be so brazen as to call this racket a free market?
Of course not.
So when letterstomycountry posts this graphic of the mergers of large investment banks…
… and pronounces it the result of a free market, one can easily imagine my reaction.
Of course, finance/banking is arguably the most regulated and controlled industry in the United States - starting with the fiat currency of the Federal Reserve that provides banks with their lifeblood by producing it out of - literally - nothing.
The graphic above is certainly cause for disgust, but it’s important to understand why: it represents crony capitalism. This continued growth of giant corporate conglomerates is the result of a corporatist system that rewards and protects big businesses - and the bigger the businesses, the more sway in ensuring government regulators swing their monopoly-on-force hammers in their favor.
-
Follow-up: I actually addressed this very graphic months ago when a different blog also claimed it was the result of the free market. See that response here.
I do believe that every individual should be free to own, buy, and sell gold. If under those circumstances a private gold standard emerged, fine—although I make a scientific prediction that it’s very unlikely. But I think those people who say they believe in a gold standard are fundamentally being very anti-libertarian because what they mean by a gold standard is a governmentally fixed price for gold.
—
Milton Friedman (via letterstomycountry)
Free banking > gold (commodities) standard > fiat currency.
Hayek on Friedman’s Monetarism:
On Somalia →
Libertarians and Anarchists are sometimes charged with explaining the “failed state” of Somalia. Indeed, it has been suggested to me a handful of times (from the same blogger) that if I love statelessness so much, I should move to Somalia. Putting aside the intellectual laziness of the “why don’t you move to” charge, I thought it important to put Somalia in context.
In the studies and editorials below, you will see that (1) relative statelessness has been positive to Somalians in comparison to prior life under a state, (2) most conflicts arise from the various attempts to impose a unified government (Somalians wish to exist in smaller regions) and from international intervention, (3) the abject despotism that was the result of the previous government has made progress, prosperity, and maintaining peace a slower process than it would have been had the previous government never existed, (4) while there may not be recognized statutory law, an ordered rule of law nonetheless exists, and while incorporating what would be considered by us Westerners as “odd” cultural customs, when not interfered with by foreigners and other authoritarian power-grabbers, it works.
Every time I read the Libertarian case for Somalia, I can never take it seriously. To claim that life in Somalia “works” is to claim that people are thriving there. …
Let me stop you right there.
Why is it that you lefties can’t seem make a sensible argument without re-characterizing your opponent’s position? I understand that Big Government sympathizers have only so many rhetorical conventions in your bag of tricks, but you seem intelligent and articulate enough to not have to rely on logical fallacies. Your comrades do it all the time (a hell of a lot). And even when they do quote me properly, they adhere to their own dictionary. Are you not better than that?
I said that the Somali non-statutory system of justice sometimes works - which is distinctly not that “life” is or “people” are “thriving.” Not only did you change “ordered rule of law” to “life” (and subsequently “people”) in general, but you completely transmogrified the fairly benign “works” to “thriving.”
Life in Somalia is still fairly miserable primarily for the consequences of the negative externalities I mentioned - abject poverty which predicated the collapse of central government, foreign meddling, a culture of tribalism, etc - a list which, after reading, no one in their right mind would magically proffer “thriving.” For the average Somali, things are better - and the case was made from the observation of 18 key indicators.
There are other points you make which I agree with (that are not necessarily much different or opposed to things I posted), but why should I bother responding? Just like you seem to ignore the key qualifying word “relative” in “relative statelessness,” go ahead and pretend I responded differently and work your rebuttal around that fabrication. It seems as though it’s what you’ll do anyway.
And speaking of fabrications: in regards to a later post where you allege: “I’ve seen Laliberty try to make the case that Somalia is better off without a state before.” Not that it matters, but I’ve never even mentioned Somalia before. This was literally my very first post on the subject.
