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Post 20

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 6:31amSanction this postReply
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Quoth Philip Coates:

"[I]f I scan fifty or eighty cities, I'm sure I can find one which is a statistical anomaly ..."

Quoth Robert Bidinotto:

"The comparison of crime statistics in the 'Wild West' and in Boston is therefore nonsensical, and drawing any conclusions about the value of government from such numbers is nonsense on stilts."

In other words, since fact and reality don't support your case, screw fact and reality. Not that that's any surprise.

Here's a well-researched, footnoted analysis of crime rates in the "wild west" versus those in the "civilized east." You can like the facts or you can not like the facts. Either way, the facts will remain facts:

http://www.claytoncramer.com/shall-issue.html#c35

Tom Knapp
(Edited by Thomas L. Knapp
on 5/11, 6:39am)


Post 21

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 6:31amSanction this postReply
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MSK:
To reuse your question a little differently, "How much respect for private property is there in the USA?"
On the part of the government there is a fair amount of lip service but little if any at all in actual fact — see Tom Knapp's post for some examples. Among the people there is a great deal of respect for private property and that is the key. (Of course the relatively miniscule private violations of property are what sells newspapers.)

Pay particular attention to the bold-faced words in the following quote:

"I heartily accept the motto 'That government is best which governs least' and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe 'That government is best which governs not at all' and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have." — Henry David Thoreau

Our job, should we choose to accept it, is to help men to do that preparation so that they (we) can live in a free and prosperous society.

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Post 22

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 6:36amSanction this postReply
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Thomas,
[Me] "To reuse your question a little differently, 'How much respect for private property is there in the USA?'"

[You] Not much.
Really? In the context I was discussing?

(Some of your gripes are legitimate, but in the context of Somalia, that's all they are - just gripes.)

So, let's look around and see exactly what this "not much" means in reality.

Let's start by getting out of bed. I mean, I presume you do have a bed, which means you have a roof over your head. Silly idea? Why not ask someone trying to raise a family in Somalia how silly that is? Or if it should be taken for granted.

I wonder if your house has more than just one room in it. And electricity, running water - ah... yes - it even has windows. I remember you saying that. And screens! I can see our poor guy in Somalia drooling to have a problem like how many holes he has in his window screens. He has to be careful to not get too close to his own window, if he lucky enough to have one, so he won't get shot.

Sooooo now, you like coffee? Don't like to mess around with grounds or whatnot? Well, you get your wallet - er... what? A wallet with money in it? Money that you can actually exchange for a cup of coffee at your pleasure? I wonder what our friend in Somalia would do to have that.

Now you get in a car. Car? More property? And you can take it out on a road to go somewhere to get a cup of coffee? And you don't have to drive around huge mountains of trash and dead bodies and whatnot?

Oh, that's too melodramatic? Well hey, let's get more tame. Have you ever seen a Brazilian road? They say that all the world's largest truck manufacturers test their trucks on Brazilian roads because if they can drive there without falling apart, they will run like a dream anywhere else in the world. So in addition to not having to face goon squads on daily or hourly basis, your car won't be breaking down constantly from pot holes in the asphalt - er... that is, look at that! The road are asphalted - not just dirt!

Want me to go on? That is what I mean by "respect for private property in the USA."

It is soooooooooo easy to sit in the middle of all this wealth, owning a bunch of it too - and demanding respect for your property, hell, I bet you would even shoot someone who tried to take your stuff, but thankfully you don't have to deal with that on an hourly basis - and bitch about our government having no respect (or "not much") for property rights.

How did you get - and get to keep - all that stuff you own anyway? You have your own goon squad?

Michael



Edit - Rick - our posts crossed. You wrote,
[Me] "How much respect for private property is there in the USA?"

[You] On the part of the government there is a fair amount of lip service but little if any at all in actual fact — see Tom Knapp's post for some examples.
Once again, really? I see posts, even yours and Tom's. I presume they were entered on your own computers - more property btw. Try doing that in Somalia. Now there is a place where there is no respect for property rights - for real. Not the USA. Anyway, I gotta stop. My coffee's getting cold (poor me, what a fucking tragedy to have that kind of problem) and I have to do some things to my own property that is so disrespected around here, like clean some of it and make it look nice...
(Edited by Michael Stuart Kelly on 5/11, 6:47am)


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Post 23

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 7:08amSanction this postReply
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Quoth Michael:

"(Some of your gripes are legitimate, but in the context of Somalia, that's all they are - just gripes.)

"So, let's look around and see exactly what this 'not much' means in reality."

Ah, context. A very good approach. Let's examine context then.

The standard of living in Somalia sucks.

Of course, it didn't always suck. Prior to imperial partition, the standard of living was getting better, faster, in Somalia than almost anywhere in the Horn of Africa.

After imperial partition, the region was wracked by the violent jockeying of the Italians, the Egyptians, the British and the Ethiopians to get "their" pieces of it, and the standard of living began to level off and then to decline.

After "independence," the standard of living declined still further under the Husseen and Igal governments, and especially dramatically under Siad Barre's "scientific socialism."

Yes, the collapse of the standard of living declined still further after the collapse of Siad Barre's state ... as "warlords" attempted, by force of arms and mass murder to impose a new state.

Oddly, however, after the US joined in the attempt to force a state on Somalia and got its ass beat, the standard of living began to improve, and by the late 1990s, the place was starting to look pretty nice. The warlords were nearly out of business, because their gun-toting "technicals" had been hired from under them as bodyguards for a surging population of entrepeneurs who were making a killing bringing in trade goods and modern services to the Mogadishu area. There was certainly government -- there always is -- there just wasn't a state.

The US and the UN couldn't stand this, of course, so they launched various new attempts to impose a state on Somalia. They imported some Ethiopans to Djibouti (Somalia itself isn't safe ... at least for statists), proclaimed them a) Somalians and b) the "government of Somalia" and started exerting economic pressure on Somalia to accept them.

Why economic pressure? Because there wasn't any state that they could go to to demand "surrender." They had to beat down the resistance of the entire population. The US started by pressuring UK telecom to cut off its international phone and Internet lines -- paid for by private funds from entrepeneurs in Mogadishu who were selling phone and ISP service to an increasingly wealthy population. They pressured international goods merchants (including food sellers -- Somalians are only supposed to be kept from starving if the food is given to them "free" by the UN and delivered by a US Marine) to only accept payment in a worthless recreation of the "Somalia shilling" printed in Djibouti and disdained by anyone who actually did business in the country (the main currencies in Somalia, where barter did not obtain, were the US dollar and the Kenyan shilling).

And, whaddayaknow, the standard of living in Somalia fell back down. This, of course, is all the fault of those stubborn anarchists, not of the states conducting the war on statelessness in Somalia. The state, as we all know, is never to blame for anything.

And property rights? In Somalia, you have the right to whatever property you can defend. In the US, you have the right to whatever property you can defend, too. Of course, it's a lot easier to defend your property from Mohammed Farah Aidid than it is to defend it from Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Schwarzenegger or President Bush.

Tom Knapp

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Post 24

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 8:03amSanction this postReply
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Thomas,
Of course, it's a lot easier to defend your property from Mohammed Farah Aidid than it is to defend it from Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Schwarzenegger or President Bush.
Sounds like a fucking paradise over there, to tell the truth.

Er... that is, except for our meddling in their affairs.

Of course, there just aren't any Somalians killing Somalians either...

Oops, sorry.

Got to step out. In this hell hole I live in, I'm a bit hungry. I have to go fight off  Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Schwarzenegger and President Bush and get these monsters away from my damn refrigerator so I can eat.

Michael


Post 25

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 8:31amSanction this postReply
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Said Thomas Knapp "In Somalia, you have the right to whatever property you can defend. In the US, you have the right to whatever property you can defend, too. Of course, it's a lot easier to defend your property from Mohammed Farah Aidid than it is to defend it from Mayor Bloomberg, Governor Schwarzenegger or President Bush."

This is true. I am struck by the fact that it is improbable that a few sources will provide an accurate picture of the social and economic situation in Somalia.

The abundance of property *here* compared to say, Somalia does not make for a case against anarchy.

I would like to see stats on foreign business investment in Somalia. Is it any less profitable to set up shop (mining, construction, agriculture etc) there, than in non-anarchy? I suspect that profit could lead to security. From the limitted reading on Somalia I've done, and from speaking with an ex who lived there for two years, it seems there is a security but it must be bought.

John






(Edited by John Newnham
on 5/11, 8:31am)


Post 26

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 9:02amSanction this postReply
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Ahh, Michael - sounds like those Brazilian roads  were patterned after ones in my old great aunt's hollar in southern Kentucky - especially come rain time...:-)

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Post 27

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 9:27amSanction this postReply
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Knapp totally misrepresents the paper that he cites in Post #20.

Knapp's characterization of the paper is "a well-researched, footnoted analysis of crime rates in the 'wild west' versus those in the 'civilized east.'" But in fact the paper does not compare crime and violence in the Old West against that of the same period in the "civilized east." Nor is it about the merits of anarchism vs. government as a control on violence in the Old West, either. Rather, it is about how gun ownership suppresses levels of crime and violence, which is quite another matter. The paper contrasts levels of violence in Old West towns of the late 1800s having no gun controls, with the violence in modern U. S. urban centers that do practice gun control.

There is no question that widespread gun ownership suppresses crime, as this paper shows. That is a very different proposition, however, from saying that anarchism suppresses crime. A limited government can certainly allow lawful gun ownership and use for self-defense in an enforceable legal framework where victim and victimizer can be distinguished. It is that last that anarchism cannot provide. In any case, the facts presented in the paper do not suggest that the Old West was an anarchist paradise, not by a long shot (no pun intended). Tucked away in the piece, for example, are intriguing lines such as, "sometimes the sheriff was himself the head of a criminal gang" -- exactly the kind of "warlord" arrangement to be expected under anarchism.

There is also this: "The homicide rate in those towns was extremely high, as the 'bad men' who hung out in saloons shot each other at a fearsome rate, in some cases exceeding the homicide rate in modern Washington, D.C. These shootings amounted to consensual violence among disreputable young men who enjoyed getting drunk and getting into fights. [152] The presence of guns turned many petty drunken quarrels into fatalities." But was all this violence truly "consensual"? Since law enforcement was so spotty, and "sometimes the sheriff was himself the head of a criminal gang," one can only imagine how many acts of outright murder by drunken bullies are blithely dismissed by the authors of this paper as "consensual violence among disreputable young men." Anyone who has ever witnessed bullies and drunken mobs in action knows exactly what I mean.

One of the chief anarchist criticisms of government is that it often engages in activities which, if done by private citizens, would be regarded as criminal violations of rights. These activities would be constitutionally banned in a properly limited government.

But anarchists reveal their own moral hypocrisy in their glorification of Viking Iceland, and in their touting of the Old West -- with its towns often run by gangster "sheriffs," its mining camps "governed" by summary lynchings of criminal suspects, its saloons loaded with drunken killers...and most of the resulting crimes and injustices immune from legal scrutiny and accountability. Anarchists prove themselves quite willing to evade those crimes and injustices that occur in such anarchistic "models," by relabeling murder as "consensual violence," and mob rule as "customary law."  As methods to constrain violence, anarchists denounce a constitutionally limited democracy, advocating instead that force should be left to the unlimited "democracy" of the marketplace.

(Edited by Robert Bidinotto on 5/11, 9:47am)


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Post 28

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 10:04amSanction this postReply
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Tom,
Robert B. makes the point one way, I will try to make it another.
When you add population density to the mix what do you get?

No expert, and not interested enough to try to answer that question, I just put it out there without pretending to know what the answer is.
I do know that people around my neck of the woods (pop 50,000, rural, 20 acre lots separated by lots of trees 60 miles from Canada) are probably no better than the people in town (pop 6,000 lots of about 100 feet by 100 feet in the largest cases).  But the people in town rub shoulders a lot more.

Though I don't think people are rats, look at the experiments with rats in cages.  One or two and they get along fine.  Too many in a cage and fights inevitably start.  There might be something really basic here that has less to do with government laws than with human biology and the fact of finite resources.

All that said, I'm glad the sheriff exists when my neighbor runs around with his shotgun.  If there were several sheriffs from competing firms, and my neighbor subscribed to one different than I, or none at all believing himself his own sheriff, I shudder to think about the result.

And few who know me would regard me as anything but the most government hating, independent cuss around.

(Added in editing: Area of 'neck of the woods' = ~1,000 sq miles, Area of town = ~1 sq mile.  The calculation is left as an exercise for the student.)

(Edited by Jeff Perren on 5/11, 10:56am)


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Post 29

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 10:51amSanction this postReply
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Hey Jeff,

That's actually a pretty cool post.

Finite resources and biology.

Add that to the human capacity to choose poorly, for example "when my neighbor runs around with his shotgun," and you are starting to make a much more solid rational basis for government than just a floating abstraction (non-initiation of force).

On that kind of foundation, you can even build-in some of those kinds of abstractions, since the result will last in reality (er... actual reality like finite resources and biology and mean ornery old cusses, not just words).

Michael


Post 30

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 11:23amSanction this postReply
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Quoth Robert Bidinotto:

"Knapp totally misrepresents the paper that he cites in Post #20.

"Knapp's characterization of the paper is 'a well-researched, footnoted analysis of crime rates in the 'wild west' versus those in the 'civilized east.'"

And that's exactly what it is. I misrepresented nothing. I didn't characterize it as (as you would have it) "about the merits of anarchism vs. government," because I wasn't claiming that it was any such thing. As a matter of fact, I'm not even the person characterizing the "wild west" as "anarchist." You should probably read -- and reply to -- what I actually write, instead of what it serves your needs to pretend that I wrote.

Now, from the top:

I never offered "the wild west" as an example of anarchy.

I never stated that lack of the state in the "wild west" was the reason for its comparatively lower crime rates.

All I did was rebut someone else's argument that a) the "wild west" was "anarchist," and b) that it was "wilder" than the "governed east."

Build your own damn strawmen. Building them for you isn't my job unless you pay me, and you can't afford my rates.

Tom Knapp

Post 31

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 11:31amSanction this postReply
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Quoth Jeff:

"When you add population density to the mix what do you get?"

That's a good question.

A couple of other good ones:

1) What do you get with gun ownership versus non-gun-ownership in varying rates (the question the article I referenced addressed)?

2) What are property crime rates going to look like in a stable urban environment -- where land is scarce and must be bought rather than abundant for the claiming, and where a non-transient population accumulates valuables instead of "travelling light?"

If I wanted to make the case for the "wild west" as "anarchist," it would be difficult. If I wanted to make the case for the "wild west" as better because it was anarchist, it would be even more difficult. For those who haven't followed the thread, though, it's exactly the opposite. It was Philip Coates who tried to characterize the "wild west" as "anarchist," and as worse because it was anarchist. I was simply establishing that he was wrong on both counts.

Tom Knapp

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Post 32

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 11:38amSanction this postReply
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Quoth Michael:

"Finite resources and biology.

"Add that to the human capacity to choose poorly, for example 'when my neighbor runs around with his shotgun,' and you are starting to make a much more solid rational basis for government than just a floating abstraction (non-initiation of force)."

As has been the case, several times, you seem to be missing a key point. Because people have the capacity to choose poorly, and because government is people, government (in the sense that you mean, i.e. the state) is nothing more than "your neighbor running around with his shotgun" to the nth power, involuntary financed by you, with you excluded from competing in the "running around with his shotgun" contest. How is that safer than, or preferable to, "your neighbor running around with his shotgun" without such a sanction?

For some reason, you grasp that people have the capacity to choose poorly, but don't grasp that people don't lose that capacity when someone taps a sword on their shoulders and dubs them "the government."

Being part of "the government" does not diminish people's capacity to choose poorly, it merely magnifies the effects of choosing poorly and distributes those effects among people who didn't make the poor choices instead of among those who made poor choices, or who voluntarily affiliated with those who made poor choices.

Tom Knapp

Post 33

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 11:55amSanction this postReply
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Tom,
I don't pretend to be an expert on this issue, but to try to answer one of your questions:
"How is that safer than, or preferable to, "your neighbor running around with his shotgun" without such a sanction?"

Because there are enforced rules, in a good society arrived at by reason and validated by experience.  My neighbor running around is an example of 'no rule but his whims'.  In any case, I don't want to put too much weight on this one example.  I don't pretend it proves the case for limited government, etc.  It's just one more case to help keep the discussion grounded in real experience.

By the way, as I skimmed that article Robert B references, one might actually use it to advance the case for anarchism.

"But other crime was virtually nil. The per capita annual robbery rate was 7% of modern New York City's. The burglary rate was 1%. Rape was unknown. [153] "The old, the weak, the female, the innocent, and those unwilling to fight were rarely the targets of attacks," McGrath found. One resident of Bodie did "not recall ever hearing of a respectable women or girl in any manner insulted or even accosted by the hundreds of dissolute characters that were everywhere. In part this was due to the respect depravity pays to decency; in part to the knowledge that sudden death would follow any other course." 

Since I'm at least one of the types in the list, where possible, I might find such an environment attractive.

But, as with so many things, a little knowledge inclineth us toward anarchism, depth of understanding brings us back again.

I suspect that, at bottom, the debate really revolves around differing views of human nature and what people are likely to do in given circumstances.

I have to give you credit: you really have studied the issue.

(Note added in editing: Yes, Tom, I see that you are not using the Wild West to prove anything.)

(Edited by Jeff Perren on 5/11, 11:59am)


Post 34

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 11:58amSanction this postReply
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1. Tom says [#31]: It was Philip Coates who tried to characterize the "wild west" as "anarchist"

2. Phil's actual words [#6]: ...partial anarchy, the "Wild West"...

Thomas L. Knapp, you seem to more than once make subtle shifts (or perhaps simply overlook the nuance) in what people have said (do you think partial anarchy is logically equivalent to anarchy?) before you reply to them.

For this reason, I will not debate you further on this thread.

Post 35

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 12:20pmSanction this postReply
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Quoth Philip Coates:

-----
1. Tom says [#31]: It was Philip Coates who tried to characterize the "wild west" as "anarchist"

2. Phil's actual words [#6]: ...partial anarchy, the "Wild West"...
-----

I apologize for the error. It was unintentional and I regret it.

However:

"Thomas L. Knapp, you seem to more than once make subtle shifts (or perhaps simply overlook the nuance) in what people have said (do you think partial anarchy is logically equivalent to anarchy?) before you reply to them."

The main point I was making was that I was not equating "the wild west" with "anarchy."

I think the notion that you were equating the "wild west" with anarchy is valid to a point -- you were attempting a contrast that had the strong implication that what you were criticizing were "anarchist" features of the "wild west" with a more governed alternative.

"For this reason, I will not debate you further on this thread."

That's your call to make, of course.

Regards,
Tom Knapp

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Post 36

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 12:35pmSanction this postReply
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Quoth Jeff:

"I don't pretend to be an expert on this issue, but to try to answer one of your questions:

"'How is that safer than, or preferable to, 'your neighbor running around with his shotgun" without such a sanction?''"

"Because there are enforced rules, in a good society arrived at by reason and validated by experience. My neighbor running around is an example of 'no rule but his whims'. In any case, I don't want to put too much weight on this one example. I don't pretend it proves the case for limited government, etc. It's just one more case to help keep the discussion grounded in real experience."

Fair enough.

Nozick tried to break all this stuff down into mathematical equations. I'm not a math head, so I can't do that. I have to go with plain verbiage. But I'll try:

"Your neighbor running around with his shotgun" is a matter of whim.

In theory, the state imposes "enforced rules ... arrived at by reason and validated by experience."

The key here is in theory. In fact:

1) The rules aren't always arrived at by reason. Demagoguery works.

2) The rules aren't always validated by experience, because the enforcers of the rules are just as likely to be whimsical as your neighbor. The difference is that those enforcers have been vested with a great deal more power to enforce the rules ... or their whims, and it isn't always easy to hold them accountable when they do the latter.

In that sense, it comes down to a risk/benefit assessment. Who is more likely to present a threat? Which threat, if presented, is worse? Do the benefits of the state outweight the risks the state represents?

And so on, and so forth.

I agree that it's not an easy set of questions. That's one reason I'm going to great lengths to dissect the arguments for the existence, or possibility, of a benevolent/justifiable/effectual state before trying to argue for a particular alternative. I may be convinced, before doing the latter, that there is indeed a minimal state solution that works.

Regards,
Tom Knapp

Post 37

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 1:06pmSanction this postReply
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Tom,
There is much truth in what you say.
The people who govern are humans.  Sometimes good, sometimes bad.  Ditto those who make the rules.
There are often unforeseen (or unforeseeable) consequences and undoing them is often very difficult.

But the real world is messy. Many of us are scrubbing as well as we can, consistent with trying to lead lives,
and lots of folks keep pissing on the table.

I just can't see any way around it, and it doesn't seem like eliminating 'the state' is, net net, better than the alternative.
I'm always open to reason and experience.

(By the way I didn't mean to imply that legislators, et al are inherently,
always or even more likely to be reasonable and wise.  Ha! Far from it.  But I've seen from experience that certain established and enforced rules do help.)

I look forward to more lengthly, in-depth, writings of yours on this subject.

Your fellow janitor,
Jeff


Post 38

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 1:11pmSanction this postReply
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"I apologize for the error. It was unintentional and I regret it."

Thanks, Tom for saying that.
Phil C

Post 39

Wednesday, May 11, 2005 - 1:17pmSanction this postReply
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Seems we're drifting more to abstract political theory than real world facts.

John N., I cannot figure out if you wrote your post partly out of sarcasm.
...it is improbable that a few sources will provide an accurate picture...
I did write somewhere that googling "Somalia Anarchy" (without the quotes) produces >70,000 hits.
The abundance of property *here* compared to say, Somalia does not make for a case against anarchy.
The abundance of property in a lot of other countries compared to Somalia does. Somalia is one of the poorest countries in the world. It's not even on the Wikipedia list of countries by GDP (PPP) per capita. If you use the CIA estimate of $600 per capita/annum, Somalia will rank 178 out of 179 countries, beaten to the very bottom only by Malawi. Somalia's neighbor Djibouti, another one of those "Fourth World Countries", actually does more than three times better at $1,957 per capita/annum.

Since I titled this thread "... in the Real World", I have to correct some really gross rewriting of history.
Thomas K.:
Yes, the collapse of the standard of living declined still further after the collapse of Siad Barre's state ... as "warlords" attempted, by force of arms and mass murder to impose a new state.

Oddly, however, after the US joined in the attempt to force a state on Somalia and got its ass beat, the standard of living began to improve, and by the late 1990s, the place was starting to look pretty nice. The warlords were nearly out of business, because their gun-toting "technicals" had been hired from under them as bodyguards for a surging population of entrepeneurs who were making a killing bringing in trade goods and modern services to the Mogadishu area. There was certainly government -- there always is -- there just wasn't a state.
Siyad Barreh fled Mogadishu on 27 January 1991. East Africa was hit by a severe drought soon after. From Infoplease:
Africa's worst drought occurred in 1992, and coupled with the devastation of civil war, Somalia was plunged into a severe famine—an estimated one-third of the population was in danger of dying from starvation. U.S. troops were sent in to protect the delivery of food in Dec. 1992. In May 1993 the UN took control of the relief efforts from the U.S. The warlord Mohamed Farah Aidid ambushed UN troops and dragged American bodies through the streets, causing an about-face in America's willingness to involve itself in the fate of this anarchic country. Peace talks in Kenya appeared to be moving slowly but steadily toward an agreement on an interim government, at least in principle, when on March 23, 1994, they collapsed. The last of the U.S. troops left in late March, leaving 19,000 UN troops behind.
Again, and to be more precise, the United Nations Operation in Somalia, UNOSOM I, began on April 1992. After succumbing to international pressure to aid the UN in delivering food, the US-led Unified Task Force [UNITAF] lands in Mogadishu on December 1992.

Notice, almost two years passed after the fall of the last Somali government before the first US forces arrive. The worst part of Thomas K.'s post is the "...got its ass beat". From John Miller's interview of Osama bin Laden (May 1998).
In December 1992, bin Laden found the battle he'd been waiting for. The United States was leading a UN-sanctioned rescue mission into Somalia. In the midst of a famine, the country's government had completely broken down, and warring tribes-largely Muslim--had cut off relief efforts by humanitarian groups. Somalians were starving to death in cities and villages, and the U. S., which had moved quickly to rescue oil-rich Kuwait, had come under mounting criticism for doing nothing.

When the Marines landed in the last days of 1992, bin Laden sent in his own soldiers, armed with AK-47's and rocket launchers. Soon, using the techniques they had perfected against the Russians, they were shooting down American helicopters. The gruesome pictures of the body of a young army ranger being dragged naked through the streets by cheering crowds flashed around the world. The yearlong American rescue mission for starving Somalians went from humanitarian effort to quagmire in just three weeks. Another superpower humiliated. Another bin Laden victory.

"After leaving Afghanistan, the Muslim fighters headed for Somalia and prepared for a long battle, thinking that the Americans were like the Russians," bin Laden said. "The youth were surprised at the low morale of the American soldiers and realized more than before that the American soldier was a paper tiger and after a few blows ran in defeat. And America forgot all the hoopla and media propaganda ... about being the world leader and the leader of the New World Order, and after a few blows they forgot about this title and left, dragging their corpses and their shameful defeat."
The reason for the influx of cash to Somalia was Al Qaeda. The reason the phone and ISP service was cut by the US was because Al Qaeda used it to finance the 9/11 attacks.

I won't be surprised if what I have posted here gets twisted into another conspiracy theory. For all the talk about theory, let us not forget that the only real example of anarcho-capitalism is Somalia. If countries with governments are such a hell, why don't the ancap adherents move there?


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