Spudboy100@aol.com wrote:
In a message dated 4/22/2001 3:29:29 PM Eastern Daylight Time,
douglassbill@hotmail.com writes:
>>This short article is an update on Somalia, abandoned by Westerndo->>
>>gooders several years ago (thankfully for the Somalis). The country >> is
>>now in a kind of rough anarcho-capitalism. In that sense, I >> suppose
>>a better title might be "Murray Rothbard Comes to Somalia"
>I have just read the link and I am still skeptical. Would anyone wish > to
>trade places with a Somali? Which Somali, the one with the rifles? > If its
>so great, why not live there? My answer is, because its a > third world
>backwater owned and operated by thugs of the lowest order.
Spudboy, I think Jerry Mitchell addresses this well in his post:
>I think the point this is making isn't that its a paradise (yet :P), > but
>that its getting better in many ways and that it doesn't take a > lot of
>extrapolation to see where its headed in general.
[snip]
As he says, the point is not to imply that Somalia is a wonderful place to
be, but only that things *are* getting better, and it's interesting to note
that they're getting better in the absence of the "help" of foreign aid
workers, NGOs, the UN, etc.
If you write off the whole developing world as just a "third world
backwater," as you seem to be implying, then you fail to distinguish between
those where things are stagnating or getting worse, and those where things
are actually looking up. I think it's an important distinction to make;
after all, just thirty years ago Singapore was basically a third world
backwater.
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