At 12:42 PM -0400 4/26/00, Jim Burnes wrote:
>
>Starvation and privation in most of Africa is almost a stereotype.
>
>Stick with a minimal government and something approaching english common
>law and we have goods and happiness aplenty.
There are some interesting issues normally neglected in the
traditional libertarian analysis. For example, the "ecotone." This is
a region of 50/50 survival, roughly speaking. A tideline is often an
ecotone.
The fact is, in alluvial flood plains like Bangla Desh (formerly East
Pakistan), people move out onto the flood plains, where land is
cheaper than elsewhere, and breed as rapidly as they possibly can
(for various reasons). Every ten or twenty years, a cyclone (=
hurricane) arrives and half a million die quickly and another few
million suffer diseases and mold and all the stuff that too much
water brings. And the capital, Dacca, sinks deeper into poverty.
Sub-saharan Africa is much the same.
Capitalism vs. Marxism has little to do with things. The issue is
that these are regions of extremely high death rates (and hence high
birth rates, via the generation-recombination equation) and nearly
permanently "poor" living conditions.
(Ain't no one gonna be dumb enough to build a wafer fab plant near
Dacca, as but one example.)
Fact is, the thriving capitalist/Protestant/Weberian societies are
built in the loess of the temperate zones. An artifact of history.
Neither taiga nor swamp nor desert.
>For most people it doesn't matter why this works. It just does. Stop
>screwing with it. Look at the most properous nations on the earth
>(including your own) and some approximation of common law and free markets
>is what you will find.
And good soil, good rivers, good weather, good places for thriving.
Those who live in dankness, in frozen wastelands, in fetid swamps, in
the shadow of sand dunes, in clouds of tsetse flies and
mosquitos...well, they fertilize the soil.
--Tim May
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Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
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