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As an aside: I've been waiting for Libertarians to declare Somalia to be heaven on earth. I wonder why they've never picked up on the obvious real-world example

As an aside: I've been waiting for Libertarians to declare Somalia to be heaven on earth. I wonder why they've never picked up on the obvious real-world example of a nation with no central state government with a monopoly on violence?

baddox 9y ago
You probably haven't looked that hard. Somalia case studies are ubiquitous in libertarian (anarchist-leaning) circles. The general claim seems to be that, yeah, stateless Somalia is way worse than high-functioning governments like the United States, but better than its neighbor states and better than it was before it became stateless. Leeson's article is probably the best on the topic: http://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf http://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf
- crdoconnor 9y ago
  Most of the metrics which he's looking at which improved under southern Somalia's anarcho-capitalism happened because of an increase in remittances. I don't think anybody's arguing that if Somalis didn't have legions of relatives abroad sending them money the humanitarian disaster would have been even worse. The security implications of living with a system of competing warlords (or 'insurance companies', in ancap terminology) are also massively glossed over.
- redblacktree 9y ago
  > Somalia is way worse than high-functioning governments like the United States Yet my libertarian friends on Facebook all seem to want to tear the enitre government down.
  - lowpro 9y ago
    There is a difference between Anarchy and libertarianism. Most libertarians want less government, not no government.
    - redblacktree 9y ago
      From my perspective, the libertarian vision "less government" looks a lot like "no government." Just defense and contract enforcement, right? With ridiculous notions like environmental issues being handled by courts.
    - brewdad 9y ago
      But less government tends to lead to no government, or right back to where we are today depending on how strongly held one's beliefs are. Good luck finding two people to agree on what exactly should be cut on the road to "less".
    - creepydata 9y ago
      Less than what exactly?
  - rootusrootus 9y ago
    At the risk of heading even further down this rabbit hole, I'd observe that there are very many significant differences between Somalia and the United States and that the existence of government is just one small part.
    - skaplun 9y ago
      If George Washington declared himself king, you might be looking today at 30% unemployment like some of the euros
      - tehwebguy 9y ago
        What is the point you were trying to make?
        skaplun 9y ago
        "that the existence of government is just one small part." I dont think you can qualify government as "just one small part". America would not be in the same place today without the decisions taken over time by its leaders. The same decisions would not be made under a different system of incentives for a leader like a monarchy/anarchy
        timthelion 9y ago
        It wouldn't be the same place, but it would still have enjoyed the highest natural-resource to population ration of any nation in history. Coal, Iron, Oil, Natural Gas, Gold, Wood, Water, Arible land, Uranium, Aluminium, Copper, all in great supply. The only comparable nations I can think of are Australia and Brazil, and their relative wealth is rather well explained by the overall wealth gradient nearing the equator:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_and_wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_and_wealth
      - kwhitefoot 9y ago
        Most of the European states that have monarchs (Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands for instance) are doing alright, Spain is an outlier.
  - creepydata 9y ago
    Strange thing is the same friends would not live in Somolia if given the chance...
    - abarrettjo 9y ago
      I would question your assumption there; plenty of Somali diaspora move back and live in Somalia or Somaliland.
  - gozur88 9y ago
    I keep reading that on HN, but after hanging around libertarians for a lifetime, I've never met a single one who said that. Usually Somalia comes up in the context of someone wanting a bigger government and dismissively telling libertarians "Why doncha just move to Somalia? Huh?" Is that maybe what you're thinking of?
  - afsina 9y ago
    What many libertarians want is decentralization. As much as possible. They probably want to get rid of all powerful Federal Government but local governments (as small as possible) and confederations are usually fine.
    - thanksgiving 9y ago
      And now we will soon have "separate but equal" restrooms in Texas. I find state rights advocates to be the worst™ people in the world. They advocate for state rights when it suits them. Absolutely hypocritical bunch. We've decided as a nation that there are some rights and responsibilities that we have regardless of where we live within this nation. How many times do we have to fight for civil rights?
      - whatshisface 9y ago
        You're making the strange assumption that the federal government will always be be more in line with your own political views than your state government. After all, at the end of the day a hard-right state is less bad for liberals than a hard-right country, because only in the first case can they try to find a job in California.
        lostcolony 9y ago
        Yes, he's assuming the government will not be terrible to live under. But saying "at least with local government, terrible governments will be localized" is a copout. Can we have non-terrible governments? If so, it makes sense to try and ensure everyone has one.
        afsina 9y ago
        To me this is like telling "Government will be right for everyone this time, if we tweak the parameters right". Applying rules of Empiricism to large scale governing will just make things worse as long as people have very different world views. Besides, locality has inherent advantages such as familiarity, cultural similarity and accountability. So at least some local governments will be probably suitable for your liking.
- cup 9y ago
  >but better than its neighbor states and better than it was before it became stateless. Not quite. While dysfunctional, Somali pre-anarchy was actually a great place to live.
  - baddox 9y ago
    Was it? It sure doesn't sound so, from what I've read about Barre's regime.
    - cup 9y ago
      Functional hospitals, schools, universities, utilities and services. No crime, no warlords and no bandits. Economic stability and religious freedom. Sure, Barre was a dictator, there was state sanctioned violence but for the average Somali on the street life was better in contrast to what followed which was: Anarchy, random violence, war lords, checkpoint extortion, no services, no schools, no hospitals, no utilities, telecommunications were monopolized and the owners became defacto rulers who maintained anarchy to ensure tax-free profits. Massive increase in maternal mortality, reduction in life expectancy etc etc. No one is saying Barre and the regime was great, but in comparison its pretty clear it was superior.
- dmoy 9y ago
  People actually argue that Somalia is better than it was back when it had a functioning government? Have they talked to anyone who grew up or lived through that? Nobody I've talked to from Somalia (I grew up in Minneapolis, a good chunk of my classmates from elementary and uni were Somali), nobody thinks it was a good change. The amount of death and fear is just staggering. That article reads a little tone deaf, a lot of the data ignores an entire 10 year period of total fucking chaos.
  - peteretep 9y ago
    While I don't agree with you per-se, there's a lot of inherent survivorship bias in your sample group.
    - r00fus 9y ago
      If it's survivor bias, wouldn't that make the Somali classmates' opinions even more valid (their contemporaries being dead and all)? Or did you intend to say selection bias?
      - kolinko 9y ago
        Survivor bias doesn't have to be based on literal survival. But yes, in this case a more generic, selection, might be more appropriate.
      - s_kilk 9y ago
        Indeed. It's kind of amazing that around here when someone says "yeah my Libertarian Paridise home-country is actually a shithole because people keep getting machete'd to death by roving gangs", someone else strokes their chin and thinks "hmm, I'm not sure I buy it, maybe there's a survivorship bias in there"
  - timthelion 9y ago
    It is very common for foreigners to hate their homeland. People who move from Kuba tend to say it sucks. I moved from America to Prague and I tell everyone that America sucks. My Russian friends say Russia sucks. The Ukrainians I know say Ukraine sucks. The Kyrgyzstanies I know say Kyrgyzstan sucks. I live among foreigners, and the only ones that I've met that actually like their home country are rich ones from totalitarian regimes who somehow benefit from the regime. And as far as I can tell, public opinion of a regime among expats is strongly tied in both directions to how that regime effects them and their families financially, though even well off people such as myself, who have chosen to move away, often find it in their hearts to hate their home country. The rich Saudis who come to Prague to study all thing Saudi Arabia is heaven on earth. The Russian who's family lost everything in 1998 [1] think that Putin should be hung from a lamp post with his own intestines. I think that there is basically no knowledge to be gained from talking to expats about their home countries. After-all 75% of Turks in Belgium voted for totalitarian dictatorship at home [2]. [1] https://economics.rabobank.com/publications/2013/september/the-russian-crisis-1998/ https://economics.rabobank.com/publications/2013/september/t... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_constitutional_referendum,_2017#Overseas_results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_constitutional_referen...
- mannykannot 9y ago
  >The general claim seems to be that, yeah, stateless Somalia is way worse than high-functioning governments like the United States, but better than its neighbor states and better than it was before it became stateless. I think you have to have a pretty strong a priori bias in favor of libertarianism to see that as a favorable statement. It also looks a bit self-serving, as there seem to be more Somali refugees in Kenya and Ethiopia than vice-versa.
subterfudge44 9y ago
> I wonder why they've never picked up on the obvious real-world example of a nation with no central state government with a monopoly on violence? Reason 1: Enforcement of contracts. Reason 2: Non-Aggression Libertarians of most stripes believe in limited role for government one of which is to enforce contracts and protect individual liberty. Since both are missing it is hard for Nigeria to be a good example of a Libertarian state. If anything Nigeria proves a lot of Libertarian principles at work. Nigerians have built roads, built private water distribution systems and private schools despite no existence of government. The state could have achieved lot more if they could have had a basic government.
abarrettjo 9y ago
Or the even better example of Somaliland, which is perfectly safe. I lived and worked there for a few months last summer, and loved it.
- cup 9y ago
  Somaliland has a government though.
  - abarrettjo 9y ago
    Fair, but I would argue that the Somaliland government is about as existent as the one Somalia also technically has. It exists, but doesn't do anything. But please correct me if you disagree! I really appreciated your comments down below, particularly your question about whether re-introducing bank notes is an effort to diminish the influence of the Telcos.
    - jjman 9y ago
      A Somalilander here, Somaliland has a fully established government which is elected by popular vote. In fact, it has one of the most sophisticated and modern voter registration system which uses bio-metric data to detect double voters. Something a number of other African or even first world (i.e. US/EU) can't guarantee. Somaliland is extremely safe, you can go about your daily life without a hint of any problem. You can walk down the street in the middle of the night without worrying for your safety. Keeping peace is everyone's business, citizens take ownership of it. Aside from that, it is a very poor country, but everyone is happy with what little they have.
- grecy 9y ago
  Awesome, where abouts were you exactly? I am driving around the entire continent now, and a friend said I must visit Somaliland, so it's on my radar when I eventually make it up that way (I'm moving South on the West Coast now)
BurningFrog 9y ago
Libertarians typically want a small state that uses its monopoly on violence solely to protect citizens from aggression.
- beefield 9y ago
  I have never quite understood why libertarians think that is the precise optimum for the amount of government activities and their "theft" of my money via taxation. Don't libertarians understand or accept that there are market failures that government is needed to solve? Or do they think that in every case government makes more bad than good when trying to solve market failures? Or is it just that freedom of individuals is more important than fixing market failures (In which case I must wonder by what logic it is important for a government to stop me being killed by another person but not at all important to stop me being killed by a market failure? I end dead in both cases...)?
  - wyager 9y ago
    Libertarians don't posit a precise optimum. They are generally of the opinion that the optimum is quite a bit lower than what we have right now. > Don't libertarians understand or accept that there are market failures that government is needed to solve? The only credible "failure" I'm aware of is the need to internalize of public externalities, which can be achieved in a number of liberty-friendly ways. See, for example, the Coase theorem. Libertarians recognize that these models are not exact, but they do suggest that we can do better. Perhaps you could list some of the market failures you are thinking of?
    - semi-extrinsic 9y ago
      > See, for example, the Coase theorem Which only holds when transaction costs are negligible, i.e., never. Which was precisely Coase's point in that work - he showed that mathematically, it doesn't matter what initial distribution you put on something (his example was radio broadcast frequency allocations), since the final Pareto-optimal distribution is independent of initial conditions. This is the Coase theorem. But as soon as you include transaction costs, the theorem fails to hold, and initial distribution is important. A few obvious market failures: * Microsoft monopoly in the late 90s * Too little being done to reduce CO2 emissions, since emission costs are externalized and delayed * Broadband providers in the US * EpiPen pricing * Essentially every Health and Safety regulation ever exists to fix a market failure. In the small government world, employers see no cost of workers dying of lung cancer in their 60s from breathing asbestos, etc. I could go on.
afpx 9y ago
The Bush Administration, under Paul Bremer, tried to build The New Iraq as the ideal capitalist state. They even implemented many things that could never get full traction in the US, like very low, flat taxes [1]. I can't say that I followed much of it closely, but at least Iraq was inspired by right-leaning principles and ideology. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/11/02/us-administrator-imposes-flat-tax-system-on-iraq/6d12223d-0f53-4053-ac3e-4c9484eed144/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/11/02/u...
- afsina 9y ago
  What libertarians would probably want first in Iraq is to let ethnic and religious groups to have the control of their own territory and abolish or weaken the central government as much as possible. Honestly this approach would at least alleviate the current turmoil there. Consider Syria, Iraq and Yemen for this.
  - afpx 9y ago
    I don't know enough about libertarianism, to be honest. (I'm not sure many people do.) But, is libertarianism something that only works when all tenets are followed? Or, does it work in piecemeal and incrementally? Like, for example, is there a priority list of things that should be implemented first and the set of measurable, expected results? This is probably not the best place to ask these types of questions, but 'libertarianism' seems to come up on here so often, I had to ask.
    - afsina 9y ago
      Perhaps it is better to read some introductory literature on this. Rothbard - Hoppe, Rand or Nozick (All are different schools in libertarian thought AFAIK)
  - dragonwriter 9y ago
    > What libertarians would probably want first in Iraq is to let ethnic and religious groups to have the control of their own territory and abolish or weaken the central government as much as possible. Except for the Kurds, that doesn't seem to be want the groups in Iraq want. I wasn't aware that libertarians were generally in favor of imposed religious- and/or ethnicity-based balkanization against the will of the people. I suspect that would actually work against libertarianism, also, because greater ideological uniformity in the constituency would support more authoritarian government (light touch is a way of accommodating divergent interests which would be eliminated).
Grue3 9y ago
You're confusing Libertarians with Anarchists. As an aside: I've always been waiting for communists to declare North Korea heaven on earth.
- timthelion 9y ago
  There is a large minority of communists who think Kuba is: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/keyword/Americas/Cuba/24013/26-11-2016/fight-for-workers-democracy-in-cuba http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/keyword/Americas/Cuba/24013...
- Pica_soO 9y ago
  Has it ever occurred to you that communism and socialism, that usamericanos fight so heavy against, might just be some red shawl on good ol' local patriotism? One huge middle finger to any foreign involvement what-so-ever, the propaganda scrawled to it, more or less un-important. If some foreign power burned every village to the ground in my country, killed about a fifth of the people, i would do everything to join the opposition, and tell everything to make my opposition to this "foreign devils" more outspoken. Especially if those "Foreigners" support old colonial powers, that already rubbed the face of my father and grandfather in the dirt. Satanistic, atheistic, communistic, decadent, drug-using, spartanic, ludist, nuclear armed country of Anti-USA, count anyone in after he has met US-Foreign Policys. If the US-Sentiment would condemn the wearing of green hats as some outrageous ideology, half of the world would look like a leprechaun inhabited Ireland tomorrow.
- ghostDancer 9y ago
  North Korea is an absolut monarchy not a communist country, even if they say so, they also say they are a people's democratic republic and it's clear they're not.
  - golergka 9y ago
    You're implying that there's a possibility for a regime that starts from commumist ideas not to become a monarchy or oligarchy. Can you point out a real-life example where that didn't happen, please?
vacri 9y ago
Vanuatu has what libertarians claim they want: no income tax; small government; happy people. The 800-strong army doubles as the police force. Not much in the way of government services, so the libertarian can pay all they want for their own garbage pickups etc. Yet they're not moving there in droves...
throwaway284534 9y ago
I'd really appreciate it commenters stopped bring this up in every time someone mentions Somalia or libertarians. It was hardly clever the first 15 times. Nobody is claiming Somali is a paradise. It's comments like this that destroy civil discourse with Reddit tier quips.
- jdavis703 9y ago
  As someone with a curiosity in anarchism as a potentially useful form of government I find these discussions useful. To not look at real world examples is disingenuous, you can simply learn things that will and won't work in a world with limited government. If the evidence contradicts your assertions then you can either change your assertions or realize that your ideal form of government has certain tradeoffs that you and society may be uncomfortable with.
lewiscollard 9y ago
You should read more intelligent libertarians, because Somalia has been thoroughly analysed in libertarian thought. Start with Kevin Carson, "Somalia — Is That Really All You Got?" for a good primer on libertarian/anarchist thought on the subject: https://c4ss.org/content/2859 https://c4ss.org/content/2859

baddox 9y ago

You probably haven't looked that hard. Somalia case studies are ubiquitous in libertarian (anarchist-leaning) circles. The general claim seems to be that, yeah, stateless Somalia is way worse than high-functioning governments like the United States, but better than its neighbor states and better than it was before it became stateless. Leeson's article is probably the best on the topic: http://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf http://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf

crdoconnor 9y ago
Most of the metrics which he's looking at which improved under southern Somalia's anarcho-capitalism happened because of an increase in remittances. I don't think anybody's arguing that if Somalis didn't have legions of relatives abroad sending them money the humanitarian disaster would have been even worse. The security implications of living with a system of competing warlords (or 'insurance companies', in ancap terminology) are also massively glossed over.
redblacktree 9y ago
> Somalia is way worse than high-functioning governments like the United States Yet my libertarian friends on Facebook all seem to want to tear the enitre government down.
- lowpro 9y ago
  There is a difference between Anarchy and libertarianism. Most libertarians want less government, not no government.
  - redblacktree 9y ago
    From my perspective, the libertarian vision "less government" looks a lot like "no government." Just defense and contract enforcement, right? With ridiculous notions like environmental issues being handled by courts.
  - brewdad 9y ago
    But less government tends to lead to no government, or right back to where we are today depending on how strongly held one's beliefs are. Good luck finding two people to agree on what exactly should be cut on the road to "less".
  - creepydata 9y ago
    Less than what exactly?
- rootusrootus 9y ago
  At the risk of heading even further down this rabbit hole, I'd observe that there are very many significant differences between Somalia and the United States and that the existence of government is just one small part.
  - skaplun 9y ago
    If George Washington declared himself king, you might be looking today at 30% unemployment like some of the euros
    - tehwebguy 9y ago
      What is the point you were trying to make?
      - skaplun 9y ago
        "that the existence of government is just one small part." I dont think you can qualify government as "just one small part". America would not be in the same place today without the decisions taken over time by its leaders. The same decisions would not be made under a different system of incentives for a leader like a monarchy/anarchy
        timthelion 9y ago
        It wouldn't be the same place, but it would still have enjoyed the highest natural-resource to population ration of any nation in history. Coal, Iron, Oil, Natural Gas, Gold, Wood, Water, Arible land, Uranium, Aluminium, Copper, all in great supply. The only comparable nations I can think of are Australia and Brazil, and their relative wealth is rather well explained by the overall wealth gradient nearing the equator:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_and_wealth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_and_wealth
    - kwhitefoot 9y ago
      Most of the European states that have monarchs (Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Netherlands for instance) are doing alright, Spain is an outlier.
- creepydata 9y ago
  Strange thing is the same friends would not live in Somolia if given the chance...
  - abarrettjo 9y ago
    I would question your assumption there; plenty of Somali diaspora move back and live in Somalia or Somaliland.
- gozur88 9y ago
  I keep reading that on HN, but after hanging around libertarians for a lifetime, I've never met a single one who said that. Usually Somalia comes up in the context of someone wanting a bigger government and dismissively telling libertarians "Why doncha just move to Somalia? Huh?" Is that maybe what you're thinking of?
- afsina 9y ago
  What many libertarians want is decentralization. As much as possible. They probably want to get rid of all powerful Federal Government but local governments (as small as possible) and confederations are usually fine.
  - thanksgiving 9y ago
    And now we will soon have "separate but equal" restrooms in Texas. I find state rights advocates to be the worst™ people in the world. They advocate for state rights when it suits them. Absolutely hypocritical bunch. We've decided as a nation that there are some rights and responsibilities that we have regardless of where we live within this nation. How many times do we have to fight for civil rights?
    - whatshisface 9y ago
      You're making the strange assumption that the federal government will always be be more in line with your own political views than your state government. After all, at the end of the day a hard-right state is less bad for liberals than a hard-right country, because only in the first case can they try to find a job in California.
      - lostcolony 9y ago
        Yes, he's assuming the government will not be terrible to live under. But saying "at least with local government, terrible governments will be localized" is a copout. Can we have non-terrible governments? If so, it makes sense to try and ensure everyone has one.
        afsina 9y ago
        To me this is like telling "Government will be right for everyone this time, if we tweak the parameters right". Applying rules of Empiricism to large scale governing will just make things worse as long as people have very different world views. Besides, locality has inherent advantages such as familiarity, cultural similarity and accountability. So at least some local governments will be probably suitable for your liking.
cup 9y ago
>but better than its neighbor states and better than it was before it became stateless. Not quite. While dysfunctional, Somali pre-anarchy was actually a great place to live.
- baddox 9y ago
  Was it? It sure doesn't sound so, from what I've read about Barre's regime.
  - cup 9y ago
    Functional hospitals, schools, universities, utilities and services. No crime, no warlords and no bandits. Economic stability and religious freedom. Sure, Barre was a dictator, there was state sanctioned violence but for the average Somali on the street life was better in contrast to what followed which was: Anarchy, random violence, war lords, checkpoint extortion, no services, no schools, no hospitals, no utilities, telecommunications were monopolized and the owners became defacto rulers who maintained anarchy to ensure tax-free profits. Massive increase in maternal mortality, reduction in life expectancy etc etc. No one is saying Barre and the regime was great, but in comparison its pretty clear it was superior.
dmoy 9y ago
People actually argue that Somalia is better than it was back when it had a functioning government? Have they talked to anyone who grew up or lived through that? Nobody I've talked to from Somalia (I grew up in Minneapolis, a good chunk of my classmates from elementary and uni were Somali), nobody thinks it was a good change. The amount of death and fear is just staggering. That article reads a little tone deaf, a lot of the data ignores an entire 10 year period of total fucking chaos.
- peteretep 9y ago
  While I don't agree with you per-se, there's a lot of inherent survivorship bias in your sample group.
  - r00fus 9y ago
    If it's survivor bias, wouldn't that make the Somali classmates' opinions even more valid (their contemporaries being dead and all)? Or did you intend to say selection bias?
    - kolinko 9y ago
      Survivor bias doesn't have to be based on literal survival. But yes, in this case a more generic, selection, might be more appropriate.
    - s_kilk 9y ago
      Indeed. It's kind of amazing that around here when someone says "yeah my Libertarian Paridise home-country is actually a shithole because people keep getting machete'd to death by roving gangs", someone else strokes their chin and thinks "hmm, I'm not sure I buy it, maybe there's a survivorship bias in there"
- timthelion 9y ago
  It is very common for foreigners to hate their homeland. People who move from Kuba tend to say it sucks. I moved from America to Prague and I tell everyone that America sucks. My Russian friends say Russia sucks. The Ukrainians I know say Ukraine sucks. The Kyrgyzstanies I know say Kyrgyzstan sucks. I live among foreigners, and the only ones that I've met that actually like their home country are rich ones from totalitarian regimes who somehow benefit from the regime. And as far as I can tell, public opinion of a regime among expats is strongly tied in both directions to how that regime effects them and their families financially, though even well off people such as myself, who have chosen to move away, often find it in their hearts to hate their home country. The rich Saudis who come to Prague to study all thing Saudi Arabia is heaven on earth. The Russian who's family lost everything in 1998 [1] think that Putin should be hung from a lamp post with his own intestines. I think that there is basically no knowledge to be gained from talking to expats about their home countries. After-all 75% of Turks in Belgium voted for totalitarian dictatorship at home [2]. [1] https://economics.rabobank.com/publications/2013/september/the-russian-crisis-1998/ https://economics.rabobank.com/publications/2013/september/t... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_constitutional_referendum,_2017#Overseas_results https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_constitutional_referen...
mannykannot 9y ago
>The general claim seems to be that, yeah, stateless Somalia is way worse than high-functioning governments like the United States, but better than its neighbor states and better than it was before it became stateless. I think you have to have a pretty strong a priori bias in favor of libertarianism to see that as a favorable statement. It also looks a bit self-serving, as there seem to be more Somali refugees in Kenya and Ethiopia than vice-versa.

subterfudge44 9y ago

> I wonder why they've never picked up on the obvious real-world example of a nation with no central state government with a monopoly on violence? Reason 1: Enforcement of contracts. Reason 2: Non-Aggression Libertarians of most stripes believe in limited role for government one of which is to enforce contracts and protect individual liberty. Since both are missing it is hard for Nigeria to be a good example of a Libertarian state. If anything Nigeria proves a lot of Libertarian principles at work. Nigerians have built roads, built private water distribution systems and private schools despite no existence of government. The state could have achieved lot more if they could have had a basic government.

abarrettjo 9y ago

Or the even better example of Somaliland, which is perfectly safe. I lived and worked there for a few months last summer, and loved it.

cup 9y ago
Somaliland has a government though.
- abarrettjo 9y ago
  Fair, but I would argue that the Somaliland government is about as existent as the one Somalia also technically has. It exists, but doesn't do anything. But please correct me if you disagree! I really appreciated your comments down below, particularly your question about whether re-introducing bank notes is an effort to diminish the influence of the Telcos.
  - jjman 9y ago
    A Somalilander here, Somaliland has a fully established government which is elected by popular vote. In fact, it has one of the most sophisticated and modern voter registration system which uses bio-metric data to detect double voters. Something a number of other African or even first world (i.e. US/EU) can't guarantee. Somaliland is extremely safe, you can go about your daily life without a hint of any problem. You can walk down the street in the middle of the night without worrying for your safety. Keeping peace is everyone's business, citizens take ownership of it. Aside from that, it is a very poor country, but everyone is happy with what little they have.
grecy 9y ago
Awesome, where abouts were you exactly? I am driving around the entire continent now, and a friend said I must visit Somaliland, so it's on my radar when I eventually make it up that way (I'm moving South on the West Coast now)

BurningFrog 9y ago

Libertarians typically want a small state that uses its monopoly on violence solely to protect citizens from aggression.

beefield 9y ago
I have never quite understood why libertarians think that is the precise optimum for the amount of government activities and their "theft" of my money via taxation. Don't libertarians understand or accept that there are market failures that government is needed to solve? Or do they think that in every case government makes more bad than good when trying to solve market failures? Or is it just that freedom of individuals is more important than fixing market failures (In which case I must wonder by what logic it is important for a government to stop me being killed by another person but not at all important to stop me being killed by a market failure? I end dead in both cases...)?
- wyager 9y ago
  Libertarians don't posit a precise optimum. They are generally of the opinion that the optimum is quite a bit lower than what we have right now. > Don't libertarians understand or accept that there are market failures that government is needed to solve? The only credible "failure" I'm aware of is the need to internalize of public externalities, which can be achieved in a number of liberty-friendly ways. See, for example, the Coase theorem. Libertarians recognize that these models are not exact, but they do suggest that we can do better. Perhaps you could list some of the market failures you are thinking of?
  - semi-extrinsic 9y ago
    > See, for example, the Coase theorem Which only holds when transaction costs are negligible, i.e., never. Which was precisely Coase's point in that work - he showed that mathematically, it doesn't matter what initial distribution you put on something (his example was radio broadcast frequency allocations), since the final Pareto-optimal distribution is independent of initial conditions. This is the Coase theorem. But as soon as you include transaction costs, the theorem fails to hold, and initial distribution is important. A few obvious market failures: * Microsoft monopoly in the late 90s * Too little being done to reduce CO2 emissions, since emission costs are externalized and delayed * Broadband providers in the US * EpiPen pricing * Essentially every Health and Safety regulation ever exists to fix a market failure. In the small government world, employers see no cost of workers dying of lung cancer in their 60s from breathing asbestos, etc. I could go on.

afpx 9y ago

The Bush Administration, under Paul Bremer, tried to build The New Iraq as the ideal capitalist state. They even implemented many things that could never get full traction in the US, like very low, flat taxes [1]. I can't say that I followed much of it closely, but at least Iraq was inspired by right-leaning principles and ideology. [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/11/02/us-administrator-imposes-flat-tax-system-on-iraq/6d12223d-0f53-4053-ac3e-4c9484eed144/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/11/02/u...

afsina 9y ago
What libertarians would probably want first in Iraq is to let ethnic and religious groups to have the control of their own territory and abolish or weaken the central government as much as possible. Honestly this approach would at least alleviate the current turmoil there. Consider Syria, Iraq and Yemen for this.
- afpx 9y ago
  I don't know enough about libertarianism, to be honest. (I'm not sure many people do.) But, is libertarianism something that only works when all tenets are followed? Or, does it work in piecemeal and incrementally? Like, for example, is there a priority list of things that should be implemented first and the set of measurable, expected results? This is probably not the best place to ask these types of questions, but 'libertarianism' seems to come up on here so often, I had to ask.
  - afsina 9y ago
    Perhaps it is better to read some introductory literature on this. Rothbard - Hoppe, Rand or Nozick (All are different schools in libertarian thought AFAIK)
- dragonwriter 9y ago
  > What libertarians would probably want first in Iraq is to let ethnic and religious groups to have the control of their own territory and abolish or weaken the central government as much as possible. Except for the Kurds, that doesn't seem to be want the groups in Iraq want. I wasn't aware that libertarians were generally in favor of imposed religious- and/or ethnicity-based balkanization against the will of the people. I suspect that would actually work against libertarianism, also, because greater ideological uniformity in the constituency would support more authoritarian government (light touch is a way of accommodating divergent interests which would be eliminated).

Grue3 9y ago

You're confusing Libertarians with Anarchists. As an aside: I've always been waiting for communists to declare North Korea heaven on earth.

timthelion 9y ago
There is a large minority of communists who think Kuba is: http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/keyword/Americas/Cuba/24013/26-11-2016/fight-for-workers-democracy-in-cuba http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/keyword/Americas/Cuba/24013...
Pica_soO 9y ago
Has it ever occurred to you that communism and socialism, that usamericanos fight so heavy against, might just be some red shawl on good ol' local patriotism? One huge middle finger to any foreign involvement what-so-ever, the propaganda scrawled to it, more or less un-important. If some foreign power burned every village to the ground in my country, killed about a fifth of the people, i would do everything to join the opposition, and tell everything to make my opposition to this "foreign devils" more outspoken. Especially if those "Foreigners" support old colonial powers, that already rubbed the face of my father and grandfather in the dirt. Satanistic, atheistic, communistic, decadent, drug-using, spartanic, ludist, nuclear armed country of Anti-USA, count anyone in after he has met US-Foreign Policys. If the US-Sentiment would condemn the wearing of green hats as some outrageous ideology, half of the world would look like a leprechaun inhabited Ireland tomorrow.
ghostDancer 9y ago
North Korea is an absolut monarchy not a communist country, even if they say so, they also say they are a people's democratic republic and it's clear they're not.
- golergka 9y ago
  You're implying that there's a possibility for a regime that starts from commumist ideas not to become a monarchy or oligarchy. Can you point out a real-life example where that didn't happen, please?

vacri 9y ago

Vanuatu has what libertarians claim they want: no income tax; small government; happy people. The 800-strong army doubles as the police force. Not much in the way of government services, so the libertarian can pay all they want for their own garbage pickups etc. Yet they're not moving there in droves...

throwaway284534 9y ago

I'd really appreciate it commenters stopped bring this up in every time someone mentions Somalia or libertarians. It was hardly clever the first 15 times. Nobody is claiming Somali is a paradise. It's comments like this that destroy civil discourse with Reddit tier quips.

jdavis703 9y ago
As someone with a curiosity in anarchism as a potentially useful form of government I find these discussions useful. To not look at real world examples is disingenuous, you can simply learn things that will and won't work in a world with limited government. If the evidence contradicts your assertions then you can either change your assertions or realize that your ideal form of government has certain tradeoffs that you and society may be uncomfortable with.

lewiscollard 9y ago

You should read more intelligent libertarians, because Somalia has been thoroughly analysed in libertarian thought. Start with Kevin Carson, "Somalia — Is That Really All You Got?" for a good primer on libertarian/anarchist thought on the subject: https://c4ss.org/content/2859 https://c4ss.org/content/2859