[CrackMonkey] Declan McCullagh's new favorite wank book

[Seth David Schoen]

Don Marti writes:

> ----- Forwarded message from Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com> -----
> 
> Date: Mon, 23 Apr 2001 10:35:49 -0400
> From: Declan McCullagh <declan at well.com>
> Subject: FC: Ayn Rand in Somalia: No government, but business is booming
> To: politech at politechbot.com
> X-News-Site: Cluebot is at http://www.cluebot.com/
> 
> 
> http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2001/05/maass.htm
> 
>  Ayn Rand Comes to Somalia
>  In the absence of government bureaucracy and foreign aid, business is
>  starting to boom
>  by Peter Maass
>    ...
> 
>    Mogadishu has the closest thing to an Ayn Rand-style economy that the
>    world has ever seen--no bureaucracy or regulation at all. The city has
>    had no government since 1991, when the much despised President
>    Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown; his regime was replaced not by
>    another one but by civil war. The northern regions of Somaliland and
>    Puntland have stabilized under autonomous governments, but southern
>    Somalia, with Mogadishu at its core, has remained a Mad Max zone
>    carved up by warlords for whom fighting seems as necessary as oxygen.
>    The prospect of stability is a curious miracle, not simply because the
>    kind of business development that is happening tends to require the
>    presence of a government, but because the very absence of a government
>    may have helped to nurture an African oddity--a lean and efficient
>    business sector that does not feed at a public trough controlled by
>    corrupt officials.

We had a presentation at Berkeley on "Anarchy in Northern Somalia"
(strange that it's now "anarchy in southern Somalia") a couple of
years ago, probably 1999.

Where has Declan been?

-- 
Seth David Schoen <schoen at loyalty.org>  | And do not say, I will study when I
Temp.  http://www.loyalty.org/~schoen/  | have leisure; for perhaps you will
down:  http://www.loyalty.org/   (CAF)  | not have leisure.  -- Pirke Avot 2:5