We went, “It’s a free country.” and the statists took advantage until, allofasudden, it wasn’t.
Though the thought is abhorrent to me – and should be terrifying to you – I do sometimes find myself playing the “what would I do if I were in charge” game. This guy puts his finger on the principal reason why there probably could never be a nation-state based on personal sovereignty and self-ownership, or if there ever were it would have a halflife measurable in weeks. Too many people like to pass laws about what other people should/should not be doing. Some of those laws may indeed be necessary for people above some threshold number to live in proximity without mayhem – but we’d never agree which ones.
You have a point.
The UN, Us, Eu and other thug clubs, have spent billions in OPM, trying to impose a state onto the former Somalia, and continue to try to do so, frequently by military force. Fortunately they keep failing.
There’s a lovely book by the late Michael van Noten, describing the traditional polycentric law system which the Somalis refused to let go of during imperial occupation and their time as a soviet satellite under the Barre regime.
That law system was still current and in place when the statists fiat law system was abandoned.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Law-Somalis-Foundation-Development/dp/156902250X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1399910968&sr=8-1&keywords=van+notten
(I normally link the book depository – it’s usually cheaper than Amazon and AFAIK it doesn’t have a murderous 3 letter agency as its biggest single customer – but that link’s through Claire’s Amazon link)
Although there is the mess left by the statists e.g. former politicians and army generals, living the only way they know how – parasitically as warlords, around Mogadishu. Most of Somalia is as peaceful or more peaceful than any other sub Saharan African area, and has gone from at or near the bottom of the list of Sub Saharan African development under a state, to about mid way up the list by 2006. The place is far less chaotic, and developing at a far faster rate than any of its statist peers.
Incidentally, you’ll probably like this yuuuuutooooobs clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Q-bB-qywJ0#t=180
Politicians and statists really are completely different from the rest of us. It needn’t be the way it is now.