Can anybody figure out why all this happened in the country which was really just an extension of America in Africa and was mostly run by American educated people with American political affiliations and a strong cultural roots with America? Of all the possible places, why was “Small America” the one nation in Africa which has had it worse? Is it despite or because of that American influence?
Bump. I saw these videos on another site and was thinking the same thing. What went wrong there?
I watched all of these and was absolutely mortified, then I watched the one on North Korea, that whole country is nuts, it’s really creepy. I’d love to see a North Korean read some Max Stirner.
“This” happened in an Americanized country led by “educated” American “intellectuals” because the cause of “this” is American “intellectualism.” The fatal conceit.
Are there any specific factors that might have pushed these areas in Liberia to the level of poverty at which they now find themselves in? I can only assume it’s government intervention in the market. Could it be anything else? If the government simply vanished tomorrow, would these conditions remain indefinitely? It seems that the argument for welfare programs and government intervention could be too easily made. What would be your rebuttal to such an argument? (Open question.)
Foreign aid kept and keep the “rebels” alive.
There are some problems in Liberia which the elimination of government would not alleviate (e.g. ethnic tensions between native Africans and African American migrants), but most of the problems in Liberia are due to government. The country is extremely unfree. If it were free(r), the economy would grow at much greater rates and all the people would become wealthier. Somehow, different people learn to live together when living together means making more cash.
Being free’er is not necessarily the case. It all depends on the wants of the people living there. If I am content with a small family farm, even though If I worked more hours i could make more money, why should that be a problem? It’s a value scale. They value ethnic tensions than being better off. It’s their free choice to not have economic dealings with other ethnicities.
It still has government and dictatorship qualities.
But in the absence of government, many people would choose money over blindly hating someone purely on where they’re from. Trade is mutually beneficial and many will recognize that people who have different ancestors aren’t that bad after all when they begin to trade with the others. The problem is that, currently, excessive taxation and regulation in Liberia is preventing the division of labor from occurring.
It seems to me in that West Point is a perfect example of what people do to communally owned land. i don’t know if anyone owns it but certainly if it was owned their property rights aren’t respected or enforced.
So in other words, if you want to stop people from shitting on the beach and in the streets, privatize them and enforce property rights. Then again it seems as though if anyone had actually built up anything nice, a bunch of marauders would quickly move to obtain it and it would likely be destroyed in the combat that ensued.
Let’s say you had an acre of arable land, if anyone grew crops on it then these crops would immediately be consumed by marauders. So why would anyone invest labor and valuable water into doing something like this.
Many people even in the United States have this attitude, we should plunder the rich only in the developed world they usually want to have government plunder them on their behalf.
Why should they get to keep all of that wealth, they don’t work any harder then I do!?! Well the same thing is happening in Liberia only difference is to be rich in Liberia is to be able to feed yourself. So as a result only those who have the capacity to fend off the hordes of marauders(usually the dictator of the country) can be wealthy.
So because any reward from economic activity is looted people don’t produce. Also you might think “why do they spend their money on guns” well think about it a gun might just be the most useful thing you can have in that situation. without one the people who do have them would do whatever they wanted with, with a gun you could at least attempt to protect your stuff. But in Liberia you would have to have a large armed force to own anything because when your life is that shitty you’re a lot more willing to risk it.
So in short this compulsory egalitarianism is very dangerous and communally owned land is shitty.
Let’s go back to fundamentals, people.
The root causes here most likely are just
Forget statism, people, because even in very statist societies like Finland, at least people have a culture of love, respect, and decency. On a smaller and local level, this culture allows conditions of high civilization and free society to thrive. The statism is but a big hindrance to an already strong base of the values that still protect high civilization.
We can’t expect people with a lack of respect for honesty, peace, property, and work to suddenly adopt “free market”. What do you expect to do - send UN-style libertarian bureaucrats and peacekeepers to help build conditions of liberty? Are we going to emulate all those nations which send aid, workers, soldiers, and programs to bring ‘human rights’ and ‘democracy’ to those nations, except do it with liberty?
Fact is - when you don’t have respect for honesty, peace, property, and work, somebody is going to become a despot, and his preference for the short-term will ensure that he plunders and destroys for the present, and make the future even more bleak. That’s what causes the state to come up in the first place. As Herbert Spencer said - the state was “begotten by aggression for aggression”.
And that’s what led to my original question - a First World nation like America still has some of the values resembling what are needed to keep high civilization running. At least that’s why we are not seeing bodies strewn over the streets of New York and nearly every woman raped. Some of those values just didn’t rub off on Liberia.
What Krazy Kaju answered was that this is the result of American Intellectualism.
And that makes me wonder - if we dumped all American intellectuals into one island - would or could that island turn into Liberia?