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Jan. 29, 2009 - Freedomain Radio - Stefan Molyneux
26:41
1270 Somalia
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Hi everybody, it's Stefan Molyneux from Free Domain Radio.
I hope that you're doing very well.
This is True News, current events clarified, number 18, on the 28th of January 2009, Somalia, anarchy in Africa.
Boy, I tell you, if I had a dime for everyone who emailed me to say, anarchy no worky because of Somalia, I would be doing this as a full-time occupa...
Oh wait, I am? So, if you have sent me that email, please...
Dime me. So, it's not exactly anarchism in Somalia, and I say that with all due recognition to how annoying communists are when they say, ooh, Soviet Union was not communism, so I'm just going to touch on this briefly, but we won't refer to it again in the rest of the presentation, which I hope will be informative.
The theory of rational anarchism is designed to supplant or replace a state with voluntary agencies over time using reasoned argument, a system of ethics from first principles, and so on.
So, to take an engineering metaphor, that would sort of be like a controlled demolition of a rotting and old and dangerous building.
Somalia, sort of like a city that got hit by a meteor.
All the buildings suddenly collapsed.
There was mayhem.
There was madness.
And so just wanted to point out that the transition was not exactly philosophically planned, understood, disseminated, and so on.
Sort of the difference between someone in the Middle Ages going to strangle a bunch of priests versus the rational secularism that came out of the Enlightenment that opposed religion on philosophical grounds.
So similarly, if a congregation of priests gets hit by a meteor, you don't end up with atheism.
You just end up with fewer priests.
And that is similar to what is going on in Somalia.
It's not a philosophical movement.
It was a coup that failed in the past.
Now, Peter Leeson wrote an excellent article, Better Off Stateless.
The link is peterleason.com, better underbar off, underbar stateless.pdf.
I'm relying on that for a lot of this, some of direct quotes, so please review that if you have questions as to sources.
I did some of my own research and have my own charts, but this is where it comes from.
So let's start with a brief history.
Since independence, this warlord Bari went on to take power and establish an oppressive military dictatorship in the late 60s.
He reigned for 21 years until 1991 when Somalia's government collapsed and statelessness ensued.
Soviet-style socialism.
After Barai got into power, under the influence of the Soviet Union, he transformed his military dictatorship into a socialistic one.
Full-scale, central planning was pursued under the government's policy of scientific socialism.
And this, of course, as it always does, did and will forever brutalize the Somali people, the government's slaughtered civilian who posed threats to the government's plans.
For political power, they used coercive intimidation to create artificial support for its activities and forcibly relocated others to further their political and economic ends, the standard totalitarian brutality that reigned throughout the late 60s to the early 90s.
According to some good...
The Africa Watch Committee wrote in 1990, both the urban population and nomads living in the countryside were subjected to summary killings, arbitrary arrest, detention, in squalid conditions, torture, rape, crippling constraints on freedom of movement and expression, and a pattern of psychological intimidation.
This is what Somalia was like.
Prior to the stateless situation that has occurred since 1991.
The state ruthlessly suppressed free speech and controlled all forms of information reaching Somalis.
Newspapers, only one of course was officially permitted.
Radio and TV were fully censored and dissent in any form was squelched with force.
Under Somalia's national security law, number 54, gossip became a capital offense.
20 other basic civil freedoms, including speech association and organization, also carried the death penalty.
This is where they were coming from.
So, State corruption.
The state was notoriously corrupt and violent.
Political actors and bureaucrats embezzled state funds, extorted and murdered weak portions of the population, engaged in aggressive asset stripping of state-owned firms.
As the UN Development Programme characterized it, quote, the 21-year regime of Siad Barre had one of the worst human rights records in Africa.
This was in 2001.
This is no small feat considering that during this period Africa was home to some of history's most savage dictators, including the Democratic Republic of Congo's Mobutu.
State theft. In 1979, all land was nationalized, which means stolen at the point of a gun, along with nearly all major industries and the financial sector.
This facilitated the government's ability to expropriate citizens' property for state projects like massive state-operated farms in the killing fields model and for Politico's personal use.
Unpopular minority groups such as the Gosha were particularly easy prey in the 70s and 80s, but they expropriated Gosha-occupied land to create state-owned irrigation schemes that benefited its allies.
In other cases, his minions expropriated land for their private use, making Gosha serfs on their own property.
All told, capacity utilization for Somalia's industrial assets and manufacturing firms was less than 20%, which is typical under a command and control centralized and socialized economy.
Ah, hyperinflation, how well we know it.
In the 1980s, government turned to inflation to finance its corrupt and bankrupt projects.
Between 83 and 90, average annual depreciation of the Somali shilling against the U.S. dollars was over 100 percent annually.
In some years, depreciation exceeded 300 percent.
See, this is called the order of having a government.
Hyperinflation destroyed the savings of the Somalis, like Germany in the 1920s, who managed to accrue modest sums over time.
It incapacitated the monetary unit as a means of economic calculation.
What that means is the old Mises thing, that you without price, you cannot have the efficient allocation of resources, but you can't measure demand.
With hyperinflation, you can't measure demand.
There's no possibility for any kind of economic efficiencies, and this is where the poor Somalis were coming from.
Ah, back to the source.
So often it is the same thing, foreign aid.
The Somali government's willful mismanagement of public resources prevented the state from being self-supporting.
International development agencies eager to woo Somalia from the influences of Eastern Europe fulfilled the shortfall with massive inflows of foreign aid.
By the mid-1980s, 100% of Somalia's developmental budget and 50% of its recurrent budget was funded by By foreign aid, which, as you may know, is the ugly, vile, and evil trick of taking money from the poor people of rich nations and handing it over to the rich people of poor nations so that they can buy weapons from the even richer people of the industrialized countries.
In 1987, more than 70% of Somalia's total operating budget was financed through foreign aid.
Compared to what? We are going to get to that.
Starvation by the late 1980s, the weight of nearly 20 years of rampant corruption, repression and state control, had reduced Somali welfare to horrifically low levels.
Well, prior to the government's collapse, the agricultural economy was in shambles and malnutrition and starvation were commonplace.
In the 1980s, Somalia had one of the lowest per capita caloric intakes in the world.
At the end of the decade, the government spent less than 1% of GDP on economic and social services while military and administrative expenses consumed 90% of the state's total recurrent revenue.
It's a dominant mafia.
I mean, you'll hear a lot about Somali pirates, right?
Because you see, failed pirates remain pirates, whereas successful pirates become navies.
State collapse. In 1988, civil war broke out in the northern part of the country, Somaliland, setting in motion the beginning of the end of the government in Somalia.
In January of 1991, a coup d'etat toppled Bares' regime, creating statelessness in its wake.
Tellingly, the same year that anarchy replaced government, 400,000 Somali refugees in Ethiopia returned to their homes.
You know how they say people vote with their feet?
Well, I don't think we need to say any more about that.
Growing peace. Some fighting continued into the early to mid-90s, but died down considerably since 1991.
By the late 90s, peace prevailed over most of Somalia.
Today, conflict is isolated and sporadic, confined when it does occur to pockets of small-scale rivalry in a few areas.
And for those of you just listening to the audio, the...
Links or the sources are on the video.
Important to this expanding piece has been expanding commerce in the absence of the state, ripping off your property and enslaving you and slaughtering you.
In modern Somalia, businessmen, not warlords, wield the lion's share of power.
Of course, you don't hear from state-influenced, state-controlled, state-enslaved media, such as in the West, what it's really like to not have a government any more than you would expect Pravda under Stalin to praise American robber barons of the 19th century.
So, that's a brief history of Somalia.
Please look up more of this fascinating reading.
We ask the intelligent questions here at Free Domain Radio and hopefully help you to remember to ask them too.
Compared to what is the most essential question when it comes to any kind of analysis?
When analyzing the practical effects of statelessness in Somalia, we must always ask the most essential philosophical question.
Compared to what?
Alright, Somali violence.
Most depictions of Somalia grossly exaggerate the extent of the violence.
In reality, fewer people die from armed conflict in some parts of Somalia than do in neighboring countries that have governments.
In these areas, security is better today than it was under the government.
And it's important to remember that Western governments are making tens of millions of dollars selling arms into Somalia, so the chilling and brutal and violent effects of statism are creeping in to Somalia.
And this, of course, is a challenge for any state in the society, but it's important to remember the amount of violence that is being exported to Somalia from foreign governments.
About the same number of annual deaths in Somalia are due to childbirth as attributable to war, roughly 4% of the total annual deaths.
And these deaths are combatants, not civilians.
Atrocities against civilians are now almost unheard of.
To give you some context for this, about the same percentage of deaths result from homicide in middle-income countries such as Mexico.
It's not a perfect country, but compared to what?
Here are 18 key indicators of developmental strides or milestones before and after statelessness occurred in Somalia.
GDP, it's really, really hard to tell because everything was misstated earlier on under the government, and of course the hyperinflation rendered the shilling impossible to track, but we'll get more into that in a little bit.
So 1985 to 1990.
Life expectancy 46 years.
It's increased by almost two and a half years from 2000 to 2005.
Improved. 1985 to 90, 30% of one-year-olds were fully immunized against measles.
Now it is 40%. Against TB went from 31 to 50%.
Physicians for 100,000 people went from 3.4 to 4%.
Infants with a low birth weight percentage declined from 16% to 0.3%.
Percent infant mortality declined from 152 per 1,000 to 114.89.
Maternal mortality rate from 1,600 to 1,100 per 100,000.
Improved all the way across the board, and considerably in many cases.
To continue, population with access to water has remained the same pre- and post-government 29%.
Population with access to sanitation, essential of course for longevity and reduced illness, 18 to 26%.
Population with access to at least one health facility in 10 years to 20 years has increased from 28% to 54.8%.
Magnificent! Extreme poverty has dipped from 60% to 43%.
Fantastic! Radios, 4 per 1,000 people to 98.5.
Telephones, 1.92 to 14.9.
TVs, 1.2 to 3.7.
Fatalities due to measles dropped from 8,000 to 55.98.
The adult literacy rate has declined.
We'll get into more of that in a sec.
24 to 19.2%.
Combined school and enrollment, 12.9 to 7.5%.
Again, we'll talk more about those.
The notes are on the video. So, of the 18 developmental indicators, 4 show unambiguous improvement under anarchy.
Life expectancy is higher today than it was in the last years of the government's existence.
Infant mortality has improved 24%.
Maternal mortality has fallen over 30%.
Infants with low birth rates have fallen more than 15 percentage points.
Access to health facilities, more than 25% points up.
Sanitation, 8%.
Extreme poverty has plummeted nearly 20 percentage points.
One-year-old fully immunized for TB, grown 20 for measles, 10.
Fatalities due to measles have dropped 30%, and prevalence of TVs and radios and telephones have jumped between 3% and 25% in 10 to 20 years.
Compared to what?
Per capita GDP is reportedly lower, but first...
Remember that firm managers or industrial managers in planned economies have strong incentives to over-report output to meet quotas or obtain rewards.
There's no more truth in the pre-anarchic Somali output production statistics than there was in the five-year plans under Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev.
Under government, a great deal of Somali production was military hardware that civilians and citizens did not consume, but rather they were in fact consumed by.
In the pre-stateless period, Somalia was one of the largest per capita foreign aid recipients in the world.
In fact, quote, pre-war Somalia was considered a classic case of an aid-dependent state.
So, with the end of the state comes the end of the foreign aid, which is used to fund military to slaughter and imprison the citizens.
So, yes, there has been a possible dip in GDP, but taking all these things into account, we can actually very strongly argue, and we'll get to this here, that people are doing better.
If it was possible, accounting for fictitious production numbers under the government, the negative value added of military expenditures and the foreign aid gap, it would likely reduce Somalia's pre-1991 average income level below its post-1991 level.
The dramatic increase in post-91 Somali consumption depicted in the data corroborates this fact.
In other words, the GDP is supposedly lower, but individual citizens are consuming much more and able to afford much more.
A substantial observed rise in consumption without an attendant rise in per capita GDP suggests an unmeasured increase in per capita income between the pre- and post-anarchy periods not reflected in the data.
More research would be helpful in this.
If you know someone or want to do it, give it a shot.
Only two of the 18 developmental indicators in the table shown show a clear welfare decline under statelessness.
Adult literacy and combined gross school enrollment.
Given that foreign aid was completely financing education in Somalia pre-91, it's not surprising there's been a fall.
100% of educational costs were paid for by foreign aid, which of course ended, for the most part, at the end of the government.
This is less a statement about the Somali government's ability to generate welfare-enhancing outcomes for its citizens than it is a reflection of foreign aid poured into Somalia education by the international development community before state collapse.
Make work schools, not real schools.
Most importantly, perhaps, the indicators in Table 1 do not measure the substantial increases in personal freedoms and civil liberties enjoyed by Somalis since the emergence of anarchy.
They are no longer slaughtered for gossip.
Most forms of free expression were punishable by death, and foreign travel was severely restricted.
Today, in contrast, Somalis are free to travel as they please, restricted only by foreign governments, and enjoy greater freedom of expressions both privately and publicly.
Let's have a look at Somalia and its neighbors.
Djibouti, sorry, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia.
Life expectancy, Somalia plus 5.4, Ethiopia plus 9, Djibouti minus 15.4, Kenya minus 15.6.
Infant mortality rate, Somalia plus 24%, has an improvement of 24%, Kenya plus 7.4, Ethiopia plus 28, Djibouti plus 16%.
Population with access to improved sanitation, Somalia plus 44, Kenya plus 7.5, Ethiopia plus 333, Djibouti plus 3.8.
Telephone main lines per 1,000 plus 1,150 for Somalia, for Kenya plus 28.6, for Djibouti plus 40.
The data reject the hypothesis that Somalia would have improved equally whether it remained under government or not.
Consistent with Table 1, Somalia performs worse on adult literacy compared to its neighbors between the periods.
Still, on the majority of the indicators considered here, Somalia improved more than its neighbors over the same period, suggesting that a collapse of government resulted in greater developmental improvements than would have occurred in its absence.
In a number of cases, Somalia has been improving while its neighbors have been declining.
Economic advance. Somalia's export of cattle to Kenya Morton doubled between the fall of the government in 1991 and 2000, only nine years later.
Local providers of telecommunications services have joined forces with multinationals like Sprint, ITT, and Telenor to provide cheaper, higher quality and more extensive coverage than ever before.
In fact, according to the Economist article in 2005, Somalia boasts the cheapest and clearest cell phone calls to On the continent.
And when you need a doctor and you don't have access to a telephone, a cell phone is essential.
And for business, of course, it's essential.
The Somalia airline industry offers greater service to more parts of the world than when Somalia was under a government under anarchy.
However, the Somali shilling has been much more stable than it was in the past.
There's no central bank or treasury, no Fed in Somalia.
Primarily, the old notes are still circulating, though in a few cases, private agencies have printed new currencies, adding to the supply of existing currency, but without the hyperinflation.
Ah, taxes. Well, there are warlords for sure.
This is a primitive tribal Islamic culture.
This is not a post-Enlightenment scientific rational culture.
While some factions are able to, quote, tax Somalis traveling on roadways, they control taxes and restrictions on Somalis movement and trading activities are substantially lower under statelessness than they were under a government.
Quote, 10% tax?
What do you think? Compared to what?
Compared to his neighbors. Compared to how it was before.
Law. Law and order is provided privately by ZIR, Somali customary law which establishes rules regarding marriage, war, resource use and social contracts between clans.
It is also supported by Daya, which defines rules regarding the punishment of misconduct, such as murder or theft.
Although some secular courts exist, Sharia courts perform an instrumental function in creating legal order.
Private courts are funded by the donations of successful businessmen who benefit from the presence of this public good in urban centers.
Under anarchy, dispute resolution is free and speedy by international standards.
Again, the sources for these are in the presentation if you're just listening to the audio.
Thank you.
Education. There are more primary schools in Somalia today than there were in the late 1980s under the government, and this number is growing rapidly.
The number of formal schools has increased from 600 in 1990 to 1,172 under statelessness.
Higher education has similarly benefited.
There was only one university in Somalia.
Prior to the emergence of anarchy under statelessness, universities have sprung up in Burma, Hargeisa, Bosaso, and Mogadishu.
And I'm sorry for my pronunciations for those of you who know what this is actually supposed to be pronounced.
Welfare. Private social insurance provides a safety net financed through impressive remittances from abroad.
These remittances average $4,170 annually per household.
Expansive domestic clan-based social networks also provide social insurance, just as they did before they were struck down by the welfare state in the West.
In hard times, private welfare can contribute as much as 25 to 60 percent of household income.
Healthcare. Okay, it's Africa, so it's still pretty primitive, but medical consultations are very affordable.
50 cents a visit.
Furthermore, the percentage of Somalis with access to a medical facility has nearly doubled in 10 years since the end of the government.
Privately provided public goods like education and healthcare services and utility companies such as electricity and water are also providing new income generating and employment opportunities that further contribute to the growing Somali economy.
AIDS. Compared to what?
In Somalia, the HIV infection prevalence is 0.5% of the adult population, whereas in Namibia, South Africa, and Zambia, and Zimbabwe, they're around 15 to 20%, and there are some African nations which is even higher.
Given that AIDS is still, for many Africans, a slow and agonizing death sentence, would you rather be in a country which is 30 to 40 times less infected than the state-based countries?
And this is partly because, of course, a lot of the foreign aid that goes from the West, from America, under Bush, has been around.
No condoms, right?
This is not a restriction that's in Somalia.
All right. Sorry for those in the audio.
This is some comparative statistics between Somalia, Namibia, Zimbabwe, and Zimbabwe.
Population growth. This is Somalia.
Yeah. As we can see, population growth, life expectancy, birth rate per 100,000, and death rate are all better in Somalia than in Namibia.
They're better in Somalia, except for the death rate relative to Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Sorry, the death rate is better than Zambia and Zimbabwe.
So it is doing better on almost every measurable statistic to its surrounding countries.
Somalia before and after the government.
Understatelessness from CIA Factbook.
Understatelessness, life expectancy in Somalia has grown.
Access to healthcare facilities has increased.
Infant mortality has dropped.
Civil liberties have expanded.
and extreme poverty, less than $1 per day, has plummeted.
In many parts of the country, even security has improved.
In these areas, citizens are safer than they've been in three decades.
Somalia is far from prosperous, but it has made considerable strides since its government collapsed 15 years ago.
The key question really all comes down to this.
Would you prefer to live in Somalia under a repressive military dictatorship which spent 90% of its income on weapons, torture and genocide?
Or now? We do not measure things relative to a utopian state of imaginary perfection.
We measure them relative to what was and what is around.
We don't want to make the error that socialists make with the Industrial Revolution, which is comparing it to present-day circumstances rather than the hell of the Agricultural Revolution that came before.
Thank you so much for watching. I hope this helps.
Please email me with comments, questions, issues, problems.
I will try to respond to them.
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