Saturday, February 6, 2010
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Monday, January 18, 2010
Monday, January 11, 2010
Austrian economics works no matter who uses them
Bouake, the second largest metropolis in the Ivory Coast is heading in the right direction as peace settles in the former war stricken country.
Bouake is the ex-rebel capital of "Soroland", as the zone is sometimes nicknamed, after the New Forces leader, Guillaume Soro....Soroland may not be a breakaway zone, but for seven years the inhabitants of this zone have got used to living without government taxes, customs charges and even water and electricity bills....In addition to tax free shopping and unlicensed businesses they have a civil society.
Hussein Doumbia is one of many local business leaders who have learnt to profit from this vast black market zone.
"Things are a lot cheaper than in the south - we see that people from the south often come here to stock up, above all the military who come for all their electronics - mobile phones, DVDs, televisions, everything," he says.
When civil servants fled south, volunteer teachers, like Ali Ouattara, stepped forward to try to keep things going.The article notes that the country is still not fully unified. It will be hard to reimpose regulations and taxes on a territory that has gotten used to ignoring them. The best thing for the Sorolanders to do now may be to preserve the peace while staving off national unity.
"We didn't want the kids to become child soldiers, so we tried to give them something. This is how we became teachers," says Mr Ouattara, who lost his job at the university at the start of the crisis....
Gradually with contributions from parents, the ad-hoc schools helped save a generation of children, and in some years the rebel zone got better results in national exams than the government zone.
Other volunteers helped cover for the absence of the state in other ways: setting up an ad-hoc postal service; their own television stations and some basic policing.
The New Forces do collect taxes in some areas - like from cocoa and cotton producers but most areas of business are unregulated in the city.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Thursday, December 31, 2009
Quick Links
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Quick Hit: Top ten pro-liberty books of the decade!
The Atlas Economic Research Foundation a think tank that promotes individual liberty, economic freedom, and limited government has come out with the best books of the decade. I've heard of a couple of the books and some that look interesting to read. And while I may not agree with all the ideals of the libertarian movement I gladly applaud their reasoning when it comes to economics.
And while this book wasn't on the list Reason's Hit & Run blog suggested adding a book that starry eyed, pro-Obama black Americans should think about reading first before they praise Obama for another useless big-government program:
Obviously any such list will have its omissions, but I’d like to nominate one additional book that deserves real attention: legal historian David Bernstein’s excellent Only One Place of Redress: African Americans, Labor Regulations, & the Courts from Reconstruction to the New Deal. Bernstein meticulously documents the ways that Progressive and New Deal economic regulations, including labor laws, occupational licensing laws, and prevailing wage laws, directly harmed African Americans. In contrast, on those occasions when state and federal courts actively protected economic liberty against this state abuse, blacks were among the prime beneficiaries, a process that the New Deal takeover of the Supreme Court brought to a disastrous end.You can also see a preview here.
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Watch and discuss
And don't give me that lame excuse poverty is the "root cause of crime"" nonsense. Crappy neighborhoods and poor people doesn't equal crime.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
