In response, I see others point to the "Deep South", and its lack of economic opportunity, as an indictment of "conservative" politics.
Both sides are right, to a point, but both sides are wrong because they are missing the "Big Picture". What's the common denominator?
The violation of individual liberty through the political method.
In other words, both cases are an indictment of Statism as a whole, not of a particular form of statism. But that doesn't fit in with the obsolete and falsified "left vs right" paradigm. So statists of either stripe will keep throwing rocks at their ideological twins while studiously ignoring the root of the problem.
Liberty would fix both places. Stop letting the cowards set the agenda and frame the debate.
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And please don't forget.
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The east side of Detroit (over by Redford if you have Google Earth) is like the pioneer west now Kent. My old neighbors tell me last week three guys in a pick up hooked up a chain to a lady's wrought iron porch railing, in broad daylight!, and were trying to pull it off, presumably to sell for scrap. Her grandsons came over from two blocks away armed with a single shot bolt .22 rifle and a ball bat. A shot through the windshield and some bad dents later they left. No one called 911 because response time is an hour or more. True story. Never made the papers,and i doubt this was reported to the cops either. The irony here is that both grandson are legally debarred from firearms by law. What a world. As to your column, Detroit probably would be better off if they just declared city gov defunct and let people handle their own matters ABTC. Liberty cures a lot of problems that way. Back in the day horse theives got hung, today rip offs can get their ass beat or shot. A potential bullet in the gut deters rip offs better than a paper tiger police force every time.
ReplyDeleteI've been hearing more and more good stories like that out of Detroit recently.
ReplyDeleteI've heard similar hopeful stories about the economy of Zimbabwe after the "government" there gave up trying to prop up their failed fiat currency.
The best thing that can happen to an area is for the faith in "government" to go away.
You correctly point out, Kent, that "left" and "right" are meaningless. If 0 (zero) represented no government (not even a council of elders) and 100 represented total government control (tyranny and dictatorship) then even the most liberty-allowing government in the world is to the right (on the number line) of 50. The U.S. is probably closer to 75.
ReplyDeleteI can pretty easily picture zero government- the good and the bad- but I find it almost impossible to visualize total government. It seems there is always a way to be a bit more controlling and evil.
ReplyDeleteI see it like Absolute Zero. On the temperature scale there is a point where you can not remove any more energy/heat... but there isn't an "absolute energy" where no more energy can be added. You know where the base is, but the maximum? Is there even one?
Sadly, the entities known as the "state of Michigan" and the "United States of America" keep the dysfunctional "city of Detroit" statist entity on life support. If there were no trickle of funds and other assistance coming from those two, the police, bureaucrats, and the rest would eventually stop coming to work since they receive no pay. "Absolute zero" as Kent calls it, eh? Conditions probably would resemble Somalia more than Christiana, at least for a time, but it would sort itself out into some kind of equilibrium. However Detroit won't ever really get to the "absolute zero" status because the other state entities won't let their minion die. They just won't.
ReplyDelete"because the other state entities won't let their minion die."
ReplyDeleteAgain, just like Somalia. I think that's where a huge percentage of the bad in Somalia comes from, too. Just like Detroit. It's not the fault of "anarchy", but of continuously trying to impose or prop up "government" in a place where it has failed.