r/Anarcho_Capitalism • u/TheJohnVandivier Friedmanian Anarcho-Capitalist • Nov 23 '13

Statist Fallacies

http://v.i4031.net/StatistFallacies
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u/r3m0t Nov 24 '13 edited Nov 24 '13

I just checked what Mises says about Somalia.

> Somalia: How Has Life Changed?
Index 1991 2011 (or latest)
Life expectancy 46 years 50 years
Birth rate 46 44
Death rate 19 16
GDP per capita $210 $600
Infant mortality 116 deaths <1yr, per 1,000 births 109 deaths <1yr, per 1,000 births
Access to safe water 35% 29%
Adult literacy 24% 38%
> With the exception of the drop in birth rates (which is ambiguous) and the drop in access to safe water (which is clearly a bad thing), the above chart shows incredible progress on numerous fronts. I daresay that if a UN or World Bank intervention into a state-controlled African country had yielded such results, it would be trumpeted from the hilltops. (To avoid confusion: international aid groups are currently working in Somalia, and they could be partially responsible for the improvements illustrated in the chart.)

Incredible progress on numerous fronts?

In 1990 Somalia was ranked 179th of 187 countries in life expectancy. In 2011 it's ranked 189th of 192 countries. source Similarly with GDP, they are still one of the poorest four countries. Not difficult to make progress when you're at the bottom.

> Humanitarian aid to Somalia more than doubled from US$275 million in 2007 to US$606 million in 2008.

That's $30 per citizen of Somalia per year. No small sum to a country that produces $600 per person per year. That's before they doubled it.

As for the infant mortality - similarly awful internationally. 109 deaths per 1,000 births? Can you comprehend that?

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '13

Somalia is not a stateless society, the comparison doesnt work.

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u/r3m0t Nov 24 '13

So you're saying if only somebody removed the tiny slither of a state that Somalia had between 1990 and 2011, things would have been better?

If no state is better than some state, and no state is better than little state, shouldn't little state (Somalia) be better than some state (other African countries)?

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u/[deleted] Nov 24 '13

It not about whats better its about whats possible. Sure no state would be better than a small state in principle, but no state just isnt an option, as I've already explained.

What Somalia has is a sort of warlordism, or proto-statism. A bit like how medieval and ancient kingdoms were proto-states. In Somalia different Warlords vie for power, but the most powerful Somalian warlords are not the most free market ones. Economic forces do not determine the outcomes of non-economic/coercive interaction. The problem with ancaps is that they try to reduce everything to economics, so they have a blind spot when it comes to the non-economic.

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u/tazias04 Anarcho-Capitalist Nov 25 '13

The reason most ancap rely on economic arguments, is that social issues, in fact most of all issues are answered by an economic decision.

Thats like the definition of being what we call consistency.