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ARMENIA: LIBERTARIAN PARADISE?
Irregular Times
Nov 11 2013
Posted by J Clifford under Economy, Environment, Outside the USA on
November 11th, 2013
At the end of last week, in response to an article scrutinizing the
problems of 1787, a new political party in the USA, one of our readers,
Stephen Kent Gray, took objection to a brief dismissive comment made
about the Libertarian Party. Gray bemoaned what he described as common
liberal misperceptions about libertarian politics.
"You can look at any libertarian or relatively libertarian society
to disprove your predictions," he wrote, before listing a number of
nations that have admirable libertarian policies.
Let's look at one of the nations he listed: Armenia.
Armenia is a former Soviet Republic north of Iraq and Iran, and east
of Turkey. The nation has an ethnically nearly homogenous population
of approximately 3 million people. Armenia's national motto is "One
Nation, One Culture", which sounds more Nazi than libertarian.
Armenia has a high rate of literacy, achieved under the Soviet
centralized system of education, and maintained since independence.
The dominant school of higher learning, Yerevan State University, is
government run. Some decentralization of the educational system has
taken place in Armenia since the disintegration of the Soviet Union,
but schools remain government-run, with a national curriculum, and
what decentralization has taken place has been under the direction
of international bureaucracies such as the World Bank, the Soros
Foundation, and the United Nations. Armenia's educational system is
not libertarian.
It's true that, in reaction to Soviet-era centralization, Armenia's
post-Soviet government has emphasized economic liberalization in which
capitalist entities are relatively unregulated. As a result, there
have been serious environmental problems: Garbage dumps in Armenia
are untreated and unlined - simple, old-fashioned dumps. Industrial
activity such as mining is able to spew pollution without much
regulation, as reported by one volunteer who writes that the "Lori
region is rich in copper-molybdenum deposits which has opened the doors
for people to use it to produce copper. Certainly, it would only make
sense to make use of natural resources to make something useful for
people to use. But, the problem lies in the fact that the waste is
not disposed of properly. Specifically, in between the monastery and
the copper mine, runs the Akhtala River where part of the waste is
dumped into while the rest is left out in the open, instead of being
fenced by cement, diffusing all through the town and making its way
into the lungs of the locals. I was truly heartbroken when I learned
that Akhtala's Monastery did not qualify as one of UNESCO's world
heritage sites due to the radioactive waste produced by the open-pit
copper mine across from it. What a shame."
While corporations and wealthy individuals get libertarian-style
freedom from strong government regulation, ordinary citizens in Armenia
suffer from brutal governmental authoritarianism. The secret police
are a strong presence in the country, and human rights abuses are
serious. Amnesty International cites "harassment and intimidation
suffered by civil society activists and journalists who question
the mainstream view", in which "public officials condone violence
against those with dissenting opinions. The targets of such attacks
are often left without adequate protection and offences against them
go unpunished, which has a chilling effect on others." Human Rights
Watch notes manipulation of results in recent national elections,
intimidation of protesters, and a centralized health care system that
prevents people from gaining access to the medicines they need.
Stephen Kent Gray tells us that the United States of America would
benefit if it became more like Armenia, an exemplar of libertarian
ideals. However, conditions in the real Armenia merely illustrate
what goes wrong when libertarian ideals are put into practice: The
powerful get all the benefits of being above the law, while everybody
else's freedoms and economic conditions are diminished. The supposed
economic benefits of libertarianism are not realized, as the powerful
gain more power at the expense of the rest of the nation, creating
a level of corruption that drains the national economy of 5 percent
of its wealth every year.
Is it any wonder that Americans overwhelmingly reject libertarian
politics, when the libertarians suggest that we move to the Armenian
model?
http://irregulartimes.com/2013/11/11/armenia-libertarian-paradise/
Irregular Times
Nov 11 2013
Posted by J Clifford under Economy, Environment, Outside the USA on
November 11th, 2013
At the end of last week, in response to an article scrutinizing the
problems of 1787, a new political party in the USA, one of our readers,
Stephen Kent Gray, took objection to a brief dismissive comment made
about the Libertarian Party. Gray bemoaned what he described as common
liberal misperceptions about libertarian politics.
"You can look at any libertarian or relatively libertarian society
to disprove your predictions," he wrote, before listing a number of
nations that have admirable libertarian policies.
Let's look at one of the nations he listed: Armenia.
Armenia is a former Soviet Republic north of Iraq and Iran, and east
of Turkey. The nation has an ethnically nearly homogenous population
of approximately 3 million people. Armenia's national motto is "One
Nation, One Culture", which sounds more Nazi than libertarian.
Armenia has a high rate of literacy, achieved under the Soviet
centralized system of education, and maintained since independence.
The dominant school of higher learning, Yerevan State University, is
government run. Some decentralization of the educational system has
taken place in Armenia since the disintegration of the Soviet Union,
but schools remain government-run, with a national curriculum, and
what decentralization has taken place has been under the direction
of international bureaucracies such as the World Bank, the Soros
Foundation, and the United Nations. Armenia's educational system is
not libertarian.
It's true that, in reaction to Soviet-era centralization, Armenia's
post-Soviet government has emphasized economic liberalization in which
capitalist entities are relatively unregulated. As a result, there
have been serious environmental problems: Garbage dumps in Armenia
are untreated and unlined - simple, old-fashioned dumps. Industrial
activity such as mining is able to spew pollution without much
regulation, as reported by one volunteer who writes that the "Lori
region is rich in copper-molybdenum deposits which has opened the doors
for people to use it to produce copper. Certainly, it would only make
sense to make use of natural resources to make something useful for
people to use. But, the problem lies in the fact that the waste is
not disposed of properly. Specifically, in between the monastery and
the copper mine, runs the Akhtala River where part of the waste is
dumped into while the rest is left out in the open, instead of being
fenced by cement, diffusing all through the town and making its way
into the lungs of the locals. I was truly heartbroken when I learned
that Akhtala's Monastery did not qualify as one of UNESCO's world
heritage sites due to the radioactive waste produced by the open-pit
copper mine across from it. What a shame."
While corporations and wealthy individuals get libertarian-style
freedom from strong government regulation, ordinary citizens in Armenia
suffer from brutal governmental authoritarianism. The secret police
are a strong presence in the country, and human rights abuses are
serious. Amnesty International cites "harassment and intimidation
suffered by civil society activists and journalists who question
the mainstream view", in which "public officials condone violence
against those with dissenting opinions. The targets of such attacks
are often left without adequate protection and offences against them
go unpunished, which has a chilling effect on others." Human Rights
Watch notes manipulation of results in recent national elections,
intimidation of protesters, and a centralized health care system that
prevents people from gaining access to the medicines they need.
Stephen Kent Gray tells us that the United States of America would
benefit if it became more like Armenia, an exemplar of libertarian
ideals. However, conditions in the real Armenia merely illustrate
what goes wrong when libertarian ideals are put into practice: The
powerful get all the benefits of being above the law, while everybody
else's freedoms and economic conditions are diminished. The supposed
economic benefits of libertarianism are not realized, as the powerful
gain more power at the expense of the rest of the nation, creating
a level of corruption that drains the national economy of 5 percent
of its wealth every year.
Is it any wonder that Americans overwhelmingly reject libertarian
politics, when the libertarians suggest that we move to the Armenian
model?
http://irregulartimes.com/2013/11/11/armenia-libertarian-paradise/