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Armenia: Libertarian Paradise?

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  • Armenia: Libertarian Paradise?

    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/

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