
Mauritius: A Glimmer of African Freedom - dpatru
http://mises.org/daily/4985?sms_ss=facebook&at_xt=4d40fb0634a75f46%2C0
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gopi
Geographically Mauritius may be in africa but 70% of its population is of east
indian orgin. So it enjoys a favourable tax treaty with India and thus most of
the foreign investment into india flows thro mauritius. In a nutshell
mauritius is to india what ireland/luxembourg is to europe!

------
pmjordan
Having visited Mauritius a few years ago as a tourist, I'd say they're
probably missing out on an opportunity in tourism and maybe immigration.
Outside the generic, polished beachfront hotel complexes, they seem to treat
their otherwise beautiful island as a landfill. I don't think I've seen so
much rubbish strewn around the countryside anywhere else. There's plenty there
for tourists to explore, but (at least for us) the way the natives seem to
treat their countryside was a major turn-off for future visits and
recommending the place to others. Admittedly, this was a few years ago, and
they may have since cleaned up their act.

(I realise that attracting tourism can be a double-edged sword)

~~~
borism
I've been there in 2007 too and I think you're wrong. If anything I think
they're too dependent on tourism. And actually they seem to understand it by
trying to diversify into tech and other industries.

Regarding rubbish and immigration, the largest population group there are
indians, the most disregard to rubbish seems to come from their culture (have
you been to India?). But they're also the largest contributors to growing tech
sector for example.

~~~
biaxident
The country is very dependent on tourism. However, the money generated isn't
being pumped back into the country.

People who visit on holiday say how wonderful the place is, beautiful beaches
and clear blue seas. But move to other areas of the island and it's a
completely different place. Walk 5 minutes down the road from the fanciest
hotel and there's a shanty town.

Mauritius certainly has a great opportunity and is probably better than a lot
of the other African countries, but it still has a long way to go.

~~~
borism
well, I've been all around the island by car and sure the places locals live
in are not posh, but far from being "shanty towns" you'll see in India (where
many mauritians are coming from) or Brasil or most of Africa for that matter.

But that's the "freedom" Mises Institute applauds - freedom for foreigners to
invest in local industries but not contribute much back besides employment.

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egor83
I wonder what he was trying to say.

Okay, taxes are lower there than in Germany or France, government spends less
- but what are the effects? Do people live better there than in Europe? Are
there any companies that prefer to do business in Mauritius rather than in
Germany because of lower taxes?

I understand that libertarians see low taxes and governmental nonintervention
as good things, but his point would be much stronger if he showed any positive
effects of these factors.

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borism
I recall not so long ago the freest country in Africa (and the whole World) by
Mises Institute standarts was Somalia?

<http://mises.org/daily/2066>

[http://blog.mises.org/7128/the-rule-of-law-without-the-
state...](http://blog.mises.org/7128/the-rule-of-law-without-the-state/)

BTW, I love Mauritius!

~~~
brc
Well, without a functioning central government, that probably was very true.

With anything like this, you have to balance it with other indicators like
life expectancy and quality of life indexes to get an overall picture of what
it is like to live in the country.

~~~
notahacker
Instead of a functioning government you got traditional clan law, militia
demanding protection money and offering nothing in return, and your route to
the "free market" was greased by paying armed men collecting rents at
checkpoints. . Of course, judging freedom using the Mises Institute benchmark
of government spending being 0% of GDP left Somalia a surefire winner, but
I'll happily trade some of that essential liberty for the second best of
Western liberal democracy.

~~~
nika
I do not understand why it is popular to characterize somalia in this way.
Have you got a reference to militias demanding money and offering nothing in
return? It seems this would be a very dangerous thing to attempt in somalia,
as the members of most tribes are pretty well armed and would not put up with
this.

Somalia is a tribal country with institutions that provide legal and judicial
support for resolving disputes peacefully going back centuries. I'm sure they
do have private roads, for which you have to pay a toll, but you have toll
roads in many countries.

I read one report that the pirates who were operating off of the somali coast
operated like startups. One guy would put up some guns, others would put up
labor, another the boat, some would stay ashore and provide financing or
support. The profits would be divided among them according to their shares.
The system works because the desire to go out again keeps them honest.

The "pirates" effectively operate as the somali coast guard, going after ships
that are in their states waters. These pirates were previously fisherman until
china decided that they could start overfishing the area. So they go and
collect tolls.

I guess it is romantic to call them pirates, and it certainly serves the
interests of the west to characterize somalia as a hellhole.

But the primary problem facing somalia is not that they don't have a
functioning society-- they do-- but that the western interests, specifically
the US and the UK, keep making war on them.

The UN created schools but the teachers are unmotivated, and so the somalis,
who are generally relatively wealthy, set up private schools of their own.

I have a friend who has been there and who worked on a proposal to put in a
port and a road across some of the territory into ethiopia. However, the
investors were scared off when an american general promised to "bomb the hell
out of it" if they built the road and the port. So, my knowledge of the
situation on the ground is dated a few years and mostly relevant to the north.

But Somalia is actually a relatively safe, stable society, it exhibits a fair
bit of success in free market principles and in operating without a state.
They are able to provide security, and repel invasions for the most part,
without a central government.

~~~
notahacker
Normally tolls for "private roads" are collected by those who build and
maintain the roads, not armed opportunists.

I'm surprised to hear you're willing to back extortion even outside Somalia
because the pirates use capitalist investment techniques and divide up the
spoils "honestly" though. Irrespective of the merits of claims of foreign
overfishing, I think you'd have a hard job arguing that the "coastguard" have
a legitimate right to collect "tolls" sometimes in excess of $1million from
unarmed ships making the mistake of operating in these areas.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Somalian_Piracy_Threat_Map...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Somalian_Piracy_Threat_Map_2010.png)
I'm sure that, much like operating a Mogadishu roadblock, it's one of the few
lucrative revenue sources open to desperate people but this isn't exactly
indicative of the "safe, stable ... free market" you describe. I'm not sure
why you're accusing me of being the one depicting their actions in a
"romantic" way.

It's not even that Somalia doesn't have any form of government (The Mises
Institute will be disappointed to know that the relatively stable _de facto_
republic of Somaliland does have formal taxation). It's just that none of the
governments' bounds of authority are recognised by each other, never mind the
outside world, and the official government proudly considers their ability to
establish military control over only 60% of the capital to be a measure of
success
[http://www.hiiraan.com/news2/2011/Jan/statement_by_h_e_moham...](http://www.hiiraan.com/news2/2011/Jan/statement_by_h_e_mohamed_abdulahi_mohamed_prime_minister_of_somalia_at_un_security_council_meeting_on_somalia.aspx)

If you sincerely believe that there is no civil war and Somalis are being
killed today by the intervention of UK and US phantoms and not by factional
infighting then I don't think it's going to be very productive to continue
this debate.

~~~
nika
That "official government" as you called it IS the "UK and US phantoms". They
are not somalis, except for a few token figureheads. They are invaders from
nearby countries, who have long coveted the land, funded and trained by the US
and the UK.

It is quite ironic that you would use these acts of aggression as an argument
that the country is in a civil war. But simply by calling them the "official"
government you have advocated the imposition of slavery on an entire nation at
the hands of thugs.

I find it quite disheartening to hear americans repeat propaganda as fact, and
use it in argument when they have no actual knowledge of the country, as I
have.

So, no, there is no productive debate when you can essentially make shit up
based on the impressions you have from propaganda, or regurgitate propaganda.

America is a curious place. The neocons hate somalis on the principle that
they are mostly muslim and thus must be evil. The liberals hate them because
they are free and well armed. Trying to clear up misconceptions is like trying
to argue with a citizen of the USSR who believed everything pravda said. You
can always quote pravda.

For instance, you assert that the tolls I mentioned in somalia were not
collected by the people who built and maintained the roads. This is a flat out
lie, which I now understand you simply made up because it fits your image of
the country.

Further, you assert there are "armed opportunists" who are collecting the
tolls, this is also a lie, and absurd to anyone who knows anything about
somalia. Only in america are highway travellers disarmed. In somalia such
bandits would not live long.

Oh, and in america there are "armed opportunists" who take "tolls" in the form
of "traffic violations" without much regard for whether they were actually
committed or not. They know that it is nearly impossible to get a hearing on
such a low level offense and certainly will cost more than simply paying the
fine. Therefore, for many if not most americans there is no justice system at
all.

That's bad enough, but they also are in the habit of stealing any significant
quantities of cash or valuable property they find in the cars they stop. They
are able to do this under what's called "asset forfieture" where they merely
need a pretext-- an unsupported assertion that the property was used in a
crime-- to steal it. This money does not go to road maintenance, but to the
personal enrichment of the cops who steal it.

In somalia, if you have been wronged, in order to get compensation, you have
to get a ruling from an impartial judge. In america, no judge is needed, the
highway robbers just take your property and file some paperwork. I'm not aware
of any such property ever being returned, despite most of the victims never
being charged, let alone convicted of a crime.

And you think you have "innocent until proven guilty"?

Think that is all just and good? fine, that may be a valid opinion. But every
characterization of somalia you make has a parallel in the USA.

Only when you talk about somalia you act as if it is some sort of moral
tragedy, but in the USA the same actions are above reproach?

This is the "magic of government" that I believe your schools indoctrinate you
into from a young age. If a man were force another man to work for him and
take %60 of his wages, you'd call that slavery.... but if the government does
it, as the government in the USA does, then somehow, thru the magic of
government this is no longer slavery, but taxation.

One thing you can't dispute about somalis. Since we got rid of barre, we have
not been enslaved.

Despite your many attempts.

