January 04, 2008 ... State of confidence.

The recent outbreak of violence leading to over 300 deaths in Kenya because of invalid democratic procedures which enabled the established elite to maintain authority over its tribal counterparts was inevitable. As inevitable as has always been the case whenever a multiplicity of diverse interests are constrained by a democratically sanctioned State of authority. So far, in the more established democracies, a degree of peace has been achieved by simply buying the electorate off, in ever more inventive and counterproductive ways. But with reality economics closing in, a tendency towards that which pertained in the former USSR and eastern European satellite states, such as east Germany, for instance, is very likely, with a slightly less authoritarian China acting as a paradigm.

Professor Hans Herman Hoppe, including others of a similar intelligence, have suggested that the best solution would be for the world’s peoples to voluntarily arrange themselves into its self-organising groups, and to trade and defend themselves as best suits their needs. Whilst such a scenario is possible, it would most likely lead to a myriad of complications more counterproductive than valuable, once the novelty had worn off.

To a fair extent prior to the European ‘scramble’ for Africa, such a situation did exist on the African continent including Somalia. Sophisticated intra-tribal and inter-tribal law functioned very reasonably. Conflicts were on a comparatively modest scale, with scarce resources demanding speedy settlements. And culture from an historical perspective, demonstrated considerable ingenuity within a narrow range of accomplishment: stone buildings to deities, fine jewellry, the weaving of fine fabrics, and other handicrafts. However, in spite of having pretty much all of the raw materials hat are a necessity of modern civilisation: oil, minerals metals, etc., Africa never developed any industry remotely similar to that which developed in the industrial revolution of the state of Great Britain and/or other European states. It took the less savoury aspects of the state as a monopoly of authority in competition with other similar states headed by power elites to provide the motivation for that to be worthwhile: State expansion including imperialism, monopolising the money supply, the need for superiority in armed conflicts, etc.

At the present time in which there is a desire to compel African development along the path of socialised democracy and the subsequent socialised authority including Stakeholder theory, the EU is conflicted over supranational authority as a replacement to intergovernmental authority in order to more effectively entrench authority over the EU citizenry.

At the end of 2007 the Kenyan Sammy Gitau received his Master's degree from Manchester University. A few years earlier he had been plucked from a life of scant hopes and championed by an EU representative to study Social agendas in Great Britain. Had Sammy Gitau been championed by the Mises Institute instead, he would have been much more able to influence his and his Kenyan counterparts’ future in consort with Kenyan economists such as James Shikwati. Such training would also be beneficial for the EU so that it would be possible to move from a state of authority to a state of confidence in which technological progress would valued for its inherent virtues, and not be be motivated by the desires of a few with the resources of the state to call upon by way of coercion.

Such a state of confidence--from an EU wide perspective--would be one in which a common law, police force and judiciary would pertain, property rights and contracts would not be subverted by Stakeholder theory and Human Rights legislation, and /or environmentalism, pensioners could live in locales of their choosing without penalties including having to return to their area of origin. And so on.