IRAQ: A FREE ENTERPRISE PARADISE IN THE MAKING?

Sunday, 27 June 2004 By Tom Titmouse
After reading Lordy's pastis inspired rantings I had a couple of thoughts. One was that if this is the best those bleedin' heart lefties can come up with then lil' Johnny has little to fear this August. The other was those famous words of Howard Johnson in Blazing Saddles: "From chaos comes order!"

And perhaps from the chaos of present day Iraq order could be. A new economic order, if you will.

A Milton Friedman wonderland! In just under a week Bremer's bureaucratic bumblers will pack their bags and head back home to Washington DC. And what have they left behind? A country torn apart by terrorist bombs and rampant crime. A country divided and riven by factional politics. A weak and powerless puppet government with little or no control over anything.

That's right; a country of boundless economic opportunity!

For years the followers of famed economic theorist Selma Hayek have looked for a place that could serve as a shining example to the world of the benefits of the unfettered marketplace. A place where the stifling hand of government did not grip the throat of every businessman. Well, it looks like this economic rationalist nirvana could be here in the freshly minted sovereign state of Iraq.

I have long argued (see Xenox News April 1993) that only by removing all the restrictions of the state can free enterprise truly run free. And I don't just mean privatization of all Government monopolies; I'm talking about the legal and ethical boundaries a government elected or otherwise cage the individual with. Remove all but the basic laws and not only do we allow the unfettered creation of wealth but we also eliminate those parasites of society the judiciary and their blood-sucking partners the lawyers. Look at Iraq today and you can see that this criteria can be meet, there maybe law but obviously no one gives a fuck about it!

It could be that Iraq could be the vessel that proves my economic hypothesis correct!

Others agree with me. The world renowned think-tank the Institute of Pubic Affairs has just published an in depth study on how conditions are ripe for a Chicago School economic heaven in newly-liberated Iraq.

Says chief economist John Stoned:
"Some may see the lack of laws and the weak government of Iraq as a recipe for disaster, but if we listened to these know-it-alls Iraq wouldn't be free as it is today. Free to throw off the shackles of government. Free to explode into a business free for all where everyone will be a winner!

"One of the aims of the coalition of the willing was to make Iraq an example of the greatness of western values to the backward and, frankly, socialist-led peoples of the Arab world. And what are these values? Well, they are the same that led to the overthrow of the Iron Curtain. The right to have a business without being told what to do and how to do it by some lazy public servant. The right to all the consumer goodies that have made life in countries like Australia and America a sort of paradise! Once the Arab world sees that Iraqi's are enjoying these things they will throw off the yoke of Islamic superstition like those of the west who have dumped Christianity for the satisfacion of shopping.

"For women of the Arabic world the Iraqi example could show them how capitalism offers the answers to life's great questions; how many shoes should I own and what colour should they be. The sort of freedom that owning a washing machine gives. Freedom that only the entrepreneurship of true capitalism can bring.
"

So what remains to be done to ensure that we can give Iraqis the economic freedom they deserve? It seems they want it because already they are expressing a healthy disdain for organized government by trying to blow it up each day! In my humble opinion one thing that needs to be done is for the Yanks to bail now. Don't worry about trying to shore up the ramshackle Interim Government; let the market decide! For once I'm in agreement with that Labour dimwit Latham; Get the Troops out now! All they are doing is holding back an economic miracle that will surely have every wanna-be Arab suicide bomber wanting to dump their explosives and head to Iraq to make their fortune.

It should be allowed happen now. We owe it to the children of Iraq that it will be done.

Tom Titmouse


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