The Politically Incorrect Show - 28/11/2000

[Music - Die Fledermaus]

Good afternoon, Kaya Oraaa & welcome to the Politically Incorrect Show on the free speech network, Radio Pacific, for Tuesday November 28, proudly sponsored by Neanderton Nicotine Ltd., the show that says bugger the politicians & bureaucrats & all the other bossyboot busybodies who try to run our lives with our money; that stands tall for free enterprise, achievement, profit, & excellence, against the state-worshippers in our midst; that stands above all for the most sacred thing in the universe, the liberty of the human individual.

[Music up, music down!]

Voltaire once marvelled at how Jews & Gentiles were able to put aside their religious animosities at the stock exchange, where self-interest demanded peaceful co-existence. I was reminded of this at the weekend when I read the following in the Herald's international section:

"The Serbs, Muslims & Croats of northeastern Bosnia fought to a bloody standstill on the dusty plain near the bitterly disputed town of Brcko five years ago. Now the old front line is home to Europe's largest black market - a striking demonstration of how capitalism in the raw is encouraging the old warring parties to find an uneasy modus operandi. At the Arizona Market - so-called because it sits on what United States peacekeepers called the Arizona Road on their route maps - locals demonstrate the sort of disregard for the forces of law & order, & taxation & regulation, that would have made the pioneers of the American West proud. Fancy a Turkish tablecloth, Finnish mobile telephone, or a Chinese lantern? How about a live chicken or fake Leonardo di Caprio playing cards or some bootleg cigarettes? All are available here at knockdown prices. Or are you looking for something more risky? Ask the right people & there are Moldavian prostitutes, Afghan heroin & Kalashnikovs from Russia ... Despite the threat of closure, the market keeps growing. Last weekend, bulldozers flattened more fields for new stalls. At one level, Arizona is a startling success story... the three ethnic groups [Serbs, Croats & Muslims] plus gypsies, Turks, Chinese & Iranians buy & sell alongside each other in a profit-motivated peace."

Now, of course, taxmen & regulators are seeking to bring Arizona within their purview. Before they succeed, it would be nice if the world took a long hard look at this place & learned some lessons from it. Such as - how much cheaper goods can be when people are free to trade them without the coercive intervention of third parties; how spectacularly a free economy can burgeon; how the key to growth & prosperity is not licences & regulations, taxes & tariffs, but the right to trade without impediment; how easy it is to outgrow previously murderous hatreds when so trading to mutual advantage by mutual consent (Israelis & Arabs, please note!). "You cannot overestimate what a breakthrough it was," one Nato official is quoted as saying. "A year ago they had been killing each other, & now they're doing business. The problem is that it has grown out of all control" - by which she means, of course, that the local government is missing out on money that ... er, doesn't belong to it anyway!

To the United Nations & Nato, I say: stop being party-poopers! Leave these folk alone. They've tumbled to something that could bring peace to the world more quickly & lastingly than all your bombs & agencies & conventions put together. The best peace-keeping operation you could conduct is simply to ensure a few basic laws are in place against murder, theft, trespass, fraud & assault. Apart from that, stay the hell out of it - & watch "profit-motivated peace" work its magic.

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