I wonder if Tyler Cowen is thinking of writing a book about Columbia—pardon, Colombia. He should; no, wait, maybe he has. A Google Search for Colombia on his weblog yields 98 hits (link). I haven’t read all of them, but I have rooted around a bit, and I think I am safe in saying that in aggregate, they present a stimulating (if, ahem kaleidoscopic) picture of a country he clearly loves, and from which we can learn a lot.
The stuff doesn’t lend itself to easy summary, but let me try: by any measure, Colombia looks to be a country that barely works, what with its prominence, not to say preeminence, in the drug world. And yes, it turns out a lot of things in Colombia are a mess. But not all are, and some messes are more interesting and instructive than others.
What we have here more generally is an attempt to respond to an important question that libertarians rarely ask—namely, if you don’t like the government, then what, precisely, is the alternative? Hobbes thought it was the state of nature: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short. Modern libertarians imagine sometimes seem to imagine life just like now, only without the National Endowment for the Arts.
No one has ever accused Tyler of being a sentimentalist about the virtues of active government. But he’s got a keen empirical eye, and a temperamental hospitality to surprises. Follow the Colombia links and get a refreshing new perspective to turn on your life back home. Or at the very least, take a look at Tyler’s choice for the best piece on Columbia he ever read.
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