By Dr. Robert Ingram Powell
In the August 1991 issue, Tekle Menelik of San Francisco commented on my commentary, “Worthwhile Considerations For A New Government,” (July, 1991). It is not, as Mr. Menelik states, “the essential mandate of any legitimate government to defend the independence and dignity of the nation.” The essential mandate of any “legitimate government” is to use the police force of government to protect the inalienable right to life and liberty of its citizens. Defending the citizens of the nation from external force is only an extension of that use of force.
Mr. Menelik incorrectly assumes that the only interest from those external to Ethiopia would be drug traffickers or criminal money launderers. Certainly such interests are possible, however not likely if the country has a legal system to prohibit such activity and an enforcement system capable of detecting and dealing with such problems. Every country faces and deals with such problems daily.
In the U.S.A. and most other open systems of government, anyone who desires to purchase land, buildings or go into legitimate business may do so with only the restrictions imposed by the Federal, State, Country and City Governments respecting local land use and building construction and business laws and practices.
In the case of Axum, Lalibela or any other area of antiquity and a National Treasure, there is nothing inherently wrong with the ownership of foreigners outside the borders of the National Treasure, so long as the architecture of the building and other man-made constructs do not interfere with the sanctity of the national treasure.
Certainly hotels, restaurants and similar complexes need to be established to encourage tourism such as to bring much needed money into Ethiopia and donations for the preservation of the national treasures.
The question addressed to chemical or pesticide factories should not be isolated to Foreign Industrialists. It should include Ethiopian Industrialists. There is nothing inherently wrong with operating Chemical or Pesticide factories, given they are operated at the State of the Art with safety functions properly monitored by a government hired environmental testing facility to keep them honest.
As to loans, the Ethiopian government should seek loans at any level it can get them to rebuild the country’s infrastructure, and invite anyone who will come to invest and build in Ethiopia for negotiated conditions in a free enterprise zone that will attract capital.
What national safeguards Mr. Menelik has in mind are conspicuous by their absence to preclude the country from assuming huge debt burdens.
He errs again in addressing Brazil and Chile as “stridently free markets.” They are not free markets, but disintegrating collectivist, socialist remnants of an anti-philosophical system, “long dead.”
The only essential law in a rational society of free men and women is, “that no individual (whether in private or in government) may initiate the use of force to violate the inalienable right to life and property of another individual.” When some individual does so, that individual is a criminal to that extent and rational laws can deal with criminals. All crimes are against individuals, not against collectives, i.e., society. Individual criminals whether acting together or in groups commit crimes against other individuals or groups of individuals — what is significant is that at the root base it is individuals who are aggressed against. In a free system, any individual can do anything that does not use force to violate the right to life and property of another individual by force or fraud.
It is important for Ethiopia to establish free enterprise zones to attract capital investment. The only system in the history of the world that makes freedom possible is capitalism/individualism. Under that system of government the greatest freedom, charity, productivity and observance of individual rights has evolved for the more than 200 years in the United States of America.
Within internecine tribal warfare in Ethiopia from the dawn of history, with frequent incursions by outsiders trying to take over Ethiopia or part of it, the entire system has throughout its history been on the brink of disaster.
Establish free enterprise zones, find out what capitalism can do for Ethiopia while watching it and measuring its productivity and response to human needs. When you destroy the incentive for people to create and excel, they don’t. Keep the government limited to enforce the laws, operate the military and the courts under a system of by and for the people and privatize all other functions that can be privatized, with emphasis on limited government, then watch Ethiopia take its place in the world of nations.