You’ve been there, and I haven’t, but my sense of what I’ve read over the years is that all these former colonies, or near-colonies, when they gained nominal independence, inherited … without a choice being given to them … the European style of nation-states that now pervades the entire planet.
It came with the territory: “Here, you want to be independent? Fine, set up your own set of institutions that replicate everything we have done, and then we’ll hand you the power trip to play with as you choose.”
Did anyone ever say, “Hey, all you people living here, what do you want? Do you want to be defined by the borders we created? Do you want big, centralized governments? If you do, how would you like them to operate? How much government is necessary? What is your history of how you used to get along before we came in and fucked you over?”
I don’t get the sense that anyone ever discussed the possibility of creating a social landscape where people normally interact voluntarily, and the only service “government” provides is a mechanism to work things out if people disagree? Another function would be to make a way for people to declare things for the public to see, such as binding contracts, so honesty would be strongly advised and used in drawing them up.
Who says there needs to be such a thing as a “parliament” and a “prime minister” or a “president” or “ministries” or any of that: those are European ideas, and you’re welcome to take them with you when you leave.
Nobody, to my knowledge, ever broached this proposition to anyone in the process of the Europeans making an orderly departure. Which means that, in fact, the Europeans left a great deal of themselves behind. I haven’t paid close attention to Senegal, but my sense is that these former colonies are mostly overrun by corruption, all of which feeds to whoever’s in power. That these “governments” are the same game the Europeans played, except with dark faces.
The thing that occurs to me is that, of all places, Africa might be in a position to create a world revolution in regards to the notion of “government”. If people in any country started seriously considering doing away with the existing European form with all it’s corruption and money-gathering, and replacing it with something uniquely African, that embraced private property rights and respect for everyone and treating people fairly, and that “government” didn’t do anything other than help bring order where and when disorder broke out.
Would there be “institutions” or “bureaus” or “departments”? Maybe, or maybe not. Things would be established, and if they worked they would keep on; if they didn’t, they’d quit. Because the people who ran them would be the same people who lived and worked there; their main interest would be the same of their neighbors … to keep things orderly in the easiest and cheapest way.
Maybe for the benefit of the Europeans and Americans and all the others with those nation-states, we would take a poll and come up with some suggestions, and whatever one seemed most popular would be submitted to the United Nations for membership, except that if it was accepted nobody would show up in New York because there would be no money to spend on such foolishness.
It would give the Europeans a name to use, but as far as getting anything done in this so-called country, a person would have to deal with people, either individually or in groups that formed voluntarily, to discuss whatever business was to be proposed.
Perhaps the first order of business for this non-country would be to arrange an orderly disposal of everything the “government” money cartel had accumulated, seeing to it that the payments were made properly when the assets were transferred to the winning bidders.
The highways, utilities, streets, airports, piers, docks, all of those would go to the highest bidders, either on a widespread basis or, in some cases, in local auctions of local properties. The new owners of the airports and docks and highways would have their own capital invested, so they’d be on the hook to their shareholders to keep the property up and improve it so as to increase its profitability. More efficient docks, airports and streets, in other words. Because if the administrators weren’t returning value to the shareholders, the company stock would go down, and the stockholders would find new administrators.
As far as security, that whole apparatus would be part of the disposal process too, with bids coming from private security companies that would have to commit to the publicly posted terms of the sale. Maybe as a condition of the sale they would have to give up 51% of the shares of the company to the people living there, or some such; these details would easily get creatively taken care of.
Could some people in Africa pull this off? I dunno. I’ve about given up on the rest of the world at this point though, but since Africa is where everything started, maybe that’s where things need to start again.
