From: Technotranscendence (neptune@mars.superlink.net)
Date: Sat Jun 08 2002 - 05:06:45 MDT
Privatization, Viking Style: Model or Misfortune?
by Roderick T. Long
Can the experience of Icelandic Vikings eight centuries ago teach us a
lesson about the dangers of privatization? Jared Diamond thinks so. In
his article "Living on the Moon"
[http://www.nybooks.com/articles/article-preview?article_id=15414],
published in the May 23, 2002, issue of the New York Review of Books,
Diamond portrays the history of Iceland in the Viking period as a
nightmarish vision of privatization run amuck.
Libertarian scholars and free-market enthusiasts have often pointed to
the Icelandic Free State (930-1262) as a positive example of a society
that functioned successfully with little or no government control.
Writing in the Journal of Legal Studies
[http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Academic/Iceland/Iceland.html], economist
David Friedman observes that the Free State "might almost have been
invented by a mad economist to test the lengths to which market systems
could supplant government in its most fundamental functions." As Diamond
himself notes:
"Medieval Iceland had no bureaucrats, no taxes, no police, and no army.
. Of the normal functions of governments elsewhere, some did not exist
in Iceland, and others were privatized, including fire-fighting,
criminal prosecutions and executions, and care of the poor."
For the rest of this article, see
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig3/long1.html
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