Indians are routing around their ineffectual local governments:
Fareed Zakaria agrees in Newsweek that India really feels like a boomtown right now… Tired of waiting for the government, some desis are running parallel local services…There’s little regulation by private tort… because the courts take 30 years to resolve cases. So you see exposed wires hanging from strip mall ceilings, parking lots using barbed wire at toddler level and outdoor barbers using straight razors. You still risk stomach upset or worse by eating food from unlicensed street vendors, which makes you want to just shake the local babus and say, ‘Come on, guys, this is just so basic. Nothing should come between me and my kachoris…’
I have new respect for government regulation of food, transportation safety and public health. If ‘there are no atheists in foxholes,’ I’d add that there are no pure libertarians in developing nations. If ‘no revolution on empty bellies,’ I’d say that libertarianism is uniquely a rich person’s vice :)
Because the legal system doesn’t work, it forces people to turn to the parallel legal system, gangsters. Any time you see a country with a parallel legal system, a parallel black economy, parallel power generation and parallel street sweeping, you know its government is dysfunctional.
