Good luck to this daring , courageous, and apparently thoughtful man. Ethiopia has been a political cesspool for a long time.
Here's something surprising. For a country with a largely temperate climate (surprising, considering that the country is so close to the equator, but it is mostly at high altitudes) it is doing very, very badly in economics. No, race is not the issue; 'race' is a moral and intellectual cop-out for hollow people. No, it is not because Ethiopia has a heritage of nothing but savagery. The country has had some eras of sophisticated civilization -- just look at the 'antiquities' section of a good art museum. Am I right to say that Ethiopia is the most under-rated country from antiquity?
I am one of those 'environmental determinists', someone who recognizes that geography is destiny for most countries. Take a look at the most developed countries, and you will find that most of them are in the zone of temperate climates. Mexico? Its center of civilization is Mexico city, a place with a climate basically like that of San Francisco (my idea of a climatic paradise) except with the rainy seasons inverted. Aside from cold deserts and extreme highlands, the only truly under-developed country in the temperate zones is North Korea, and that reflects a hideous government more than anything else. Or Ethiopia. Yes, it's close to the equator, but it is still mostly temperate. Mild climates are best for bringing out the sharpest thought for just about anything. Silicon Valley was not going to develop in the Sahara or Siberia. (OK, you can probably figure that I have read much Toynbee on this).
Marxist-Leninist socialism is a horror. Personal profit and loss does far better in enforcing economic reality than can any central planner. It's not that the country needs to go to an economic model out of the theories of Ayn Rand, a mirror-image Marxist almost as soulless as Lenin. The country needs to abandon the model of government ownership and command of productive business.
Here's something surprising. For a country with a largely temperate climate (surprising, considering that the country is so close to the equator, but it is mostly at high altitudes) it is doing very, very badly in economics. No, race is not the issue; 'race' is a moral and intellectual cop-out for hollow people. No, it is not because Ethiopia has a heritage of nothing but savagery. The country has had some eras of sophisticated civilization -- just look at the 'antiquities' section of a good art museum. Am I right to say that Ethiopia is the most under-rated country from antiquity?
I am one of those 'environmental determinists', someone who recognizes that geography is destiny for most countries. Take a look at the most developed countries, and you will find that most of them are in the zone of temperate climates. Mexico? Its center of civilization is Mexico city, a place with a climate basically like that of San Francisco (my idea of a climatic paradise) except with the rainy seasons inverted. Aside from cold deserts and extreme highlands, the only truly under-developed country in the temperate zones is North Korea, and that reflects a hideous government more than anything else. Or Ethiopia. Yes, it's close to the equator, but it is still mostly temperate. Mild climates are best for bringing out the sharpest thought for just about anything. Silicon Valley was not going to develop in the Sahara or Siberia. (OK, you can probably figure that I have read much Toynbee on this).
Marxist-Leninist socialism is a horror. Personal profit and loss does far better in enforcing economic reality than can any central planner. It's not that the country needs to go to an economic model out of the theories of Ayn Rand, a mirror-image Marxist almost as soulless as Lenin. The country needs to abandon the model of government ownership and command of productive business.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
