LiquidHydrogen wrote:You are right, it was due to the hysteria over communism that a lot of these countries received Aid and cheap loans. But you are forgetting that these countries were also resource poor. They had very little, if any, natural resources. What I's suggesting is not to ask for Aid or Loans but to subsidize the growth ourselves. The sale of which could've been used to subsidize other sectors such as manufacture and heavy industry. Somalia/Somaliland probably have a lot of untapped minerals and maybe even prospective oil, (I'm pretty sure the was a lot of hoohaa about massive Oil/gas/uranium prospects in Somalia a few years ago) which could be used to raise the necessary capital to fund our true objective, import substitution.
You could even use the current western paranoia over China/Russia/BRIC countries and Islamism as a way to persuade the US/UK that a strong and stable Somalia would be a better ally than a Chinese influenced weak ISIS/alshabab overrun shithole. That should scare the bejeesus out of any US President.
Too ambitious and not based on reality.
The reality is that somalia is not sovereign and will not reach the sovereignty it had pre 90 for a long time.
whats worse is that most of the world is also not fully sovereign and cannot have an independent economic path.
You should look at the cold war days as the years of freedom, you could really do as you pleased back then, right now there are too many strings.
We will have to wait for other countries to gain independence from the near total western control, before we can join them.
In the mean time we should use the time to build working institutions so that we can develop efficiently as a colonial economy depending on mineral exports and agriculture.
Technology has changed quickly and will continue to change , the model for manufacturing has had revolutionary change.
It has made manufacturing accessible and cheaper to implement if you develop a decentralized mindset.
Right now as we speak there exists and is in use capital equipment that allows you to manufacture the entire set of parts for CAR, Truck,Fridge,Cooker in the space of a regular suburban 2 storey home.
Another similiar sized home can hold all the equipment to build mobile phones and/or laptops/desktops routers and switches and digital radios.
With advances in 3D printing you can expect this to get even crazier.
Import substitution was a spectacular failure back in the 60's to the 80's across the world, this was because it was a top down approach and unsustainable.
A decentralized bottom down approach mimicking the guild artisans of pre-industrial times can be sustainable and a more organic development, and if done well you can sneak it in despite near total domination of your economy by multinational corporations and banks, especially if you include the full set of parallel structures e.g currencies and financial systems.