In its proposed form, the bill tinkers with the music lists aired in common areas (lobbies, elevators, corridors etc) of various premises (hotels, traveling facilities, casinos and shopping malls). The programs should consist of a minimum of 45% of either Greek-language songs, or instrumental versions of said songs. The quota leaves out cafes, restaurants and such (thus slinking away from a direct breach of private economic liberty, as interventions like anti-smoking laws in some cases were found as too heavy-handed). The bill also incentivises radio stations to scale up, so to say, the play-time of this kind of songs, by allocating them more advertising time (another thing that is also strictly regulated, obviously), if they comply to some percentage. Finally, there are some provisions regarding soundtracks in Greek movie productions.
There is an international angle in this protectionist instrument (pun intended). Wiki reveals that a handful of countries apply some form or another of music quotas, with France the most prominent among them. The Greek minister also mentioned Australia and Canada in an interview.
The bill aims to protect local music legacy and invigorate modern production, as part of the competent Ministry’s constitutional mandate. But there are some discords, apart from the always funny administrative percentages (and the paraphernalia needed to track who plays what and for how much). What is deemed as eligible Greek music, in the bill’s proverbial ears, misses a tone or two: Foreign-language songs and prototype instrumental compositions, by Greek artists, do not qualify. For example, Greek band VoIC (their latest album’s cover above, source) mix rock with (mostly Greek) folk music, but fall short of the criteria. And given some minister remarks on “Englishisation”, this will be a point of contention.
Bonus tracks:
Cover of a Greek (and Greek-language too!) song, “Misirlou”
Some Russian folk music (especially no34 is excellent) from an indie game (a most fortunate use of local traditional sound)
That’s the title of this excellent piece by Toby Green, a historian at King’s College London. Green does a wonderful job of highlighting all of the problems that African societies face today: corruption, poverty, and my personal favorite, “neoliberalism.” Neoliberalism is just shorthand for loans that Western financial institutions give to African states. These loans are usually only given if African states promise to follow certain guidelines that Western financial institutions have drawn up. The end result is corruption and poverty.
I can agree that it’s a terrible system, even if I think the name Green has given it is dumb.
Throughout the piece, Green makes a good case for fundamental change in Africa. The problem is that he mistakenly thinks that this change can occur via the states that are currently in place in Africa. He mistakenly thinks that Ghana, Nigeria, Uganda, or Angola, to name some of the more prominent examples, have what it takes to enact the changes necessary for a fundamental shift.
Green argues that “unipolar American and Western European hegemony” (which by definition cannot be unipolar if there’s two poles, unless…) is responsible for Africa’s problems, and that the continent’s early independence leaders should be looked to for guidance. The problem with this, as Hendrik Spruyt has pointed out, is that the continent’s early independence leaders didn’t listen to anybody but themselves. They simply sought to graft their visions of what Africa should be onto the existing colonial governance system of the various European powers.
These early independence leaders sought to forge nations out of the colonies that the Europeans had haphazardly patched together. There were other elites on the African continent who wanted something different from what Africa’s early independence leaders wanted. Some of these elites were nationalists who wanted their states to be fully recognized equals on the world stage, just like the early independence leaders. The difference between these nationalists, and the early independence leaders, was that they wanted to abolish colonial boundaries and restore pre-colonial boundaries which would then be recognized as states within the Westphalian states-system. Like so:
Early Independence Leaders
Other, actual Nationalists
Wanted African states to inherit colonial boundaries
Wanted African states to abolish colonial boundaries and restore old ones to prominence
Wanted to create and forge national identities out of these colonial boundaries
Wanted to harness the power of already-existing national identities by tying them to internationally-recognized states
The early independence leaders obviously won out. The borders of European colonialism were maintained and enshrined within the Westphalian states-system that soon encompassed the globe.
Green and other Leftists think that the above column on the left is a perfectly acceptable way to continue, and that the problem is not the states-system that Africa’s early independence leaders established, but rather the “unipolar hegemony of America and Europe.” Without a rethink of the fundamentals, Green and other Leftists are going to continue inadvertently contributing to the immiseration of Africa.
Don’t get me wrong! The current loan system is awful. It’s terrible. But it’s exactly what you’d expect to get from an order like the one outlined above.
If people are serious about unleashing Africa then they need to look to the above column on the right. The map of the nations that were ignored by Africa’s early independence leaders (ignored, and eventually slaughtered, oppressed, persecuted, and imprisoned) is still there. You can find good maps of nations in Africa — often condescendingly referred to as “ethnic groups” rather than nations – that are superimposed on the map of African postcolonial states. Here’s the best one in the world at the moment.
Green implicitly recognizes that there’s something wrong with the postcolonial African state of Africa’s early independence leaders. He can tell that the column on the left is somehow off:
[…] in many African countries, traditional chiefs [are] more respected than elected officials […] A more damning indictment of the failings of the democratic model promoted across Africa […] is hard to find.
What he can’t seem to do is see that the column on the right lines up almost perfectly with the views that Africans have of their chiefs. Now, the chiefs are by no means revered by everybody in Africa, and there is a strong, if minute, anti-chief current throughout the continent because not everybody wants an Africa based on the tenets of nationalism. The columns above only highlight two strains of thought on how Africa should be governed. There are others, most notably Islamist proposals, but the one that libertarians (and, indeed, most Leftists) should find most attractive is that of the African federalists.
African federalists competed with the two nationalist camps when it became apparent that things were about to change vis-à-vis Africa’s relationship with Europe. While the nationalists embraced decolonization, which meant independence from European colonial rule, the federalists embraced integration with their colonizers. They argued that African colonies could, and should, federate with European countries. This federation would mean that African provinces would stand on equal footing with older provinces of European states. African provinces would be able to practice self-government without resorting to autarky. Like so:
Early Independence Leaders
Other, actual Nationalists
Federalists
Wanted African states to inherit colonial boundaries
Wanted African states to abolish colonial boundaries and restore old ones to prominence
Wanted African colonies to become represented provinces in federated European polities
Wanted to create and forge national identities out of these colonial boundaries
Wanted to harness the power of already-existing national identities by tying them to internationally-recognized states
Wanted full citizenship rights within the federated polities that would replace the old European empires
In hindsight, the federalists were right to deplore the idea of independence from Europe. The Westphalian nation-state, at least as it was envisioned by Africa’s early independence leaders, has been a disaster for Africa. It’s also clear that the federalists had an uphill climb, not only because decolonization-nationalism were all the rage but also because several of the Europeans who ran the colonies did not themselves have federated orders. The French and Portuguese had no experience with federalism, and the Spanish and British had weird federalisms based on monarchical principles. The Dutch and the Americans both had good models to emulate, but they didn’t have any African colonies and the idea of African colonies federating with Dutch or American states was out of the question in the 1960s and 1970s. That doesn’t have to be the case for today.
There’s nothing in this world that says the ideas of Africa’s federalists can’t be put in to practice today. There’s nothing to prevent the world’s most powerful polity, the compound republic of the United States, from entertaining the ideas put forth by Africa’s federalists. Nothing, that is, except the conservatism of Western and Western-educated elites, who believe that Africa’s early independence leaders were somehow right, because even though the results of their actions have gone horribly wrong, their ideals were pure in motive.
But while adopting sovereign territoriality as the dominant script, they were far more cautious in accepting the principle of self-determination for all nationalist claims. While claiming the right of national self-determination as a rhetorical tool in the struggle with the metropolitan powers, they simultaneously denied those claims to indigenous groups within the territorial state that the nationalist leaders envisioned. The Dutch were not incorrect in asserting that the nationalist (Javanese) claim for Indonesian independence subverted the possible independence of many areas and ethnic groups within the East Indies. Sukarno himself of course recognized that “the Dutch had invented Indonesia” given that it had never been a coherent political entity before. [Sukarno] was eager to lay claim to the entire territory as a unified state on the principle of sovereign equality with other states, disregarding local demands for true national self-determination.
This is from the great Hendrik Spruyt, and you can read the whole thing (pdf) here.
I have two takeaways for NOL: first, the people who led decolonization efforts after WWII exploited the maps drawn up by imperial powers; they were not nationalists, they were cosmopolitans who had been educated in European capitals and who had borrowed the logic of nationalists in those capitals. Calls for federation instead of independence/decolonization were few and far between, but they did exist. Adam Smith called for union between the UK and its North American colonies. Several African statesmen called for federation between their lands and France. I believe some Indians called for federation between their land (which included present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh) and the UK, but I need to do more research on this. In Hawaii, the federalists actually won out.
Second, the current narrative, or script as Spruyt calls it, still doesn’t give local/indigenous actors their due. The current Westphalian script — undergirded by the principle of sovereign equality with other states – still treats the leaders of decolonization like victims of imperialism who fought against the odds to defeat intransigent European oppression. There is simply not much being said about the people who called for greater representation within the European imperiums and for federal restructuring of these imperiums.
A third takeaway is that libertarians have a much better alternative to adopt than shallow anti-imperialism, which is just a form of antiwar nationalism: they could call for federation with polities as a foreign policy doctrine. They could actively build alliances with those factions that were squashed by nationalists who disregarded the claims of other groups, with the aim of integrating these societies into a federal order.
Ignacio, from X, put forth an objection that captures well the spirit of animosity towards worldwide federation under a Hayekian (or, dare I say, Madisonian?) constitutional order:
With Hayek’s globalism we cannot agree: national sovereignties are necessary because:
a) there are different ethnic groups;
b) although free trade does not help to erase deep cultural differences;
c) Where to go into exile if the world were a federation?
I’ve heard these same types of objections over and over again with small minor differences.
Here are some rebuttals, by no means extensive, that may be of interest to those of us who clamor for a much better world.
a) Ethnic groups and national sovereignty don’t go together. In Europe, some ethnic groups have managed to secure for themselves sovereign nation-states, but not without first squashing the rights of other ethnic groups within these territorial borders and forcing the others to become like them. In most of the world outside of Europe, including in the United States, ethnic groups have been incorporated into existing territorially-defined states to varying degrees of success. Some of the ethnic groups, such as Jews in Europe or Palestinians in Israel, have been exterminated, removed, or persecuted harshly, while others have managed to carve out spheres of influence within the existing state’s apparatus of power. These multi-ethnic nation-states are the norm throughout the world, and the world is a lot poorer, a lot more violent, and a lot less free than the United States.
b) It is true that free trade does not erase cultural differences. Free trade doesn’t lead to peace, either. Hayek (and Mises) both recognized these facts, which is why they advocated for a federalist world order to replace the multipolar world from whence they came. Free trade by itself cannot overcome cultural diversity or violence, but free trade coupled with the political, legal, and military integration of two or more polities does squelch cultural chauvinism and intergroup violence. Just ask the Americans.
c) Hayekian globalism doesn’t insist on incorporating every one and everything into its federal world order. Those who want to join, can and should. Those who don’t want to join, don’t have to. Hayekian globalism simply advocates for these policy options to be on the table, and for constitutions to have processes for entrance and exit. Why should Singapore, London, or Tokyo have to federate? Why shouldn’t Malaysia and London-less Britain or Tokyo-less Japan have the option of joining a federation?
Objections to Hayekian globalism and its federal world order are important because they are popular, but that doesn’t make them rooted in fact. The libertarian’s task in our time is to rid our own faction of these pernicious myths, and then go forth boldly and call for a globalism that would actually work.
Meh. This is not good evidence that American society is fragmenting. In fact, I’d say Hanania has got it backwards: politics is fragmenting despite the ongoing homogenization of culture.
Hanania is pushing this narrative of cultural fragmentation because it aligns with his view of “decentralized order.” Many libertarians in the United States continue to try to maintain an uneasy peace with Leftists by paying strong tribute to one of the Left’s most endearing values: multiculturalism/identity politics. Libertarians like Hanania think that by showing how markets and decentralized orders enhance multicultural societies, they are making inroads with the Left, or at least maintaining that aforementioned uneasy peace. They’re not wrong, and I’ve done this myself, but when you start fishing for evidence it’s time to rethink your priors, and this is what Hanania does by trying to celebrate cultural fragmentation using online media preferences.
Hanania and others who do this have another motive besides maintaining peace with the Left. They like to use the harmoniousness of multicultural markets to show just how dysfunctional government is. They will contrast harmonious markets with the heavy-handedness of government. “Politics,” these libertarians claim, is holding market-based social harmony back, and in a big way.
The problem with this narrative is that American society is more homogenous than ever before. This is the cold, hard truth, and it’s great news. I can travel from Waco, Texas to Chicago, Illinois and not see anything along the way that I can’t find in Waco. Compare this experience with an American traveling from, say, Provo, Utah in 1960 to Selma, Alabama. There were no “colored” drinking fountains in Provo in 1960. In fact, there probably weren’t any black folks period in Provo in 1960!
Now compare my travel experience from Waco to Chicago with that of somebody traveling from Albany, New York in 1860 to, say, Atlanta, Georgia. One of these places had slaves. Culture shock, from one part of the republic to another.
This doesn’t mean that American society is becoming more conformist, or that there is less cultural diversity, it just means that there is now a set of norms and values that almost all Americans — the vast, vast majority – tacitly agree upon. This is great news!
It’s not just the integration of black folks into mainstream American society that’s great. Immigrants are still assimilating, and after 2 generations they’re as American as apple pie. All of them. There’s not a single immigrant group that hasn’t been able to Americanize. Yes, there’s cultural diversity, especially once you get into the nitty-gritty of “local culture,” but there’s also a total homogenization that’s happened. Again, this is a good thing. This means that America is way more libertarian than you’d think.
It’s not just American culture that has homogenized, either. The people and places that have been allied with, or occupied by, America since the end of World War II have become Americanized. American culture is all-encompassing, including politics. In Europe and Israel, the Americanization is so robust that American media personalities such as Tucker Carlson can give major policy speeches in places like Budapest and small-time rappers from places like Memphis, Tennessee can perform in front of huge Tel Aviv crowds.
The NFL now plays regular season games in Germany and England. Major League Baseball clubs play regular season games in South Korea and Japan. The World Cup will be here, again, in 2026. UEFA is talking about hosting a Champion’s League final in the United States. Those are just examples of the major sports that were once viewed as regional peculiarities by allies on the other side of the ocean. Think about food. And, again, music. And books, and X, and research, and Netflix, and Disneyland. And, as Tucker’s speech in Budapest shows, politics. Local culture has persisted, but so too has the cultural homogenization of places enjoying the protection of the US military.
This is not a bad thing. It’s a great thing!
So what’s the problem? Only the US is experiencing continued economic and demographic growth. Our allies are dying off, and it’s because of their political systems. Demagogues in these countries exploit the Americanization of their societies in order to enact counterproductive policies that seek to revert liberty. You know where I’m going with this, right? Demagogues in the 13 American colonies also sought to extinguish liberty in the name of the local. To bring them to heel, the colonies federated.
We can, and must, do the same thing with our allies today. It’s time to start thinking about ways to help Europe and East Asia (and anyone else who wants to join) federate with us under the constitution.
So, I tried out Substack and I didn’t like it. I much prefer the old way of doing things (though I’m not averse to trying out new things!). I’ll be back here instead of Substack. Some of the Notewriters might migrate back here, too. Some of them might stick to Substack.
It’s 2023, baby, and NOL is experimenting with decentralization. Look for a ‘nightcap’ soon!
During my long traveling over Europe this summer, among other areas, I ventured to Albania, a country where houses frequently do not have numbers and where I located the building where a friend of my youth now lives by a drawing on a gate. This is a country where the so-called oriental bazaar is buzzing everywhere, where towns literally hang on cliffs, and where one easily runs across the ruins of the Roman, Byzantine, and Ottoman legacy of the country and the “archaeology” of the recent communist past (small concrete family bunkers, tunnels for the former communist nomenklatura, monumental sculptures and mosaics in the socialist realism style).
It was interesting to see how this country, which lived much of the 20th century under the most vicious communist dictatorship (1944-1990), is now trying to live a normal life. To some extent, Albania is very similar to present-day Russia: decades of the negative natural selection under communism killed much of self-reliance, individual initiative, and produced the populace that looks up to the government for the solutions of their problems. For the past thirty years, a new generation emerged, and things did dramatically change. Yet, very much like in Russia, much of the populace feels nostalgia for the “good” old days, which is natural.
According to opinion polls, 46% of the people are nostalgic for the developed communism of dictator Enver Hoxha (1944-1985), an Albanian Stalin, and 43% are against communism; the later number should be higher, given the fact that many enterprising Albanians (1/4 of the population) live and work abroad. During the last decades of its existence, Albanian communism slipped into a wild isolationism of the North Korean style. Except for Northern Korea and Romania, all countries, from the United States, Germany, UK (capitalist hyenas) to the USSR, China, and Yugoslavia (traitors to socialism), were considered enemies. Incidentally, Albanian communism was much darker and tougher than the Brezhnev-era USSR. Nevertheless, as it naturally happened in Russia and some other countries, in thirty years, the memory of a part of the population laundered and cleansed the communist past, and this memory now paints this past as a paradise, where everyone was happy and looked confidently into the future, where secret police and labor concentration camps existed for a good reason, and where the vengeful dictator appears as a caring father.
In the hectic transition to market economy and with the lack of established judicial system, there naturally emerged a widespread corruption, nepotism. But, at the same time, small business somehow flourishes. The masses and elites of the country aspire to be united with neighboring Kosovo since both countries are populated by Albanian majorities. On top of this, Kosovo is the birthplace of Albanian nationalism. However, unlike current Russia, which is spoiled with abundant oil and gas resources (the notorious resource curse factor), corrupt Albanian bureaucrats that rule over a small country exercise caution. Although that small country is too blessed with oil, natural gas, chromium, copper, and iron-nickel, they do not waste their resources on sponsoring geopolitical ventures and harassing their neighbors. For themselves, the Albanians resolved the Kosovo issue as follows: we will be administratively two different states, but de facto economically and socially we will be tied to each other, and all this makes life easier for people, preventing any conflicts. Not a small factor is that, unlike, for example, Russia or Turkey, Albanian nationalism is devoid of any imperial syndromes, and therefore there is no nostalgia for any glorious lost empire. The fact that Albania is a member of NATO also plays a significant role, which forces the Albanian elites behave. Acting smartly, instead of geopolitical games, they decided to fully invest in the development of the tourism business, believing that, in addition to mining their resources, this is the best development option.
Notes On Liberty 