Re: Somalia
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I don't think its unfair to say that a "warlord" that has aligned his clan with the UIC in order to receive Saudi aid has been "propped up" by the Saudi's, and the same for "warlords" that have aligned themselves with the interim government, which has received the support of the UN, US and others.
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Yeah, I agree that they've been propped up to some degree since early '06. Prior to that, though, nobody was doing anything in Somalia for a full dozen years; even famine relief was pretty limited compared to other places in Africa. In other words, I want to make it clear that the warlord feudalist conditions in Somalia from '93-'06 did not arise due to outside interference.
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More importantly, I agree with your necessary conditions but dont think the first is true, at least not yet (but if the ACists want to declare it to be so, let them). To be consistent with their claim that substantial but incomplete de-regulation of utilities cant be used as an example of the failure of competition, they can't claim that "AC with the financial support of states" is an example of the success of AC.
Even if 1 is true, there is of course, no ability to substantiate whether things would be better, worse or the same if it werent "largely AC". Experiments (even social experiments) need repetition for conclusions to be valid. I doubt that they can come up with a comparable experiment where the only significant difference in the situations is that the indigenous people are not ACist.
Also, implicit in 2 is that Somalia has been "largely AC enough" for the impact of the prior years interventions/aide to have diminished substantially in influence. There hasn't been, particularly on statistics like life expectancy and infant mortality improvements.
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Fair enough.
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