Death by Bureaucracy

It doesn't take much thinking to realize that an anarchist restaurant must by necessity be minimalistic. Such an establishment is under the constant threat of raids by law enforcers. Its owner is taking the risk of having everything in the restaurant confiscated and sold. Hence, the furniture must be cheap, decorations must be basic, and the kitchen mustn't have any equipment of value.

There's a certain charm that comes with this type of establishment. It's unpretentious. Everything is basic, honest, and genuine. Nothing tries to be something that it isn't. But the arrangement isn't ideal. It puts great limits to what can be achieved. The state poses a constant threat to owners, who in turn keep things modest and scaled down no matter how successful the establishment becomes. On the plus side comes the freedom of not having to follow arbitrary rules, to arrange things as the owner pleases, and not having to do any book keeping or paying taxes.

Wherever this kind of considerations come out in favour of an anarchist solution, we'll see minimalistic establishments and businesses pop up, every one of them with as little capital investment as possible. Africa is full of this kind of businesses, as well as India and other third world places. It's not for lack of business skills that third world countries are a mess. It's the bureaucracy that forces everything into this type of low capital economy, and it looks to me like this situation is about to expand into Europe and beyond.

One of the charms of living in Portugal and Spain is the numerous fairs that are held through the summer. These are events that take advantage of the warm and dry climate of the region. Stalls are put up in designated areas. They serve food and provide for entertainment. A whole industry is centred around this, with many families deriving most of their income from the profits made during summer. However, the plague has provided an excuse for sadistic bureaucratic clamp downs on this age old tradition. Last summer, no stalls were allowed at all, and this summer, all stalls must be fenced off with guards at the entrances pointing ray-guns to everybody's forehead to check for fevers, and spraying sanitizer on everybody's hands.

My wife and I came across one such area shortly after leaving the anarchist restaurant the other day, and the look and feel of the place reminded me of pictures from Guantanamo Bay. There were fences, and the guards were there to make sure that mask are worn and social distancing upheld. Not surprisingly, very few had volunteered to enter the area. The stall owners, who pay good money for the privilege of having their stand on public ground, looked concerned. The state which had once acted as a convenient barrier against competition has gone mad.

Without a doubt, the anarchist restaurant is doing better than the stall owners, and this will not go unnoticed, especially if the anarchist restaurant manages to avoid a bureaucratic shut down for another year or two. Everybody will want to get out of the regulated economy. Africa is coming for Europe, not because of illegal immigration, but because of bureaucrats killing the economy with their rules and regulations.

Guantanamo Bay detention camp

By Shane T. McCoy, U.S. Navy - (copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Camp_x-ray_detainees.jpg so that the image can be used on Wikinews.), Public Domain, Link