This is just snark. This article is more about the now than the future, and it's about what is, not what "should" be.
You're posting this snark precisely because it does pose a significant challenge to the conventional worldview in which regulation is the answer to everything. Why not address the issues directly with some productive discussion instead of trying to cocoon yourself behind a snarky dismissal? For instance, a starter question from each ideological direction: If the regulatory state is so wonderful, why are so many people being forced to bypass it, or basically starve/stay poor? And how can we bring the benefits of a well-regulated state to these places that aren't exactly rolling in free-flowing cash and can't afford any sort of very expensive regulation? (Because while a small 4 page article may not have discussed it except for an off-hand comment, I'm sure there's rampant abuses and mafia-like organizations in this economy.)
The article is just describing an economic ecosystem that is in play today. It reads like someone's attempt to wrap his head around something new and different that needs to be understood.
If this economy is as large and successful as it's claimed to be, then we should be making an effort to understand it as well.
You'd need to be pretty heartless to decry it on face value when it does something so basic in our modern world as provide electrical power for people who have been denied it by their current economic system or government for one reason or another.
If you have a reason to counter the facts in the story, by all means speak up.
No one is lubricating commerce for these people. Their current government and economic system is failing them miserably.
What they've done to better the lives of themselves and those around them, they've done for themselves in spite of their current government and its forced economics.
These people aren't trading in drugs or slaves. They're doing something quite remarkable and how they're doing it should be studied.
No one is lubricating commerce for these people. Their current government and economic system is failing them miserably.
Yes, so imagine if we came in with technical solutions that leapfrog their failed government? For example, there's a program to replace mail service with small parcel delivery by quadcopter drone. No roads during the rainy season? No problem!
So you are surprised that a system in which there is relatively little government oversight and few people who initiates the use of force resembles a system which is defined by relatively little government oversight and no initiation of force?
