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Trivia Tidbit Of The Day: Part 480 -- Zimbabwe Proves Property Rights Matter.

Mugabe Is Disgraceful-

Zimbabwe today has few peers when it comes to destroying a thriving economy with bad policy. The Mugabe government there has dismantled what was just a decade ago a shining light of that part of Africa.

Zimbabweans will go to the polls this weekend and are expected to vote yet again for Robert Mugabe and his political party. In Zimbabwe, there is no free press, but this would be the perfect election for a "change" candidate who could ask the people whether they are better off than they were just a few years ago. Indeed, the anti-market high-handedness of the Mugabe government has undermined property rights, subverted the rule of law, chased away Zimbabwe's best and brightest, and driven Zimbabwe's economy into the tank:

The costs are more than economic. They are human:

Mugabe and his cronies are chiefly responsible for an economic meltdown that has turned one of Africa's most prosperous countries into a country with one of the lowest life expectancies in the world. Since 1994, the average life expectancy in Zimbabwe has fallen from 57 years to 34 years for women and from 54 years to 37 years for men. Some 3,500 Zimbabweans die every week from the combined effects of HIV/AIDS, poverty, and malnutrition. Half a million Zimbabweans may have died already. There is no freedom of speech or assembly in Zimbabwe, and the state has used violence to intimidate and murder its opponents.

Meanwhile, inflation is somewhere around 24,000 percent.

It is a sad, sad story, and it is an extreme example of why property rights and free markets are so important to a functioning society.

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Posted by Will Franklin · 25 March 2008 03:12 PM

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