Honduras: A Libertarian Nightmare

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/honduras-sold-libertarian-paradise-i-went-and-discovered-capitalist-nightmare?akid=12842.294211.A0Cgtu&rd=1&src=newsletter1032667&t=9

Few cars have license plates, and one taxi driver told me that the private company responsible for making them went bankrupt.  Instead of traffic stops, there are military check points every so often.  The roads seemed more dangerous to me than the gang violence.
The greatest examples of libertarianism in action are the hundreds of men, women and children standing alongside the roads all over Honduras.  The government won’t fix the roads, so these desperate entrepreneurs fill in potholes with shovels of dirt or debris.  They then stand next to the filled-in pothole soliciting tips from grateful motorists.  That is the wet dream of libertarian private sector innovation.
On the mainland there are two kinds of neighborhoods, slums that seem to go on forever and middle-class neighborhoods where every house is its own citadel.  In San Pedro Sula, most houses are surrounded by high stone walls topped with either concertina wire or electric fence at the top.  As I strolled past these castle-like fortifications, all I could think about was how great this city would be during a zombie apocalypse.

We walked through the gated walls and past a man in casual slacks with a pistol belt slung haphazardly around his waist.  Welcome to an Ayn Rand’s libertarian paradise, where your extra-large pepperoni pizza must also have an armed guard.Part of the reason this discredited, libertarian bullshit still carries any weight for Americans is because so few of us travel.  Only 30 percent of Americans have passports, and if Americans do go places, it’s not often to Honduras.  On the mainland of Honduras, we saw no more than a handful of Americans.