Airstrip One

Convenient Fiction

Is the Economist really a free market publication. In this article they state "the world is slowly waking up to the dangers of allowing shipping to operate under the cloak offered by FOCs [Flags of Convenience]". So greater international government, more regulation and higher taxes for an industry that has largely moved out of government control and (surprise) not only become more prosperous but through containerisation done more to bring peoples together than any amount of UN resolutions.

In many areas of business, money laundering and tax evasion are two other "abuses" that governments are keen to crush, a globalising - and regulating - tendancy is slowly taking over. All those Libertarians and fellow travellers who cheer globalisation to the rafters in the name of the Anglosphere or exporting liberty may find that the world they've helped to create is far less free than the one they helped to destroy.