Some random items of interest:
- Vigilante militias in Rio are displacing the drug gangs -- favelas under the control of militias has grown from 108 in 2005 to 400 in 2008 (out of 965). Why? They have a better (albeit parasitic) conflict/business model than the drug gangs since they act as a substitute for missing public goods/services normally supplied by the government. First, they provide a minimal level of security and conflict adjudication. Second, they make more money than the drug gangs by "taxing" everything from propane to cable TV to the gray market.
- US gray economy estimated at $1 Trillion (not including criminal, outside of the evasion of taxes and regulation, activities) and growing faster than the "legal" economy.
- Proposal and wiki for an open source fabrication lab.
- Somali pirates are expanding operations into the Indian ocean. The combination of positive feedback loops (maritime insurance + rapid payoffs by crisis negotiators) and legal ambiguity (the biggest fear of a western navy and governments is that they might arrest a pirate -- prompting a massive/expensive legal tussle with few certain penalties and the forced extension of a visa to the former pirate once he is released from his short incarceration). Is a franchise model for other locales possible?
- A business group in Ciudad Juarez asks for UN peacekeepers. Hilarious. "Ciudad Juarez, population 1.5 million, has an average of seven homicides a day, with the total at 1,986 for this year through mid-October."
- Seccession.net. County based secession effort.