The prominent laissez faire
attitude of the Italians, manifested in both the people and the environment,
has been quite surprising and inspirational to my desire to see libertarianism
in the States. Traffic laws, for example, are simply a suggestion. Motor
scooters have free reign to travel through and around pretty much anything that
is not another person, and pedestrians are seemingly fearless of being struck.
I wonder why they even bothered to paint crosswalks in the first place. Yet, the
system works wonderfully, and I have yet to see any major traffic jams. It is a
very free market approach to traffic!
Ironically, the people who seem to
care least about what is going on are the police, who can usually be found
meandering about the streets in pairs talking on their cell phones and paying
little to no attention. Barbara noted that one female officer’s uniform was
complete with hoop earrings and two-inch pumps. Who said justice can’t be
classy?
Of course, this laissez faire
approach comes with its downsides, as the city is littered with an enormous
amount of trash. This is particularly strange, considering the stringent trash
laws that require separation of plastic and metals from foodstuffs. Then again,
most of the laws seem voluntary at best, so it shouldn’t surprise me that this
is extended to sanitation.
The refugees in my center are not
what I had expected. I don’t wish to down play their circumstances, but most of
them are not fleeing active combat zones, as I had previously believed. Instead,
the majority are economic refugees from West Africa. I wish I had read up on
that instead of spending the better part of two years reading about ISIS and
the Syrian Civil War. Anyhow, I look forward to getting to know them and
hearing their stories. I’m sure there is a lot they would like to get off their
chests.
-Tucker Strom
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