Speaking of government shutdowns, how would you like to live in Belgium?
Unable — or unwilling — to work together, bickering politicians have left unassuming Belgium without a fully functioning government for eight months, the longest for any nation in Europe since World War II.
Through most of that time, few Belgians, let alone the outside world, even seemed to notice. Trains continue to run, waffles are still being grilled on street corners, and people window-shop along centuries-old arcades. Tourists still sample mussels, go for overpriced canal rides in Bruges and snap up Tintin souvenirs, blissfully unaware of a political crisis.
From The Los Angeles Times, which notes that Belgians are so embarassed by how long it's taking to form a government that they're actually protesting in favor on one, via Matt Welch at Reason's hit & run, who offers the counter-argument that this seems like "an interesting meditation on the surprising unnecessariness of a sitting legislature!" It's a libertarian's dream come true -- even if government isn't really the problem, its absence doesn't have to be, either. Don't know if I'd want to trust my life and fortune in a governmentless nation slightly less civilized than Belgium, though.
