If Libyans have property ownership and hope to have high incomes, they are utterly lacking the third key ingredient of middle-class life: functioning institutions of economy and state. And this is where Libya’s uniqueness is going to get them into trouble.
Col. Gadhafi destroyed everything that was professional and independent. He obliterated the army after several coup attempts, replacing it with cowboy militias. He sent education and medicine spiralling into the past by appointing incompetent cronies to run them. He erased any concept of a civil service, replacing it with a mafia-like web of kleptocracy and official paranoia.
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