In a large park in the heart of the Indian city of Jamshedpur, however, stands an exception to this story: a statue of and public memorial to Jamsetji Tata. Jamsetji Tata was truly a hero and indeed the founder of what we may call a dynasty of heroic figures who have played a major part in the history of modern India and, increasingly, the world. Born into a Parsee family in 1839–when Britain still ruled India–young Tata came to live in Bombay (now Mumbai) when his family moved there and set up in the cotton trade. He worked in the firm and established trading links to Hong Kong and east Asia. In the 1860s the firm went bankrupt due to the disruption caused by the American Civil War. However, he refounded the company and went into manufacturing, setting up a large cotton mill at Nagpur.

Early Liberal and Visionary

As a successful businessman by the end of the 1870s, he became involved in public life in India and was associated with the early classical liberal elements of Indian nationalism as represented by people such as Dadabhai Naoroji and Pherozshah Mehta. He also came to have four great goals or visions. These were to build a truly world-class hotel in Bombay, to create a top educational institution, to set up hydroelectric power in India, and to create a profitable domestic steel industry. He devoted the rest of his life to realizing these, with the help of his cousin Ratanji Tata and his sons–particularly the elder, Dorabji.

In 1903 he opened the Taj Mahal hotel in Bombay, built at a cost of $250,000. In 1901 he and Dorabji hired American technical experts to search for sources of iron ore and coking coal in a suitable location for building a steelworks. The search began seriously in 1904 but Jamsetji died while visiting Germany that May. Dorabji carried on the search and in 1907 discovered an ideal site and a virtual hill of iron ore at the village of Sakchi, about 150 miles west of Calcutta. The Tata Iron and Steel Company was incorporated that year. Unable to raise capital on the London market but undaunted, Dorabji and Ratanji returned to India and raised what was needed by subscription from more than 8,000 domestic investors. The first steel ingots rolled out of the new plant in 1912. Meanwhile another of Jamsetji’s goals had been realized with the formation of the Tata Power Company in 1911 to provide the required power. The firm also had to construct its own railroad, locomotive, and railroad-engineering works.

Following this the Tata firms continued to grow and develop, although they only survived the 1930s economic slump because Dorabji and other family members pledged their entire wealth as security. Dorabji died in 1932. In 1938 Ratanji’s son J. R. D. Tata stepped in to run the firm. He would remain chairman until 1991. He was the first qualified Indian pilot and a pioneer of aviation. He founded India’s first airline in 1932. It became Air India in 1946 before being nationalized by the Nehru government in 1953. When J. R. D. took over, the Tata group contained 14 companies. It had grown to 95 by the time he retired, with expansion into areas such as chemicals, automobiles, and tea. In 1945 he realized the last of Jamsetji’s goals by creating the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, now one of India’s leading universities. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who became hugely wealthy by exploiting the so-called “permit-raj”–the nightmare of regulations and permits created by the Nehru administration–J. R. D. refused to give bribes to politicians or use the black market. He insisted instead on high ethical standards, first-class performance and customer service, and concern for the welfare of employees.

Real Heroes of Indian Independence

The Tata group, now headed by J. R. D. Tata’s son Ratan Tata, is of course still very much with us. Tata Steel is now the world’s sixth largest steel company, while Tata Power is the largest private electric power producer in India. In fiscal year 2009 the group grossed $72.5 billion and it continues to expand and innovate. Thus in 1998 it launched Westside, a major retail chain, and in the same year launched the Nano, a car priced at just $2,200. The village of Sakchi, which became the site of the original steelworks, is now a small part of the city of Jamshedpur, which has a population of over one million. The company built the entire city from scratch and still runs it. Unlike other major Indian cities, it has reliable supplies of electricity and potable water. Politicians have moved to set up a municipality but have met resistance from the local population, which values the honesty and efficiency of the current administration. Jamshedpur is perhaps one of the largest examples in the world of the provision of a huge range of “public goods” by a private entity. Among other things, it is a model for environmental protection, despite still being the home to a huge steelworks and many other massive manufacturing plants.

In a sane world this family would receive the kind of kudos that scholars give to politicians and soldiers. The objection of course is that these are mere businessmen (and businesswomen–Simone Tata is the head of Westside, for example). In fact the stories of Jamsetji, Dorabji, and J. R. D. Tata show the qualities of classical virtue, which we traditionally associate with heroism. They had a vision that they pursued and realized in the face of seemingly insuperable difficulties, obstacles, and setbacks. They achieved their vision not through the use of force or fraud or by compelling people by threats, but by open, free exchange and agreement. It was done and continues to be done by providing products and services of high quality that people buy voluntarily. Throughout, there has been an emphasis on honesty and high standards.

Jonathan Swift famously observed that the man who made two blades of wheat grow where but one grew before did more for humanity than the entire tribe of philosophers and politicians. Who has done more for India over the last hundred years? The Tata family shows that we should never forget that commerce and business at their best are virtuous activities more worthy of respect than many kinds of activity that get far more attention.

Related posts:

1. The Kasper Family
2. The Unseen Costs of Family Leave
3. On Heroes, History, and Our Heritage

It would seem that thinking of this kind has a deep appeal to human beings, that we may even be hardwired by evolution to be attracted to it. Seemingly the idea of a future that is somehow knowable and determinable eases anxiety and makes the world seem safer and tamer. (This also explains the persisting appeal of conspiracy-based theories of history and current affairs. Apparently many people would rather believe that the world is run by incredibly cunning and evil people than admit that no one is “in charge.”)

No One Knows

The claim to be able to predict or direct the future is wrong, and to the extent we believe it, we will do incredibly dangerous things. In some ways we can make predictions about what will happen—if we couldn’t, life would simply be impossible. Thus on the basis of what has happened already, we can predict fairly confidently that the sun will rise in the east tomorrow. We can be almost as confident that the Chicago Cubs will not win the World Series—or can we? The problem with the second kind of prediction is that it works on the basis of past regularities or statistical aggregates involving human interaction. Most of the time these predictions pan out, but not always.

One major problem is unforeseen and (more importantly) unforeseeable events, which completely change what can reasonably be anticipated and make nonsense of what looked like sound expectations. Another problem is that people will change their behavior on the basis of what they confidently expect to happen. Sometimes this makes the anticipated event even more likely, but occasionally it has the opposite effect and confounds all the confident prognostications. In reality, while we can guess at bits of it and have reasonable expectations in some areas, the human future is ultimately radically unknowable merely on the basis of past experience, on both a micro and a macro level.

It is also true that all of us seek to influence the course of future events. Simply by living and acting we have an influence to some degree. This, however, is largely not a matter of definite purpose on our part. We influence the future in ways we do not anticipate or intend. Beyond that we often consciously try by acting in certain ways to make particular outcomes more likely and others less so. In other words, we make plans assuming that our actions will have the results we anticipate and desire. Sometimes things work out, but often they do not. The more elaborate and longer-term the plans, the greater the likelihood that things will not work out as expected. This applies to both individual and collective action.

All of this has an obvious bearing on economic thinking and on what we can reasonably expect from public policy. Essentially, we should have modest and humble expectations of what it can achieve. We should be prepared to accept that most policies will fail; that is, they will not bring about their anticipated outcomes. We should also expect that in many cases public policy will have consequences that were not only unforeseen by those advocating them, but could not have been foreseen—even by critics.

Above all, this means that the idea of using political power to plan or guide the course of events is ultimately a fantasy, one that can only end in disappointment. Sometimes government policies will work out the way they were intended to, but more often something will derail them or they will produce unexpected and often unwelcome results. This is of course one of the central arguments made against government planning by the Austrian school of economists, most notably Mises and Hayek. The solution for them is to use the outcome of the interactions of individuals in markets and other social institutions to generate signals, such as prices, that correct errors and provide some degree of guidance as to what course of action one should follow to achieve a desired result. One of the most important aspects of this process is insurance, essentially a series of transactions (bets, effectively) that provide a rough guide to the chances of certain undesirable events happening.

The Austrian analysis, moreover, does not only apply to government. It also applies to private institutions. Thus much of the planning by large private firms or churches or charities fails in the same way that government planning does. It is less dangerous or apparent because firms and other private organizations, while organized on a nonmarket basis internally, are embedded in a wider system of market relations that swiftly reveal when plans are not working out. Therefore they are corrected more swiftly.

However, this self-correcting mechanism can break down. One problem is the one I touched on in a previous column (“The Recurring Crisis,” www.tinyurl.com/de214b): the distorting effects of the government monopoly of money. As money is the medium in which prices are expressed, distortion of its supply will have systemic effects and delay corrections from taking place, making the problems more severe than they need be. This is exacerbated by another phenomenon that is purely private in origin and reflects the human weakness for certainty alluded to earlier. Just like the Romans, our own society has its class of augurs and fortune tellers, but now they appear as economic forecasters and academics. Individuals who take their omens and prophecies seriously will believe that they can know and control the future and act on that basis. This is bad enough, but it’s made worse by another flaw in human psychology: our propensity for crowd manias. The combination of these traits with the government monopoly of money is what has produced a global financial crisis.

In the last ten to fifteen years a curious form of intellectual hubris came to possess the professions of economics and finance. Many participants came to believe that complicated mathematical modeling made it possible to estimate risks so accurately that the future was truly knowable in the sense that any possible outcome was somehow taken account of. The result was a misplaced confidence that led people to make highly risky bets on the basis of an assumed knowledge of the future returns on investment and growth in the value of various classes of assets. When combined with the mistaken monetary policy of the Fed, the result was disaster once things did not work out as expected.

What should we take from this? Mainly that we need to be more humble and aware of the limitations of human knowledge. Above all we should remember that government is no wiser and in many ways less well informed than private actors.

Related posts:

1. The Public Interest of Private Enterprise and the Private Interest of Public Policy
2. Private Enterprise in the Public Interest
3. Public Lands and Private Incentives

At one time British-owned auto manufacturers were world leaders. In 1952 the merger of Austin and Morris to form the British Motor Corporation (BMC) created the world’s fourth-largest producer of cars. By the 1960s, however, the British auto industry faced growing problems. The main firms had lost an increasing share of the market to foreign-owned competition both at home and abroad. The profitability of many firms was steadily declining. This reflected a number of problems, such as old-fashioned or low-quality products or those, like the iconic Mini, that were triumphs of design but whose production costs made them unprofitable. Also, the management of many firms was both incompetent and hindered by chaotic organization of sales and production. Most seriously, the industry was plagued by bad labor relations, with frequent strikes and disputes and rigid enforcement of job demarcation.

Faced with this, British governments intervened to encourage mergers and the takeover of the failing firms by the remaining successful ones. This led ultimately to almost all the remaining British-owned firms being brought into one firm in 1968 with the creation of British Leyland (BL) via a state-sponsored merger of BMC and Leyland Motor Company. The underlying problems were not addressed, however, and the labor relations and chaotic management in particular became even worse. In the early 1970s the Heath administration gave financial assistance despite having opposed aid to failing firms during the 1970 election. By 1975 British Leyland was insolvent and on the verge of going out of business.

To Nationalize or Not to Nationalize

At this point the British government had a choice. It could allow BL to go bankrupt, with many of its 40 plants closing and the remainder being sold off, or it could act to prevent this. The government decided to take the firm into public ownership. The idea was to invest several billion pounds in the firm, and several hundred million pounds were indeed put in. The taxpayers also took on most of the outstanding debt. This did not stop the losses, however. The firm (with various name changes) continued to decline while soaking up a steady stream of government money. Several parts of the business were sold off, and eventually the core (the old BMC) was sold by the government in 1988. It never made money and finally closed in 2005—during a general election. In other words, the British government (or rather the taxpayers) spent 23 years and a fortune trying to preserve an enterprise that went out of business anyway.

This was a classic case of trying to prevent the inevitable. The parts of the original firm that survived would almost certainly have done so in any event, as they were always profitable and would have found purchasers had BL been allowed to go bankrupt in 1975. Some might argue that at least jobs were preserved—for up to 30 years in some places. This is wrong for two reasons. First, the number of jobs actually preserved for that length of time was quite small because there was a steady loss from 1975 onward as a succession of managements made desperate efforts to keep the ship afloat.

Even more serious were the hidden costs of this bailout. All the money put into BL and its successors was capital that could have been employed profitably, creating work somewhere else. Instead it was simply wasted. The British-owned auto industry was essentially doomed by the mid-1970s. Trying to resist this did nobody any favors in the long run and simply prolonged the agony of re-adjustment to a painful and disruptive change.

Ominous Parallels

The parallels with the current position of the Big Three are not exact, but they are disturbingly close. The firms in question are also run down by a generation or more of bad management decisions, bad investments, and crippling wage, healthcare, and pension costs. It is not that auto manufacturing in America is unviable. Honda, Toyota, and others manufacture very profitably in the United States, just as Nissan does in the UK. There is nothing to suggest that giving the Big Three the massive amounts of money they want will do anything other than delay their demise and create a slow and lingering death rather than a swift one. In fact, so dire is the position of General Motors and Chrysler that even with assistance they are unlikely to survive as long as parts of British Leyland did. Meanwhile, all the money given to these firms will be money that could have been used to more effect elsewhere in the economy.

The U.S. political class is probably aware of this, even if it does not realize it will simply be repeating on a much larger scale what the British government did 30 years ago. They are motivated by two main concerns. The first is economic nationalism—the fear that if these firms and their suppliers go out of business, the United States will be weakened. The answer to this is straightforward, no matter how unpalatable it may be to nationalists: The aim of production is consumption, not national power and prestige. In the longer term policies that weaken productivity (which any diversion of capital will do) will actually reduce the power of the nation-state (if that is your main concern).

The second concern is for the many who would lose their jobs and the communities that would lose most of their employment. This comes down to an argument about whether concerns of this kind (which are serious and important) should be a matter for government action. Even if you think they should be, however, it does not follow that the right course is for Uncle Sam to support these firms financially. The example of Britain shows that the much more effective policy would be to let the firms be wound up and use the money to try to revitalize the local economy of places like Michigan. As people here in England watched the goings-on in Washington and Detroit, there was an overwhelming urge to shout, “Don’t do it!” Sadly, even if the folks in Congress had heard, I doubt they would have followed the advice of history.

Related posts:

1. Agricultural Subsidies in Great Britain
2. The Feminine Mistake: The Economics of Women’s Liberation
3. Liberty’s Decline in Britain

One reason this effort is difficult is that the retrospective view we have of historical figures is not fixed. They shift with time, as increasing chronological distance brings greater perspective and as current issues and debates lead to reassessments of past figures.

One result is that people who were once thought of as prominent figures can sink into obscurity. Less commonly the reverse happens, and individuals who have languished in obscurity suddenly rise to retrospective prominence. Another well-known phenomenon is the reassessment of a person’s quality and reputation as he comes to be viewed in a different light. Some, who during their lifetime and shortly afterwards enjoyed a glowing historical reputation, have the gloss come off their name and are increasingly viewed in a critical light. Others, unpopular and maligned in their own times, are presented in an ever more positive fashion and find their stock rising. This is particularly true of political figures.

Thus John F. Kennedy is now regarded much less highly by the majority of historians than he was in his own lifetime or the aftermath of his death. Harry Truman, one of the most unpopular presidents in U.S. history when he left office, is now given high marks by most historians. Eisenhower, seen for many years as an ineffectual and lightweight president, is another whose reputation is steadily rising.

The Present Influences Our View of the Past

The opinion you have of a past political figure tends to be influenced by the view you take of contemporary political events or of particular public-policy issues. This will lead you to regard past figures with a positive or critical perspective depending on how their career and actions can be interpreted in the light of current controversy. Thus if you favor an expansionist and interventionist foreign policy, you will tend to have a higher opinion of Theodore Roosevelt than you would if you opposed such a policy. As public opinion about policy shifts, so do the reputations of past politicians.

In other words, the historical reputations of political figures such as former U.S. presidents have a strong ideological component. The political reputations of past presidents and other politicians, then, are an important indicator of attitudes and worldviews among both the wider public and intellectuals. With this in mind, the many surveys into the historical standing of U.S. presidents have a revealing, and depressing, quality. As noted, the reputations of several have changed over time, with Eisenhower showing the most impressive gain, from 22nd position to eighth among professional historians between 1962 and 2005. Ronald Reagan is another “riser,” from 16th in 1982 to sixth in 2005, while Lyndon Johnson shows a steady decline, from tenth in 1982 to 18th. There are also some notable differences between the opinions of historians and those of the general public, with the latter having a consistently higher view of Kennedy than the former does.

However, alongside all this change there is also some notable consistency. Certain presidents are always in the top ten, and the top three or four remains impressively consistent. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Roosevelt are consistently in the top four, while Theodore Roosevelt, Truman, Andrew Jackson, and Woodrow Wilson are consistent top-ten rankers. Washington’s role in founding the United States partly accounts for his position, while Lincoln and FDR are both seen as leaders who confronted an existential crisis.

But the list also suggests a number of other things that reveal an underlying set of ideological presumptions. Presidents who expanded the functions of government receive high marks. Preserving or establishing the modern state is also seen as creditworthy. It helps to have been a wartime leader (unless the war is regarded as unsuccessful) and to have had an interventionist or expansionist foreign policy.

Cleveland and Coolidge

This is made even clearer by the contrast between the posthumous reputation of these individuals and that of others. There are several presidents who consistently rank low, although a different set of criteria would rank them much higher. Two of the most notable are Grover Cleveland and Calvin Coolidge, both of whom have ratings that would put them in mid-table to lower. Yet an examination of their records both suggests that they should have a higher rating by some criteria and indicates why this is not so far the case.

Cleveland, a man of great personal integrity and independence, was a consistent advocate of limited government, fiscal and monetary responsibility, a laissez-faire economy and free trade, individual responsibility, a pacific foreign policy, and opposition to government corruption and political patronage. Among other things, he blocked the annexation of Hawaii and regularly vetoed bills to give public funds to special interests.

Coolidge reformed the public finances, reduced taxation, and presided over an unprecedented economic boom. He also (along with his predecessor Harding) reversed the major assault on civil liberties that had taken place under Wilson. Yet each of these presidents gets a C or B- rather than an A.

What surveys and the historiography reveal is a deep-seated set of ideas among both self-defined “liberals” and “conservatives.” The core idea is that the central, most important aspect of history is the growth and maintenance of the modern, territorial state, rather than economic development, scientific and technological innovation, or the well-being of the people. These are seen as important but secondary. There is a fascination with power, and politicians who employ it are viewed as more significant or successful than those who try rather to reduce its application. From this point of view the division between “liberals” and “conservatives” is over how power should be used, rather than whether political power is a good thing.

There is, however, a different way of thinking about both dead politicians and living ones. This would apply the test not of what they managed to achieve by using power or of how they preserved or extended the state, but rather of how far they avoided the use of power or limited it and of how far they put their trust in the good sense and ingenuity of ordinary people and voluntary interactions—as well as that of how far they relied on peace and trade rather than war and armaments. If these standards were applied, Cleveland would rank as one of the greatest American presidents and Coolidge as one of the “near-greats.”

That this is not the case shows how deep the worship of power runs today. However, this should not stop us from trying to escape from the consensus and look at things from a truly different angle. One cheering point is that slowly but surely Cleveland and Coolidge are rising up the league of reputation. Maybe one day they will receive their proper evaluation. If so, this will reflect a profound change in thinking more generally.

Related posts:

1. The Constitutional Crisis: An Historical Perspective
2. The Leaders We Deserved (and a Few We Didn’t): Rethinking the Presidential Rating Game
3. Our Economic Past : Why Grover Cleveland Vetoed the Texas Seed Bill

One of the two most striking features of the current financial contretemps is the way it has seemingly come as a complete surprise to most financial commentators and economists. (The other is the way that financiers and bankers who have spent the last few years presenting themselves as buccaneering entrepreneurs have suddenly discovered a fondness for taxpayer bailouts.)

As recently as a year ago, most commentators in the financial press were convinced there was no real prospect of a major correction to the real-estate market, much less a serious financial crisis. There were dissenting Jeremiahs who warned that things could not go on as they had been, but they were in the minority. (They included the most successful investor in America, Warren Buffett.)

With no sense of satisfaction I report that I was, in my own small way, one of the Jeremiahs. I did not foresee all that has happened—neither did anybody else—but the broad outline was clear. Why did the majority miss it? The answer is a combination of common sense and a historical perspective informed by a certain approach to economics.

Trends and the Popular Mind

The first is easy enough to explain. A recurring feature of the popular mind is the belief that whatever trend is dominant at the moment can only continue indefinitely. Thus if the prices of houses and other assets are rising and have been rising for some time, then they must continue to do so indefinitely into the future. Talented and intelligent people then come up with all sorts of elaborate explanations of why this must be so. These are little more than elaborate rationalizations of assumptions. The contrary, common-sense view was captured by the chairman of Richard Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers, Herbert Stein: “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop.”

However, common-sense observations and instinct do not help us understand precisely what has happened to the U.S. financial system and economy over the last decade, or why it happened and why it has now come to a messy end. The thing to grasp is that this kind of phenomenon has happened before. The current “credit crunch” is only the most recent of several such financial crises going back to the mid-nineteenth century or even the 1820s. Besides the events of 1929–1932, there were severe financial crises (“panics”) in 1873, 1893, and 1907. There was nearly a similar panic in 1997, and in many ways it is the response of the authorities to that year’s events which produced the situation we face today.

Although the details of the crises are distinctive, they all have something in common: they were the dramatic system-wide effects of manipulation of the money supply. The distinctive details are produced by the way monetary policy interacts with the most recent innovations in the financial markets.

Because of errors of public policy, the government’s monopoly central bank increased the money supply above the underlying level of actual economic growth. This can lead to a general rise in money prices (inflation), but that is not inevitable. Frequently a rise in the amount of money needed to buy consumer goods is concealed by a rise in productive efficiency, which reduces production costs so much that money prices still decline. However, the rise in the supply of money and credit leads in all cases to a rise in the money prices of assets and investment goods, such as securities, stocks, land, real estate, and even such things as antiques and fine wine.

This sparks off a speculative spiral in which people invest in capital goods not because of the anticipated return or because of their utility (as in the case of houses), but because they expect the money value of the good to rise. To return to Herbert Stein, this cannot go on forever, and eventually the underlying expansion of the money supply that drives the whole process will stop. (In fact it doesn’t have to actually stop; it is only necessary for the anticipated rate of increase to decline.)

Problems Are Exacerbated by Monetary Disorder

At this point two things become apparent. One is that a lot of investments are unsound and will never justify themselves. The other is that many people are left holding assets that are worth less than what they paid for them. The result is a period of economic pain in which the malinvestment has to be liquidated.

Paradoxically, the speculative spiral, or bubble, is actually amplified by open and competitive investment markets and tends to be most pronounced in newly developing sectors or with regard to newly created investment vehicles (railroad stocks and bonds in 1893, derivatives in the current events). The problem is that the more efficient and open a market is, the better it will respond to market signals as expressed in prices. If those signals are systematically distorted by an underlying monetary disorder, the response will amplify that disorder. The more efficient the market, the greater that effect. Because this bubble tends to be most pronounced in areas that have seen financial innovation, each particular panic has an element that is novel and typically completely unforeseeable.

Looked at in this way and with the benefit of historical perspective, the events of the last decade become clear. In response to the crisis of 1997 (brought about in turn by the policies of governments in various parts of the world), the world’s monetary authorities (above all, the Fed) expanded the money supply. This led to an asset bubble in shares, particularly those in cutting-edge hi-tech sectors. The bubble burst in 2001. The Fed, along with other central banks, then increased the supply of money and credit even further to avoid the painful reckoning. However, by trying to avert a recession in 2001–03 they precipitated an even-more-severe one now. The continued expansion simply led to another asset bubble, this time mainly in real estate, which has also burst. In this case the novel element is complex financial instruments based not on prices set by markets but rather elaborate mathematical models—which we now realize are useless precisely when you need them most: during a sudden shock.

A common response to these events is to blame the inherent qualities of financial markets. Certainly the response of people within those markets to adversity does not help their cause. However, the underlying active agency behind recurring crises of this kind is the government’s money monopoly. As long as its policy errors can have large-scale disastrous consequences, three sentences should fill you with fear: “The price of X cannot fall”; “We have managed to get rid of the business cycle”; and “This time it’s different.”

It can. We have not. And it isn’t.

Related posts:

1. The Current Economic Crisis and the Austrian Theory of the Business Cycle
2. The Fed Should Inflate to End the Financial Crisis? It Just Ain’t So!
3. Book Review ~ The Crisis of Global Capitalism by George Soros

Migration, the movement and resettlement of people, is one of the universals of history. In some periods it happens on a relatively small scale, while at other times there are large-scale movements with significant effects. Sometimes entire tribes or ethnic groups move as single entities. This is a frequent feature of the history of Africa for example and can also be observed in many parts of Eurasia during the Late Antique period between roughly 250 AD and the eighth century.

The other form that migration takes, which has become the norm in most of the world since the Middle Ages, is individualistic. Here individuals or families move from one part of the world to another.

A lot of literature is concerned with what motivates people and households to migrate. There is a longstanding debate over whether it is “push” factors (the desire to get away from unpleasant conditions) or “pull” ones (the desire to move to a place with better conditions) that should be emphasized. Recent work suggests that although in reality most cases involve a mixture of both, “pull” is commonly more important than “push.”

Another feature identified by recent research is “chain migration,” in which the individuals who initially migrate are then followed by relatives and people from their own immediate place of origin. This explains why most migration is not random or uniform but tends to be from one specific place to another equally specific place, with the reasons for the original movement by the “pathfinder” often personal and idiosyncratic. The central point, however, is the individuality and personal nature of the decisions that both constitute and drive the process of migration.

Today there is a tendency to see the extent and level of migration as unprecedented. This is not true. In this, as in other respects, we are only starting to approach the situation of the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. At that time the plethora of border controls that we now have to deal with was hardly even imagined. In Europe in 1900 only two states required a passport for entry, the Russian and Ottoman Empires. This was regarded as a sign of their backwardness—the long-term trend in most parts of the world for the previous 200 years had been for controls on movement to fade away or be abolished.

The scale of migration in the nineteenth century was massive both absolutely and proportionally. Between 1815 and 1914, more than 20 million people emigrated from the United Kingdom. To put this into context, the overall net increase of British population between 1801 and 1911 was 26.5 million. (Thirteen of the 20 million went to the United States.) Britain was not alone in this. No fewer than 5.5 million Italians emigrated between 1900 and 1910, mostly to the United States and Argentina. In Sweden 20 percent of the total population emigrated between 1860 and 1910. Nor was movement on this scale confined to Europe; there were enormous movements within Africa and parts of Asia, such as China and India, not to mention the Russian Empire, while the United States saw the steady movement of population out to the west.

The last few examples and the American case in particular highlight two central points that need to be made about migration in the modern world. The first is that since 1800 the significant migration has been not so much from one part of the world to another as from the countryside to the city. To move from rural Sicily or the Ukraine to Milan or Kiev was as dramatic a move in many ways as from either location to New York.

The other point is that what matters is movement per se, not movement that happens to cross a geopolitical border. In terms of its impact, both on the individuals involved and in the aggregate on the places of origin and reception, there is no fundamental difference between movement within the boundaries of a state and movement that crosses over those boundaries. To take a more recent example, the United States was profoundly changed by the massive movement from south to north that took place between 1920 and 1960 (with a lull during the Depression), a migration contained entirely within the boundaries of one nation-state. In Britain large migration from England into South Wales between 1890 and 1920 completely transformed the recipient society. Among other things it made Welsh a clear minority language as compared to English. Many large cities in Scotland and the north of England were deeply affected by the inward movement of large numbers of Irish from the 1840s onwards.

Thus it is not really a question of whether immigration (or indeed emigration) should be controlled, but whether the movement of people beyond their immediate locality should be regulated. If the concern is that the unintended outcome of many individual decisions to move will be changes in society and ways of life, these are as likely to arise when the movement is within a state as when it is over the borders of a state.

Many pre-modern regimes recognized this. Thus the Chinese state for much of its history had a system of internal controls that (at least in theory) restricted movement within the empire. In medieval times there were legal restrictions on the freedom of movement for most of the lower orders of society. Opposition to immigration because of social and cultural effects is a species of the wider genus of opposition to change in general, just as protectionism and restraints on trade and exchange are partly driven by the fear of the changes brought about by free economic choices of individuals.

Individuals and families make many decisions over such matters as what to buy, what kind of work to do, and where to live. In the aggregate these personal decisions produce large-scale unintended outcomes that are often discomfiting to many. The question is whether should we accept these outcomes and trust human interaction and ingenuity expressed through personal actions and cooperation to deal with any problems, or whether should we use political power and accept the position that collective choices should trump individual ones.

If we adopt the second position we should recognize that what drives it is, above all, the desire, in the words of Hilaire Belloc, to “always keep ahold of nurse, for fear of getting something worse.” If we are tempted to do so, there is something else to consider. British commentators have engaged in much hand-wringing over how the recent influx of migrants from Eastern Europe is putting a huge strain on schools, public housing, social-welfare departments, the police, and public transport. These all have one thing in common: They are provided by the state. There are no anguished complaints from grocery stores, restaurants, or private landlords. They have adapted, started to provide new services and products, and gained from the influx of new skills. We should note this contrast and learn from it.

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First, it uses measures such as government spending as a proportion of GDP or the share of total income taken in taxation. Figures such as these show a dramatic rise in the size of government during the twentieth century.

The second element concerns how much economic activity, broadly defined, the government should undertake, whether directly or indirectly. Here there has been a shift in focus in recent years. Until the later 1980s it was often argued that a large part of actual production should be directly controlled by government through the “public” ownership of productive assets. That argument is now seldom heard. Instead we hear that government should intervene in the distribution of income and should provide, or at least fund, key services such as health and education.

All this is very familiar. What we may not realize is that the contemporary debate concerned only a part of a larger, more general argument. Moreover, while debates about the nature and appropriate role of government have been going on since at least the 1760s, the one described above, with its focus on measurable size and the government’s economic role, has only really been a feature of the last 120 years or so. It began originally with the transformation of public administration during the nineteenth century and the rise of socialism and modern theories of economic management toward the end of that century and during the early twentieth century. Before then the debate was much wider ranging and was concerned with more fundamental issues having to do with the very nature of government and the relation between the individual and society. We may define this earlier and more fundamental debate as one between individualism and collectivism.

The crucial point is that the size of government, as defined above, is not the same thing as its scope or extent. The wider and more basic question is: what should the range or scope of government be? What areas of life should be of interest to government and the subject of collective choice, and which areas should be purely private and a matter of individual, personal choice? It is perfectly possible to have a government that is active and concerned with a large part of human life and yet is small in terms of its share of GDP. The main reason why contemporary governments are so large is not just because their scope has grown but also because the areas they have become involved in require employing large numbers of people, which is costly. The fundamental choice is between a government that is concerned with only a small part of human affairs and one that is concerned with a large part. In the second case there is a further choice between an extensive government that is large in terms of the resources it consumes and one that is extensive and active but small. (The fourth possibility, that of a government that is restricted yet large, is unlikely.)

Public as a Whole

The debate started with the appearance of a new way of thinking about government that appeared in Europe following the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 and more particularly in the years after about 1740. Its main exponents came from the German-speaking parts of Europe, although they also drew on the ideas of French thinkers. Known collectively as Kameralists, their argument was that rulers and governments should be concerned with the interests of the public as a whole rather than their own personal interest or that of a small group. They saw government as having three main aspects. The first was public finance, the funding of the state. The second was “oeconomy,” which meant more than what we now call “economics.” It implied that the whole political society was like one large household, with government aiming to run its affairs in an orderly manner and to maximize the wealth and prosperity of the whole by direct action. The third was “polizei,” or public policy. This meant that governments should be concerned with anything and everything that had a bearing on the well-being of the public, from health to education to morals to security.

The All-Embracing State

The implications of this way of thinking were profound. It meant that in theory any part of life was a proper concern of government, from the kinds of clothes people wore to the way they brought up their children. Above all this was a collectivist approach that saw society as a collective whole rather than seeing the individual as primary and society as the product of the interactions of individuals. This meant that human flourishing was a collective good rather than an individual and personal one. It meant also that the whole (the nation or society) was an entity with a real existence and real interests, which were prior and superior to the existence or interests of the individuals who comprised that whole. The logical conclusion was that, if necessary, the interests and desires of individuals could be properly sacrificed to those of the whole.

The Kameralists and others did not favor anything like socialism. In fact they were strong supporters of private property and markets, but on the grounds that they served the collective interest.

These ideas became the orthodoxy in most parts of Europe during the latter years of the Ancien Régime and, if anything, became even more influential after the French Revolution and the rule of Napoleon. However they also provoked a response from thinkers such as Adam Smith and Wilhelm von Humboldt. The latter’s major work, The Sphere and Duties of Government, was a direct response to Kameralist ideas as found in his native Prussia. (Paradoxically, in his capacity as a civil servant he was a major practitioner of the ideas he opposed, particularly in the sphere of government-run education.) The ideas of the U.S. Declaration of Independence can also be read as an attack on this view of government. This alternative view, which was perhaps best expressed by John Stuart Mill, is that individuals were primary and were the best judges of their own interests, that each individual had to pursue his own personal and distinctive kind of happiness, that consequently government was the servant of individuals and should exist only to enable people to pursue happiness by providing a framework of impersonal rules, and that each individual should have a large and extensive sphere of personal autonomy. In other words, personal choice rather than collective choice should be the default position.

This division between a collectivist view that led to an extensive role for government (but not necessarily a large state) and an individualist one that led to a highly restricted and diminishing role was at the heart of political argument in most of the nineteenth century. Both sides triumphed in some areas and lost in others. Thus religion was moved from the public to the private sphere, a huge victory for the individualists, while education became a central government responsibility. With the rise of socialism the argument came to focus specifically on government’s role in narrowly defined economic matters.

Since 1989 we have reverted to the older argument. We are now bombarded with assertions that the lifestyles, diets, childrearing practices, and cultural choices of people are the proper concern of politics and government. The kinds of arguments made by Kameralists are once again the staple of many of our public intellectuals and politicians. Time to dust off those copies of Humboldt and Mill and make the case for individuality and personal autonomy.

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There have been efforts to reclaim the term by those who sometimes describe themselves as “old-fashioned liberals,” but these have not succeeded. Faced with this situation, supporters of the original liberal position have resorted to a number of linguistic expedients. For a while many adopted the label “conservative,” which had been previously attached to some of their most steadfast opponents. This nomenclature, while widely used in the United States, has never caught on elsewhere and has not fully taken hold even there. This was partly because many old-style liberals refused to use it and also because the right to the label was vigorously contested by what we may call old-style or “traditionalist” conservatives, who claimed a right of first usage.

More recently most advocates of strictly limited government have settled on the term “libertarian,” while others prefer the more learned-sounding “classical liberal.” (I have used both terms myself.)

However, these alternatives still present problems and are arguably not satisfactory. As F. A. Hayek pointed out, the term “conservative” not only brings allusions to a tradition of thought that while distinguished is not “liberal” in the older sense, it also carries implications of a mistrust of reason and skepticism about change combined with a reverence for the past and an affection for such things as tradition, hierarchy, and authority, none of which are core parts of the historic liberal tradition, with its emphasis on individual liberty, innovation, and personal responsibility.

The expression “classical liberal” is much better but is clumsy and has the clear implication that the ideas are some kind of preserved tradition rather than a developing body of thought. “Libertarian” is the most popular (and is now found on Facebook!) but has disadvantages of its own. As well as being an ugly word, it has the implication for anyone familiar with its history that the person using it as a label is an anarchist. In most cases this is not true and causes confusion.

More seriously, the term “libertarian” draws attention to only one part of a much larger philosophy: opposition to extensive government and political power. This is indeed a central part of the philosophy, but it is not the whole of it and use of the term tends to lead to the other elements being slighted or ignored.

Is this really a problem? If so, is it serious enough to warrant any thought? Clearly this isn’t the most serious difficulty, but history and political experience suggest that it is more serious than one might imagine. All words, and political labels in particular, come with a whole range of historical and cultural associations and secondary meanings that have a significant effect on the way people respond to individuals and ideas associated with them. Some labels can come to have a series of associations so negative that it is impossible to use them to identify your argument if you want to persuade people.

In the United States, for example, any argument for greater decentralization and less centralization is doomed if linked with the expression “states’ rights” because of that term’s association with racial privilege and segregation. Other words carry a whole set of broadly positive associations, and this makes neutrals more favorably disposed toward the arguments identified with them. This was once very much the case with “liberal,” which is why people made enormous and successful efforts to appropriate it.

There is a term available that is seldom used now, but that was once the predominant and accepted label for the set of ideas related to personal freedom and responsibility. This is “individualism”—or rather “Individualism.” Before the mid-nineteenth century the word “individualism” was rarely used and when it was, it was usually as a pejorative, with connotations of selfishness and irresponsibility. However, from about the 1850s onwards a whole series of writers on both sides of the Atlantic (and not just in the English-speaking world) began to use the word and associated ones such as “individuality” in a positive way. From the 1870s onwards it came to be capitalized and used as a political label.

The period between roughly 1880 and 1912 saw an intense debate in Britain and the British Empire, the United States, and France in particular between two fairly well-defined and -organized intellectual camps, the self-defined Individualists and Collectivists. The second group included Fabian socialists and American Progressives (who went on to capture the word “liberal”), but also included conservative imperialists and advocates of policies such as nativism and racism, as well as the wing of the Republican party represented by figures such as Theodore Roosevelt. (Many of the socialist and “left-wing” progressives were also supporters of imperialism, racism, and policies such as eugenics—something now often forgotten.) The Individualists were the advocates of minimal government and opposition to empire and indeed all forms of collectivism, whether racial or national. They were also associated with a number of other movements, above all feminism, with many leading feminists of the time strongly self-identified as Individualists. The heart of the argument was about whether government has a duty to promote a general collective welfare, defined as something above and beyond the pursuit of individual happiness, and whether there is some collective identity that trumps the claims of actual individual men and women.

Term Disappears

Up until the 1930s this division between Individualism and Collectivism was generally understood to be one of the basic distinctions in modern politics. As late as the 1930s the opposition to the New Deal came largely from people who identified themselves as individualists and as belonging to what by then was a well-established intellectual tradition. Then quite suddenly in the 1940s and 1950s the term disappeared from general use as a political label and reverted to a more general, uncapitalized use. Why this happened is a mystery, but it was clearly part of the general reshuffling of “right wing” politics that took place with the advent of the Cold War.

Apart from its historical associations, now largely forgotten but ripe for rediscovery, Individualism has a number of advantages over other terms in the contemporary world. It has broadly positive connotations for many people but also makes divisions between those who respond favorably and others who do not more clear cut and obvious. As such it sends a clear message. It has a wide range of meanings and associations in addition to implying a clear view about government and its role, as it also has implications for one’s attitudes toward culture, philosophy, and social life in general. It does not imply that if you define yourself in this way then you are a supporter of the status quo (you may be, but that isn’t the clearly understood implication of the word).

Above all it relates to what is increasingly the real debate in modern societies. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have increasingly reverted to the debate of the period between 1880 and 1914 between increasingly aggressive collectivists of many kinds on the one side and defenders of individual autonomy and voluntary choice on the other. We may say, and not tongue in cheek, “Individualists of the world unite.” It’s time to dust off that label and revive it.

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Today many people complain the world is moving toward bland uniformity. This is usually blamed on “globalization,” “global capitalism,” or “mass society.” In other words, it is the supposed product of trade between different parts of the world, with technology perhaps playing a part. Some critics identify something called “cultural imperialism,” a process by which one way of life is spread throughout the world, whether by force or seduction. In reality this is usually a coded way of complaining that everywhere is becoming more like the United States, or what the critics imagine the United States is like.

In fact, this picture is almost the exact opposite of the reality, both historically and in the contemporary world. Today many of the most prominent features of popular culture in many parts of the world come not from the United States but elsewhere, in particular Japan. It is the evidence of history, however, that shows how false the picture described actually is and gives us a better idea of what is actually happening.

A visitor to the palace at Tsarskoe Selo in Russia or the Royal Botanical gardens at Kew in England would find himself confronted with buildings in a Chinese style (a pagoda at Kew and an entire village in Tsarskoe Selo). These are instances of Chinoiserie, the deliberate imitation of Chinese models. This was an important part of the cultural history of Europe from the mid-seventeenth century onwards. As trade contacts with Ming and Qing China grew, principally via the Dutch and British East India companies, there was a clear movement of ideas, practices, and styles from China to Europe. This is clearest in the impact of Chinese porcelain on European design and decoration (not to mention ceramics via the many attempts to discover how to make porcelain), but it also affected architecture and furniture. In food there was the introduction of tea (the very word being a derivation of a Chinese original). Something that has not yet had much scholarly attention was the impact of Confucianism on Enlightenment thought, but the evidence suggests that this was considerable.

At the same time, European societies also adopted styles and forms from India and the Ottoman Empire. In Britain this result was the Neo-Mughal style of architecture, as found, for example, at Sezincote House in Gloucestershire or the Royal Pavilion at Brighton. Drinking coffee was of course adopted from the Ottomans, and Turkish and Indian textile designs were widely copied and adapted. There was also the transmission of medical techniques, notably that of inoculation, brought back from Turkey by Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. Another example was the popular phenomenon the “oriental tale,” which combined a fantastical view of the Middle East with much of the actual content and stylistic features of Turkish, Arab, and Indian stories.

Nor was this simply a phenomenon of the eighteenth century. If anything it became even more pronounced after 1800. From the 1830s onwards the so-called Neo-Moorish style of architecture, which drew on classical Arab and Turkish forms, was popular throughout Europe and North America. Jews played a major part in encouraging it, and it became the predominant style for synagogues. After Japan came into closer contact with the rest of the world following the Meiji Revolution of 1868, Japanese techniques and styles became tremendously influential and had a huge influence on movements such as Art Nouveau, Surrealism, and Art Deco. Many of the most important artists of the “belle epoque,” such as Van Gogh, were strongly influenced, to the extent of producing works in the highly technical Japanese style. At the same time there was another wave of fascination with Chinese motifs and ideas. In fact, what is striking is rather the contrast between the period after about 1910 and what had gone before during the previous 300 years. Beginning that year, until roughly 1980 the flow of ideas, motifs, forms, styles, and practices from other parts of the world into Europe and North America suddenly slowed down dramatically.

The kinds of cultural exchange described were brought about by, and were in some sense a part of, the steady increase in interconnection between people from various parts of the world from the fifteenth century onward. It was trade and migration that led to the spread of ideas, forms, and practices. Conversely, the move toward protectionism and economic nationalism at the end of the nineteenth century not only led to war and economic dis-integration, it also hampered cultural borrowings and led to an emphasis on “pure,” particular, and local forms and techniques. The exchanges of course were not one-way. The adoption of Western ways and institutions by Japan, Russia, the Middle East, China, and India are well known. What is overlooked is the flow of influence in the opposite direction and also between other parts of the world outside Europe (for example between India and China).

Muddied by Imperialism

The picture is of course muddied by contemporaneous imperialism. This is commonly seen as driven by economic concerns and as intimately related to the exchange relations. However, the two phenomena—imperialism and what is now called “globalization” (increased economic integration)—are independent. Imperialism is best understood as a political phenomenon, being the effort of the ruling classes of various parts of the world to capture the wealth and social transformations created by trade. The trade and the accompanying cultural transfers would have taken place in the absence of imperialism, and often did.

Linking economic integration to imperialism makes us focus on the movement of institutions and forms out of Europe and North America to the rest of the world and to downplay the impact of the rest of the world on them. Moreover, on examination the various cultural phenomena described were clearly not marked by a sense of superiority on the part of Westerners. In the eighteenth century in particular, the Ottoman Empire and India were seen as being generally on a par with Europe, and China as being more civilized and ‘“advanced.” “Oriental” tales and literary forms were commonly borrowed in order to criticize Western societies by contrasting them unfavorably with others. (The Persian Letters of Montesquieu are the best-known example of this.)

The direct transfer of ideas, conventions, and cultural forms and practices alongside goods and people can have a significant impact on the recipient culture. In other cases it leads to the appearance of cultural hybrids that combine features from widely separate and contrasting cultures. In this way a process of innovation and intellectual and cultural discovery takes place, which leads to the creation of things that are genuinely new. This process has clearly resumed since about 1980, with Japanese popular culture now enormously influential and Indian cinema beginning to have a worldwide impact, while African art, cuisine, and music are having an influence all over the world.

This is something we should welcome unreservedly. All of history suggests that societies and cultures that are open to outside influences are more creative, productive, and inventive.

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The reason for this was that such dates and the events associated with them formed part of a complex narrative that it was thought all educated people should understand. Such understanding was desirable because the narrative explained how important aspects of the world came to be and so made sense of the present. The dates identified what were seen as crucial events, ones that had extensive effects and so shaped and determined what followed. They marked major turning points or moments of decision in the course of history. 

The nature and content of the historical narrative can be deduced from the dates and events that were given prominence. Almost without exception they involved episodes in war and revolution, the deaths or triumphs of major political figures, and events that, while not political in themselves, had major impacts on political events (the voyage of Columbus for example). In other words, the world we live in is seen to be mainly the outcome of politics, wars, and the careers of rulers. 

Obviously there is a great deal of truth in this. Politics and power do indeed have far-reaching effects on people’s lives in a dramatic way. However, the view of history, and of human social life more generally, that we get from the classic lists of important dates is partial and distorted. Other kinds of narrative can be constructed that would yield a very different list. One might emphasize the role of ideas and knowledge in human affairs. From that point of view 1776 would be memorable not so much for the American Revolution as the publication of The Wealth of Nations. The most important event in the history of seventeenth-century Europe would not be the Treaty of Westphalia (1648) but the publication of Newton ’s Principia Mathematica (1687). 

In fact we can go even further. Maybe there are other dates associated with other kinds of events that are actually more significant than those that mark the course of political power. It may be that it is not power that is the fundamental driving force in the history and evolution of human society but something else. The revealing point is that the key dates in that alternative story are almost unknown to the public, and the understanding of human society and history that goes with it is seldom even formulated and articulated. 

One example of a very important date in this kind of narrative is January 22, 1970. That day saw the first passenger-carrying flight of the Boeing 747, the jumbo jet, from New York to London. This was the culmination of years of work by Boeing, and it marked a revolutionary transformation in the nature of air travel. Before then air travel had been expensive and planes could not carry significant cargo loads or numbers of passengers. Although air transport had become prominent following earlier technical breakthroughs (notably the production of the Dakota), it was still not a regular part of most people’s lives and had a correspondingly limited impact on human affairs. The Boeing 747 changed all of this and in a very short time. Within six months of that first flight 747s had carried one million passengers, and after only one year, there were a hundred in operation and the number of passengers had risen to seven million. Other manufacturers soon tried to enter the market that Boeing had discovered, and the era of the wide-bodied jet airliner and mass air transport arrived. 

The significance of that date can be understood by trying to imagine what the world would be like if we were to revert to the limited use of long-distance air travel that was the norm before 1970 and how much of what we now take for granted would change or vanish. (This is not simply a thought experiment—there are loud voices urging exactly this course of action.) Several important features of the contemporary world, such as mass long-distance tourism, are only possible because of the revolution begun on that day in 1970. In general we can say that the peoples of the world are much more closely connected than they were before. Trips to other parts of the world that would previously have been major undertakings are now routine. Much modern business and trade depend on the ease and low cost of modern long-distance air travel. For billions of people the world has shrunk, and contact between different parts of the world has become simpler and cheaper. This has brought about much greater cultural and intellectual contact between different peoples and cultures. 

Another date that would find a prominent place on this alternative list is April 26, 1956. That day the first containership left Newark for Houston. It was the brainchild of an entrepreneur called Malcom McLean. As a young man running a trucking firm, he realized that the main cause of delay in moving goods was not the actual shipping but the transhipping from one mode of transport to another. His simple yet brilliant solution was the metal container and the containership. The immediate effects of this were dramatic, reducing costs 35-fold. In the long run the container played a crucial part in the great surge of economic integration (known as globalization) that occurred in the late twentieth century and so contributed to a massive rise in living standards for millions of people worldwide. A hundred years earlier, inventions such as the railroad, the iron-hulled steamship, the freezer ship, and the telegraph had driven the great economic transformation of the second half of the nineteenth century, which brought about an unprecedented rise in real incomes and living standards. 

Growth of Trade 

Dates such as these mark key points in a very different narrative from the one that concentrates on power and its workings. This other narrative traces the growth of trade, the interconnections between more and more people, and the greater part of productive activity over an ever-larger portion of the planet’s surface. Aspects of this story are the discovery of previously unknown wants, a steady growth in the range of possibilities and opportunities open to ordinary people, a massive improvement in living conditions, and the mutual exchange of ideas and cultural expressions between the various parts of the world to their mutual enrichment.

However, because this narrative is not spelled out and its key dates are mostly unknown, we are generally unaware of it. The process it traces and its benefits are taken for granted and assumed to be natural. If we do stop and think about it, however, we will see the world and the course of human history differently from how the narrative of power would have us see it. We should realize that what is important for the everyday life and hopes of ordinary people is not power but peaceful cooperation and exchange. Not everyone welcomes this. There are those who would decry increased affluence, regret the easier movement of people, and deplore cultural mixing and exchange. We should ignore them and reject their argument.

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