The Importance of History
Theory isn't enough.
Back in the classroom after a year-long sabbatical, I’m realizing how much I missed the direct interaction with students. For me, nothing compares to those moments when the light of understanding comes on in my students or when they face a challenge to things long taken for granted. Their faces almost proclaim that they are seeing the world in a fundamentally different way. One of the most powerful ways we can elicit those reactions — and call into question the largely statist worldview they bring to college — is to challenge what they think they know about history. There may be no more important thing for classical liberals to do than to offer counter-narratives to standard historical stories.
I’m doing this in two different classes this semester. The more historical of the two is a senior seminar on the Great Depression, which I’m teaching for the second time. (The syllabus is here). We started the class last week by walking through what I like to call the “High School History” version of the Great Depression. This is the version in which laissez-faire capitalism caused the stock market crash and Herbert Hoover stood around doing nothing (committed lover of laissez-faire that he was), allowing the crash to become a depression. Of course this version also tells us that FDR and the New Deal saved us from utter chaos and that our entry into World War II finally pulled us out of the Depression.
The students nod quietly as I repeat this narrative, only to look a little shocked when I then say, “Every piece of that story is wrong and we’re going to explore why over the course of the semester.”
In the world of liberal arts we like to talk about throwing students out of their comfort zones. That feeling of disequilibrium is the first step toward learning. And it’s one of the most powerful moments one can have in the classroom. But it’s also crucial for helping anyone, not just students, understand the classical-liberal framework.
Understanding the Present
Getting a better understanding of the history, especially of major events like the Great Depression, is so important because historical narratives and interpretations fuel our understanding of current events and how to respond to them. Just think of the ways in which the High School History version of the Great Depression has informed the national discussion of the current recession. If one really believes that story, it’s a small step to applying the same narrative to today’s situation and to believing that capitalism failed and more government is the answer.
The other course is comparative economics. We started by talking about how the West grew rich (and reading Nathan Rosenberg and L. E. Birdzell’s wonderful book by that name). In the opening chapter, Rosenberg and Birdzell offer nine different commonly believed reasons the West grew rich, including three that are staples of the contemporary college curriculum: exploitation, colonialism/imperialism, and slavery.
My students who have studied First-Third World relationships in other courses nod their heads quietly until I start to explore the counterevidence Rosenberg and Birdzell offer. It’s hard to argue exploitation, they point out, when the real wages of labor have steadily risen over the last 200 years and capitalists have more or less willingly paid them. As for the other two, they offer examples of western countries that were colonial powers but did not get rich and other countries that had no colonies but did get rich. As for slavery, they make the same point: Some slave societies did not get rich, and some rich countries did not have slaves. The bottom line of their first chapter is that none of these “standard” explanations seem reliable. They argue instead that it was the unique institutions of the West (private property, limited government, freedom of thought and exchange) that generated our prosperity.
This unmasking of history is not just powerful in the college classroom; it should be one of the key ways we classical liberals make our arguments and try to persuade anyone of our views. Arguing theory is fine, but many who disagree with us often trot out historical examples they believe undermine the theory. Those examples are usually wrong, but to show it, classical liberals must have a good command of history and be prepared to offer a different narrative of the event in question. I submit that at the bottom of most disagreements with classical liberalism lies a bad reading of history.
If we want to change people’s minds, we’re going to have to start by challenging their reading of history. Learning that history is among the most important things classical liberals can do.
Comment by Troy Camplin on 2 September 2010:
We also need to be writing those histories, making them available for both academic and popular audiences. Histories and biographies are big sellers.
Comment by Eben Sales on 2 September 2010:
Please read DECLARATION, The Nine Tumultous weeks When America Became Independent, May 1 – July 4 1776, BY William Hoagland. The History of our revolution, as I have been taught and even read many biographies, was a lot more contenuous than I was ever aware of.
The documenting of supporting and conflicting background is helpful in a deeper understanding of what, why, and how the Declaration occurred.
Why does it take a very long time frame to question the history of great events?
Comment by Norman on 2 September 2010:
History is interesting, but you’d better instill a greater skepticism into your students about the historical accounts they’re reading. All historical accounts are skewed towards the point of view of their authors or teachers. If you want a libertarian perspective you’d better know the authors underlying theme, economic theory, and philosophy.
To understand historical revisionism it would help to read Jeff Riggenbach’s book on Historical Revision, and Strictly Confidential by David Gordon. Both books are available from the Mises Institute. (Mises.org) Strictly Confidential is a collection of essays by Murry Rothbard. Unfortunately most historians and intellectuals are statist oriented.
Comment by Michael Makovi on 2 September 2010:
Professor Horwitz,
This is very interesting, thank you, and your basic point is well-taken. Perhaps you could someday write a short, basic article, summarizing what a person would learn from your course? It might be a good object lesson in how a classical liberal can use history, for those of us who cannot attend your lecture.
Comment by Corrino on 2 September 2010:
I have been reading these articles for better than two years now, but my academic and professional direction doesn’t allow for much independent research at this time (trying to pass the CPA and working 60+ hrs/week as an estimator). I find that these explanations all ring true on a common sense level, but I have a few lingering concerns.
Can anyone humor me with answers to these questions?
1. How does the free market protect the environment? That is, how can the agents of the market anticipate shortages rather than, say, discover that some resource has been irreversibly expended? I am not claiming that regulation does a better job.
2. “Government” in the way it is described on this site, consists of elected officials, their departments, and their employees…in a situation where that government is severely restricted in its authority, couldn’t cartels pop up that have at least as much power as the government? How would the market prevent or correct for that?
Thanks to any patient response.
Comment by Rollie on 2 September 2010:
Thank you for this, Professor Horwitz.
Corrino, in response to your first question, a good economist will recognize that in most circumstances prices reflect the scarcity of the resources to which they pertain. Such resources certainly consist of land, labor, and capital, but they will also pertain to other things such as clean air, clean water, a low noise level, etc. Notwithstanding, economic sustainability cannot be logically separated from environmental sustainability. For more on this, Google Murray Rothbard’s essay “Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution.”
In response to your second question, a private cartel which pursues its own interests at the expense of the consumer can never exist for any significant amount of time. Market competition exerts pressure on industry to provide goods and services at optimal prices. If a cartel forms with the intent of maintaining high prices, several things occur. First, the scenario provides each producer with an incentive to cheat. Any cartel situation necessarily increases a firm’s ability to more easily out-compete their competition and reap the benefits if they so desire. Second, what might be referred to as “profiteering” provides a signal to other entrepreneurs that says there is more money to be made in the industry. Thus there is a huge incentive to enter an industry independently rather than attempt to convince a cartel to allow the entry of new a firm at the expense of reduced sales. This is why industry looks to the government. Licensing and regulations impede the market process and help existing firms maintain their market share. Ultimately consumers are in control. They vote with their dollar. In this way, consumers decide what is to be produced, how it is to be produced, in what quantity, how often, and so forth. A firm that succeeds in pleasing its customers ultimately has a better chance of survival. A firm that doesn’t, fails.
Hope this helps.
Comment by Bullseye on 2 September 2010:
To Corrino:
Good questions. Maybe this will help. I’ll try to keep it short.
1) How do you define the “environment”? Would you include your front yard? How is that environment protected? The answer is individual property rights. I can’t dump my garbage on your land. The environment you’re worried about is not individually owned, so it doesn’t receive the protection that your front yard receives. The best answer is to create property rights for those “commons”, those parts of the “environment” where property rights don’t currently exist.
2) Producers are servants. Consumers hold the power. The market is not segmented as is commonly imagined by those concerned about monopolies or cartels. The question itself is biased by this misunderstanding. Every use of money competes with every other use (saving, consuming, or investing). Buying gasoline for your car competes with buying a 100 shares of Cisco, leaving the money in your checking account, or buying a plane ticket to Rio or opera tickets. So cartels (few companies producing in a non-existent imaginary market segment) have to compete anyway, and they still want to maximize profits. Setting prices to result in maximum profits is not done by maximizing prices, because consumers still get to decide whether and what to buy. Raising prices can therefore reduce profits. Similarly, lowering prices can increase profits. If buying gasoline is too expensive, you will telecommute and buy Cisco instead. Consumers still hold the power. Further, those with true monopoly power are entirely products of government force. Government makes it illegal or very difficult for companies to compete, thereby granting an advantage to its favorites. The company that picks up your garbage, is a monopoly because the local government makes it illegal for other companies to try to provide you better service at lower prices. Finally, there is nothing more monopolistic than the government. The instant we allow government to control another aspect of our economic lives, we are actively choosing to be dominated by the ultimate monopoly. If you’re concerned about monopoly or cartels, the very last thing you want is to give more economic power to that mega-monopoly.
Comment by AntiNeoFascist on 2 September 2010:
@Corrino: 1) To free market advocates, private property is crucial. If you look, I believe you’ll find that many (if not most) negative environmental occurrences take place on public land (land grants) or the liability to such negative action is limited by govt (like the BP oil spill). In a free market where most all property were private and private property rights are paramount, businesses and individuals have a vested interest in maintaining the quality (and thus value) of the land. Leases would contain language requiring this and be enforceable beyond just “We met govt regulations.” I would recommend starting with Walter Block’s “Environmentalism and Econ omic Freedom: The Case for Private Property Rights” (http://mises.org/etexts/environfreedom.pdf). I’m sure others could recommend other readings.
2) Firstly, “government” consists of much more than just elected officials. See EPA, FCC, FTC, SEC, FDA, etc. In a free market, there generally aren’t cartels (or at least they are extremely short lived). Because without govt interference, if a group of companies get together to abuse consumers by either raising prices, lowering quality, or both, then one of two things happens: One, this market is now ripe for a new start-up to provide reasonable quality/price that takes customers away, thus taking away the cartel’s power. Or two, competition breaks the cartel from within. One of the members of the cartel decides to gain a slight advantage over the rest by selling for one penny less, or providing better quality or some other additional service. Technically, there’s a third way, by monopolizing a resource. But this is extremely difficult and rare. Either way, most of the time, cartels can only continue when they can block entrance into the market. Generally, the only way this can happen is with govt help. The great thing about globalization and the internet is that it is becoming easier and easier to find alternative companies to provide you your desired good or service. Making cartels even harder to form.
Comment by AntiNeoFascist on 2 September 2010:
I love how three different people answer the questions, all responding within a minute or two of each other (therefore probably not having read each other’s posts) and all three answers are basically the same thing.
Marvelous.
Corrino, I’d love to know your thoughts on these answers.
Comment by Daniel Shapiro on 2 September 2010:
Thanks for your inspiring and thought-provoking essay Mr Horwitz.
“Historia est vitae magistra” – CICERO (History is life’s master teacher)
“All man learns from history is that he learns nothing from history” – HEGEL
I think both these statements are true. The second by Hegel seems most applicable to the history of politics and statism wherein we observe this cyclic rise and fall of civilizations. What have we learned? Is this historical rise, decline, and fall inevitable? Is it some intrinsic self-destructive trait within human nature, or is it simply ignorance (a lack of knowledge)? I think it is the later. The history of science displays an entirely different pattern – rise in fits and starts, dormancy, rise, rise, rise.
Certainly physical science is less complex than volitional human nature and human social interaction. In studying the history of civilization perhaps we should (like the scientist) be on the lookout for recurring patterns of qualitative change, try to discover the fixed underlying natural laws and principles, and relate cause with effect. If sucessful, Hegel is wrong and Cicero is right!
As Mr. Horwitz points out, the Great Depression is a case in point. The fairy tale interpretation we learned in high school American history was likely written by those with a bias toward aggrandizement of the State and its illusory benificence. These “historians” were likely on the State payroll. Happily, the truth seems to be rising to the surface thanks to individuals with a better (non-statist) frame of reference to interconnect the events of past and better explain human social cause and effect.
Comment by Paul on 2 September 2010:
Steve, great stuff. It’s remarkable (and flattering) to me how similar your introduction to the Great Depression seminar is to the opening paragraph of http://www.amazon.com/review/RVUYALYQQ9U2X/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm ” rel=”nofollow”> this review I wrote on Higgs’ Crisis and Leviathan.
Comment by Paul on 2 September 2010:
Whoops – I guess the comments section doesn’t accept HTML. This is the link I referenced: http://www.amazon.com/review/RVUYALYQQ9U2X/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm
Comment by Corrino on 2 September 2010:
Thank you for your answers. They are slowly nudging the programmed fears out of my mind!
The environmental question has been answered to my satisfaction…because the government “owns” that land, no one has any real interest in protecting it beyond the minimum requirements the government imposes. Add a dash of inbreeding between the industry and regulators involved, and you have a recipe for disaster. How that may be resolved (realistically) is another matter, but I am satisfied that you are correct, and perhaps after reading your suggested articles I can even defend that stance when I take fire for it.
Your answer to “who will stop cartels?” is that cartels will stop themselves through infighting and agile competitors who are unencumbered by the cartels’ rules. That makes sense. So what is the problem with Big government when, as the biggest cartel around, it will fall on its own sword anyway? Citizens can’t exactly shop for governments, but if their prices become that prohibitive (sorry, we have to tax you to death for your entire professional life but we can’t pay that pension we promised) won’t there be a reckoning? Then again, most business cartels don’t have standing armies. Hmm.
Comment by Cry Aboutit on 2 September 2010:
@ Dan Shapiro:
I think it is human nature to seek comfort and avoid pain.
The pain of paying attention to difficult and sometimes unsavory realities.
The pain of vigilance in the name of personal liberty.
How much simpler is it to live within the soft coils of the all-protecting State? How many would rather listen to the advice that, ultimately, they are responsible for nothing? No failure is their personal failure. No tragedy is their responsibility to foresee, mitigate, or avoid. No challenge is theirs to overcome if it causes them discomfort. The present isn’t theirs to command; the future beyond their concern.
I think a frightening number of people fall into that trap of false security.
Until the soft coils get tight. And only then, when it is too late, does it occur to them that living without liberty is living at another’s convenience.
Comment by Tristan Band on 2 September 2010:
I think a unity between theory and history is absolutely essential. Theory, because without it one simply is bumbling through disparate facts. As John von Neumann once said:
“The sciences do not try to explain, they hardly even try to interpret, they mainly make models. By a model is meant a mathematical construct which, with the addition of certain verbal interpretations, describes observed phenomena. The justification of such a mathematical construct is solely and precisely that it is expected to work.”
Granted, those of a more Austrian bent (like myself) should bear in mind that he was talking about the hard sciences, and that attempts to duplicate that in the social sciences leads to some trouble-the erroneous race & IQ relation, for one, was a byproduct of the fetish for quantification. However, the essential principle is true; that all of our work consists in developing theories that model what we observe in reality. While more verbal deductive, the Austrian approach is an attempt at modeling. It’s not perfect, but it serves as a tool for explanation and study.
At the same time, studying history from multiple perspectives is helpful. Interpretations vary, but underlying facts are agreed upon. One must bear in mind that there is a difference between pundits promoting a certain view, and scholars out in the field. As an Econlog podcast about Hoover shows, most historians don’t believe the Hoover myth. Many economists, including some Keynesians, are not as likely to grant either the New Deal or WWII for getting us out of the Depression. An absolutely critical project, spearheaded by many fine Marxist historians, consists in showing that there has never been a laissez-faire era. Marxists are sophisticated leftists, in the sense they emphasize not confusing rhetoric with reality. It is this confusion that leads what I call the “activist left” to assume that Reagan meant every word of his deregulatory approach.
Comment by AntiNeoFascist on 2 September 2010:
@Corrino – I’m glad these answers (and readings) help you. As for your thoughts on govt as a cartel, you’re right. However, I would say that govt differs from a business on a few points: 1) Govt makes the rules we HAVE to follow (if you just LIVE in their territory). You can’t choose NOT to buy their good or service. 2) Ideally, in such an abusive situation, people would take their business elsewhere (i.e. move to another country, thus choosing another govt). However, in many ways, all current govts are following suit. In the past (and this has happened in the past) this has encouraged exploration for new lands; thus the emigration to America from Europe. This leads to 3) In our current environment, there is no room for new entrants to the market. There are really no new lands to discover; no new countries to found and start a new govt (at least not simply). Unless space exploration takes off (pardon the pun) this govt cartel may not see an easy or quick end.
Though, there may be some hope from the other method of cartel breakdown. Imagine a time in the future when govts around the world have increased their regulations, requirements, and taxes to the point of oppression. These individual govts may begin to see a dwindling of their revenue as fewer and fewer are successful under these conditions. Thus, in an effort to try to attract those people and businesses that may increase revenue, they may undercut their neighbors and enact policies that are MORE free. But the lengths to which things have to degrade to get to that point is frightening. I will continue to hope that we can change the policies of our govt to be more free, and in doing so, attract and demonstrate the benefits of free market policies compared to control and central planning.
Comment by Dale Young on 2 September 2010:
It’s been a while since I read it, but I believe that Jared Diamond’s book Collapse may be of interest on the first question. He explores a number of societies that collapsed due to several things, but one of the chief ones is destruction of the environment. He also looks at some societies where they have been successful at avoiding collapse through various strategies. As I recall, one of the success stories is of Japan, where they prevented the destruction of their forests through the use of private property.
Comment by John M. on 2 September 2010:
Corrino, I am a non-libertarian reading this blog on a semi-regular basis (“know thy enemy”), and I’d like to give you my counter-arguments to the answers you got from libertarians:
1. Private property rights “protect” the environment only if by “protection” you mean “doing with it whatever the owners want to do with it.” If you own a forest as your private property, you may choose to protect it… or you may choose to cut all the trees, sell the lumber and build a shopping mall. The anti-libertarian argument is that option #2 usually brings a higher profit to the owner than option #1, and therefore private property owners have an incentive to destroy the environment rather than protect it.
2. Cartels (or even just single corporations) DO have standing armies sometimes. Private armies are a common sight in some parts of the world. Also, cartels have several ways of maintaining themselves without blocking entrance to the market. The simplest way is to just BUY UP any new competitors. Large companies do this all the time when they see an innovative small business that may threaten their market share.
Also – and this is very important – cartels and big business won’t just sit there and accept your free market rules. If there is no big government to help them, they will try to create one. I believe free markets are inherently unstable, because they make some people very rich, and then those rich people set up a strong government to protect their interests.
Comment by Tristan Band on 2 September 2010:
@John M.
That is fascinating. I was aware of the existence of private armies, could you give me a link of how these private armies attacking their paymasters competition? Which cartels? Which corporations?
The basic idea of using private property as a means of preserving the environment is fairly complex.
And, I am aware that they buy up competition, but are you sure it is sustainable? The heads of these companies are only human; eventually, they will fuck up. Could you care to send me a link a
I don’t deny they wouldn’t just sit there. Indeed, big government has traditionally been a tool of the rich. Your thesis evokes Franz Oppenheimer’s “The State”.
Comment by Tristan Band on 2 September 2010:
By the way John M., I don’t view you as an enemy. Why am I the bad guy here?
Comment by James on 2 September 2010:
Being a 4th year US history major and also a classical liberal, the two have strengthened each other circularly. I’m a better history student because I’m a classical liberal, and I’m a better classical liberal because I’m a history major.
Comment by Dave B on 2 September 2010:
Corino
I was in the same boat at one time.
John M
While others may anwser better than I, I will take a stab at it.
1- Option 2 is for short-sided people with long run losses. If security and stability of income (and even reputation) is desirable, they would be acting in their best interest to ration the land in some form so that they can replenish it while sustaining a steady flow income long term. It also works so that they can sell the land in the future without it being striped of its rich resources. If its stripped of resources, the property that had valuable resources is now worthless to others and there would be a big loss in the sale of the land which is why option 2 is not in their best best, self-interest. It would end up costing them more in the long run for their short sided gains.
2- The others already answered most of that one above. Just adding, they may provide their own security, but they cannot violate any other person or property. If they do, its a violation of property rights. Only governments which have a monopoly on force can violate those rights.
Comment by Rich Matarese on 3 September 2010:
–
The great difficulty is that the “High School History” is, in these United States, firmly under the control of the ex-Education majors, who are almost without exception staunch statists.
These creatures tend reliably to be wholly ignorant of anything BUT the “High School History,” and are entirely uninterested in learning anything that contradicts the spurious picture they foist upon their students.
I would be interested to see what sorts of results are being gotten with the increasing number of American adolescents who have been home-schooled in parental efforts to keep them out of the hands of the “educrat” bureaucracy running the governmental indoctrination systems in this country.
Any research pertinent to this subject?
–
Comment by Corrino on 3 September 2010:
John M.
As far as the environmental question is involved, I am a lost cause from your perspective. It is true that land owners can (and should!) do whatever they want with their land. In a scenario where that person or group chooses to gut the resources of the land, or even to create a scenario where the creatures and plants of that land can no longer survive, he will have bought pristine land and then blighted it.
In the market, there need to be both buyers and sellers. If the land owner decides that he is sick of his crappy hole of land and wants to buy a new one, he can try to take the money he got from raping his last parcel and use that to purchase more land, or he can sell his old parcel to use as partial payment on a new piece of land, or some combination of the two.
Let’s assume that there are people who actually desire the abandoned mine shaft/incinerator/landfill that he used to own. I don’t have to tell you that he will be taking a big loss on that land and will have to make enough profit from his industry to buy new land practically outright.
But that puts him in a tight spot: Say you own the land he wants to buy. If you knew that this guy or corporation was going to deforest and strip mine the land wouldn’t you be more reluctant to sell it to him/them? Wouldn’t you demand a higher price? Not necessarily out of environmental concern(though laudable, in my opinion), but because you know that there must be a resource worth exploiting on that land if this guy wants it.
Perhaps you might decide that the land isn’t for sale (literally “not in my backyard”). Without the State’s power of eminent domain, he has no legal way to take it from you. None.
Or maybe you decide that you value some combination of external reward from profit on the sale with the internal reward of protecting beauty in the natural world–so you decide to sell it to a group of conservationists or a Boy Scout troop. Better yet, you lease it to them so that you ultimately control the use of the land.
Then again, you might decide that the money is too good to pass up, and the rat bastard industrialist gets what he wants.
But now he faces another challenge: when you owned the land, it was a private nature preserve. Maybe it had a little hunting lodge on it or something, but in any case as a good environmentalist, you didn’t have a factory or fleets of equipment or 30′ bonfires every night on the land. The new owner, pursuing industry, will have take some very disruptive actions to get production going. But the owners of the adjacent land now have a claim against him for screwing around with their right to use and enjoy their own land (smoke, noise, vibration, etc.), and can sue him for disrupting that (thanks to Rollie for pointing me to Murray Rothbard’s essay).
To summarize:
There has to be a buyer and a seller, so land that has been abused by poor management will have much less value to prospective buyers. Caught in a cycle of buy-high-sell-low, the abuser had better be damn sure there is a profit-generating resource on the land.
If the owner of the next piece of land takes issue with the potential buyer’s resource management technique, he doesn’t have to sell the land, and there is no legal way for the potential buyer to take it.
Even if the land gets sold, the new owner will be restricted in his use of the land to the extend that his activities may encroach on adjacent owners’ property rights and he will face legal backlash for impeding those rights. After a couple of cases, insurance companies will be highly reluctant to underwrite such enterprises.
So that’s where we disagree.
That said, I concede that in the real world it seems that a person gets as much justice as he can afford. Those with power want to keep it, and they flood the courts with their retained lawyers and push for laws that favor them.
But that is true under any system of government, from the might-makes-right societies (I would say “of the past”, but…) to divine right monarchies, to modern democracy.
Where this libertarian approach seems to differ is that they try to pull the fangs from the system that would eat them for the benefit of the connected few.
I think we are in agreement on the private army issue, too. Warlords, drug lords, and many global corporations have security specialists that are effectively armies for their discretionary use. But as distasteful as these entities are, I find it even more despicable that the well-connected put a legitimate facade on them with the backing of purchased laws.
So how do you defend lawmakers from the efforts of power grabbing jerks? I honestly don’t know, and there are major issues here:
Say you decide to pay the officials to be untouchable. The plan is to make working for the government pay too well to want to take bribes or in some other way to prefer a specific interest over the public good. That poses a problem because we are already paying too damn much to these people for what we get and voters will destroy that plan. Also, you will be attracting people with exactly the wrong mindset to do public work.
Many positions of public work are considered honorable: teachers, police, firefighters, mayors, etc. It is implied that they will take the greatest reward from internal sources–the creation of better infrastructure, lives saved, better jobs for their communities. Muddy that water with high pay, and internal reward takes a back seat.
My girlfriend is a teacher, and she has been crapped on for most of her professional life. She pays vast sums into a retirement program that she fully acknowledges will be long gone before she will get to use it. She gets a low wage for her level of education, so she will be paying toward her student loans for most of her life. And she spends about 20% of her time teaching, the other 80% parenting, with constantly uninvolved but overly concerned parents and administrators hounding her at every turn. But she takes a lot of internal reward for her work, and that makes the difference for her.
I couldn’t do it–I see students as products. If they don’t want to compensate me for creating high-quality products, then I won’t create high-quality products, or I’ll go elsewhere. But I don’t have the public servant mindset, and don’t claim to. If they paid, say, 120% what they pay her now, I would consider being a teacher…and that would be bad.
Same story for a police officer: crappy hours, danger, constant pressure from their peers, city officials and the media. Some are “on the take” as a survival strategy. And some don’t have the public servant mindset and should never have been given a badge. If you gave me $60K a year, military-grade weapons and armor, license to operate outside pubic scrutiny, and still treated me like a hero at every opportunity, I would really consider being a cop. That’s precisely why I shouldn’t be a cop.
Those are two examples of public servants who typically aren’t power-hungry empire builders. They should be the least susceptible to buy offs. Now take legislators, judges, program directors. Ideally they would have the same public servant mindset that teachers and cops have, but we know they don’t. They seek external reward: praise, power, and money. So the level of compensation they would require to make them immune from external forces is astronomical. Besides, the public values their motives to some extent, or they wouldn’t keep getting elected. My friend calls these problems “intractable”. I agree.
Comment by Jeffrey Weiss on 3 September 2010:
If you’ll excuse a naive first time visitor: How do you apply private property rights to air? Or to the Mississippi River? How do you subdivide environmental responsibility when the resource does not neatly divide?
Comment by Daniel Shapiro on 3 September 2010:
To Jeffery Weiss,
This is a good question in which you’ll likely get many different answers. Here’s mine: I don’t believe anyone can have a valid property claim to anything substantial that is not a derivative of human life (the source of property). The land, the air, the water, etc. are not the creations or inventions of man. However, the access to, and the “use ownership” of these natural resourse can become an individual’s property based upon priority.
I cannot claim the use of the upper atmosphere because I do not have access to it. The same goes for oil deep underground. If I had the technology to travel to the planet Mars (i.e. access) and I was the first one there (i.e. priority) I believe I would have a rightful claim the exclusive use of this planet. It should also be remembered that water in a river is in motion. Thus, you could only claim access to the use of the water molecules that happen to be flowing by where you are.
The Austrians will likely tell you that air is a “free resource” – maybe here on the surface of the planet Earth. We live at the bottom of an ocean of air – just breathe!
The Henry Georgist’s have other ideas on land which say that when someone occupies land, they are depriving everyone else of it’s use and should pay them via a tax scheme. A sort of land communism idea. What do you think?
Comment by Mike Sq on 3 September 2010:
@John M.
I’m a first time visitor but thought I would throw my two cents in.
Point 1 – Yes, it may be more profitable for some people to cut down a forest on their land and build a mall, but there are a few other factors to consider. Others would be unlikely to follow suit as each successive mall is less profitable (how many malls can one area support). Obviously development takes forms other than just shopping malls, I’m simply using that as an example of showing that the benefits of clearing land for development purposes are finite. You must also consider the fact their are many private conservators who own millions of acres of land that they choose not to develop [Ted Turner comes to mind].
If you or I don’t like what a land owner chooses to do with their land, we have two options; We can either try to convince him to not develop his property (via reasoned discourse, boycotts of his development project, etc) or we can buy land (by ourselves or with a group of like-minded people) for the purpose of not developing it. What we must not do is use the threat of force to coerce a land owner to use his land for purposes we desire. You have no more right to do that than I do of deciding that society would be better served by turning your front lawn into a forest.
Point 2 – It would be, economically speaking, impossible for private cartels to buy up all new competitors. The very act of buying all new competitors would attract new competitors (knowing that they would make a profit by being quickly purchased by the cartel). Also, the cartel would become less efficient and more expensive with each new acquisition, thereby attracting more competitors and increasing their problems exponentially.
Comment by John Hagel on 6 September 2010:
Wonderful posting and perspective. I am concerned, however, that this is a big vulnerability of the modern classical liberal movement itself.
Too many modern classical liberals have a deep foundation in theory – usually with a strong philosophical orientation – but have shockingly little knowledge of history themselves. Without this firm foundation in history, theory is largely impotent and can often lead to perspectives that are dangerously wrong.
Comment by Daniel Shapiro on 7 September 2010:
To John Hagel,
Yes you are right, and conversely, without an intellectual basis, history is a mere mountain of facts related only by time. Data without a hypothetical relational structure is meaningless. It is the relation of historical data that gives it human meaning, utility, and if valid provides intellectual tools to create our futures. My cat could care less – she seems to be perpetually stuck in the present moment.
Obviously both perception and conception are necessary to learn from the past and act wisely in the present to improve the probability of creating a better future for ourselves and posterity.
The challenge is to have the curiosity, discipline and honesty to understand the world as it was and as it is, and not distort it fancifully, which as political history demonstrates, has led to an on-going sequence of circumstantial justifications for enslavement and tyranny.
Here’s what I think is the big lesson yet to be learned from history:
“Nature recks nothing of intentions, good or bad; the one thing she will not tolerate is disorder, and she is very particular about getting her full pay for any attempt to create disorder. She gets it sometimes by very indirect methods, often by very roundabout and unforeseen ways, but she always gets it. … It would seem that our civilization is greatly given to this infantile addiction – greatly given to persuading itself that it can find some means which nature will tolerate, whereby we may eat our cake and have it; and it strongly resents the stubborn fact that there is no such means.” — ALBERT JAY NOCK (Our Enemy the State)
Comment by Corrino on 7 September 2010:
John M.
I would have responded sooner but I had to clean up the language a little bit. Eminent domain gets me fired up.
As far as the environmental question is involved, I am a lost cause from your perspective. It is true that land owners can (and should!) do whatever they want with their land. In a scenario where that person or group chooses to gut the resources of the land, or even to create a scenario where the creatures and plants of that land can no longer survive, he will have bought pristine land and then blighted it.
In the market, there need to be both buyers and sellers. If the land owner decides that he is sick of his crappy hole of land and wants to buy a new one, he can try to take the money he got from logging/mining his last parcel and use that to purchase more land, or he can sell his old parcel to use as partial payment on a new piece of land, or some combination of the two.
Let’s assume that there are people who actually desire the abandoned mine shaft/incinerator/landfill that he used to own. I don’t have to tell you that he will be taking a big loss on that land and will have to make enough profit from his industry to buy new land practically outright.
But that puts him in a tight spot: Say you own the land he wants to buy. If you knew that this guy or corporation was going to deforest and strip mine the land wouldn’t you be more reluctant to sell it to him/them? Wouldn’t you demand a higher price? Not necessarily out of environmental concern(though laudable, in my opinion), but because you know that there must be a resource worth exploiting on that land if this guy wants it.
Perhaps you might decide that the land isn’t for sale (literally “not in my backyard”). Without the State’s power of eminent domain, he has no legal way to take it from you. He will have to either bribe you off the land or go away.
Or maybe you decide that you value some combination of external reward from profit on the sale with the internal reward of protecting beauty in the natural world–so you decide to sell it to a group of conservationists or a Boy Scout troop. Better yet, you lease it to them so that you ultimately control the use of the land.
Then again, you might decide that the money is too good to pass up, and the evil industrialist gets what he wants.
But now he faces another challenge: when you owned the land, it was a private nature preserve. Maybe it had a little hunting lodge on it or something, but in any case as a good environmentalist, you didn’t have a factory or fleets of equipment or 30′ bonfires every night on the land. The new owner, pursuing industry, will have take some very disruptive actions to get production going. But the owners of the adjacent land now have a claim against him for infringing on their right to use and enjoy their own land (smoke, noise, vibration, etc.), and can sue him for disrupting that (thanks to Rollie for pointing me to Murray Rothbard’s essay).
To summarize:
There has to be a buyer and a seller, so land that has been abused by poor management will have much less value to prospective buyers. Caught in a cycle of buy-high-sell-low, the abuser had better be sure there is a profit-generating resource on the land.
If the owner of the next piece of land takes issue with the potential buyer’s resource management technique, he doesn’t have to sell the land, and there is no legal way for the potential buyer to take it.
Even if the land gets sold, the new owner will be restricted in his use of the land to the extend that his activities may encroach on adjacent owners’ property rights and he will face legal backlash for impeding those rights. After a couple of cases, insurance companies will be highly reluctant to underwrite such enterprises.
So that’s where we disagree.
That said, I concede that in the real world it seems that a person gets as much justice as he can afford. Those with power want to keep it, and they flood the courts with their retained lawyers and push for laws that favor them.
But that is true under any system of government, from the might-makes-right societies (I would say “of the past”, but…) to divine right monarchies, to modern democracy.
Where this libertarian approach seems to differ is that they try to pull the fangs from the system that would eat them for the benefit of the connected few.
I think we are in agreement on the private army issue, too. Warlords, drug lords, and many global corporations have security specialists that are effectively armies for their discretionary use. But as distasteful as these entities are, I find it even more despicable that the well-connected put a legitimate facade on them with the backing of purchased laws.
Comment by Darci Immerman on 8 July 2011:
Great factors…I might word that as someone who actually doesn’t comment to blogs much (in truth, this may be my first publish), I don’t assume the term “lurker” could be very flattering to a non-posting reader. It’s not your fault at all, but maybe the blogosphere could give you a better, non-creepy identify for the 90% of us that enjoy studying the posts.
Comment by Brian on 12 July 2011:
As to Capitalisms vs. Communisms enviro record, it was no contest. We won (in more ways than one). The gov’t in charge of everything led to horrific enviro damage.
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