Given that my father is one of my most active readers. I thought he’d get a kick out of the recent post over at The Austrian Economists on fatherly economic wisdom. On a side note I think this is one of the best posts Pete has put up in terms of “blogability.” It’s a quick prompt to all of his readers to participate on the blog in a cheap and easy way. See my comment on the thread for the economics of the phrase, “don’t shit where you eat.”
Love you Dad…
Dick Clark’s recent blog post discusses the controversy over Wikipedia.
An encyclopedia that anyone can edit, critics argue, is one that is vulnerable to endless mistakes.
What critics to often fail to recognize is that, while subject to error, an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, is one that also has the potential for endless corrections. Compared to traditional encyclopedias, once errors are in print the costs of correction are extremely high.
Wikipedia’s reflection of market dynamics is most easily observed in what many people view as the project’s weakest areas: obscure articles which draw little traffic. In articles about third-rate garage bands and other topics of limited interest, one will often find factual and typographical errors at a much higher rate than in high-traffic articles like “England” or “Barry Bonds.” The much higher demand for information about the latter topics means that many more eyes will be combing those much-demanded articles for mistakes.
The world will never be perfect, the human race’s understanding of the world will never be perfect, the law that governs the world will never be perfect, but processes that expose and correct imperfections are preferable to institutions that stagnate and exacerbate errors.
Whenever a content dispute does arise between editors on the “talk” pages that accompany each article, there are a host of dispute resolution options available to resolve them. The community has created the “Third Opinion” board, where editors at loggerheads can request an outside perspective on a disagreement. There is also the “Request for Comment” process, where one editor may request formal oversight by the community at large, and particularly by veteran editors whose informed opinions usually carry more weight than those of new users. There are also the Mediation and Arbitration Committees, which are for solving more complex, ongoing disputes, and who actually refer to past precedents in making judgments.
Thanks for the great post Dick.
The insolence and brutality of anger, in the same “manner,” when we indulge its fury without check or restraint, is, of all objects, the most detestable. But we admire that noble and generous resentment which governs its pursuit of the greatest injuries, not by rage which they are apt to excite in the breast of the sufferer, but by the indignation which they naturally call forth in that of the impartial spectator; which allows no word, no gesture, to escape it beyond what this more equitable sentiment would dictate; which never, even in thought, attempts any greater vengeance, nor desires to inflict any greater punishment, than what every indifferent person would rejoice to see executed (p. 267).
–Adam Smith, Theory of Moral Sentiments
Me I’m one!!! And amongst good company with GMU faculty Alex Tabarrok and graduate Ben Powell.
Over the summer I attended the Social Change conference hosted by IHS. By far my favorite lecture of the week was by Richard Bell a recent Harvard graduate working on the historical and social significance of suicide in colonial America.
Bell, read a chapter from his upcoming book that focused on suicides amongst prison inmates on death row (no wonder I found it interesting). Bell used source materials that were both chilling in their own right and spun together in a profoundly subtle narrative. It seemed that Bell’s intention was to give insight into the questions “why so much suicide, why in this place, and why at this time?” by drawing focus to these under recognized sources.
I’d like take a bolder approach and discuss what I thought lay beneath the surface of Bell’s work.
First, America’s unique legal evolution left plaintiffs and defendants without a way to express their preferences over justice and penal sentences. As Sudha Shenoy likes to point out, America’s legal history is strange compared to the rest of the world. Social Historian, Lawrence Friedman has also noted that America is the only Western country to have begun its legal history with a fully state-sponsored prosecutor from the get go. Everywhere else went through early stages of institutions where criminal law was a more active process between individual citizens. Victims took criminals to court and voiced there requests for compensation in the courts. Dr. Shenoy informs me this was somewhat the case up until the mid 1980s in England. With police officers laying personal responsibility for pressing charges against criminals.
So when I heard Bell describe how death row inmates felt helpless and without options to the point where they expressed their last sense of control through suicide this legal history shot to mind.
Second, the self reported motivations behind the wardens, sheriffs and town-leaders of the time stunk of private interest motivations couched in public interest rhetoric. Bell found the newspapers and the public announcements of the town leaders. They would torture and mutilate the corpses of the dead inmates in full public eye. They claimed that the suicides were an attack against the civic order.
The Public Choice economist inside of me thought “those self-interested loons.” How better to protect the role of the current administration than to threaten the citizenry? The torture effectively said you can’t escape the state authority even in death.
The bottom line is I thought Bell’s empirical puzzle was a fascinating one, and his analytical narrative a compelling story that could be made all the more powerful with a pinch of Austro-Public Choice insights. This morning I read about two oddities in current events that seem similar. First, suicides of army members is at a 26 year high, and second there seems to be a glut of serial killings in the former Soviet Union as of lately.
I just had the pleasure of reading a brilliant essay by one of my classmates Geoff Lea.
I lived with Geoff during the last academic year. He has since moved on to New York to fulfill a research opportunity at the Foundation for Economic Education where he will be working on an intellectual biography of Henry Hazlitt and (to the best of my knowledge) a dissertation on the role of economic communicators within the history of economic thought.
I am fond of telling people interested in graduate school, that the majority of learning takes place outside of the classroom. Aside from attending optional lectures, seminars, workshops, and always writing (writing, writing, and more writing), your peers are an infinite pool of valuable information that can and should be tapped constantly. After knowing Geoff for the past few years I can honestly say that there is no other person who I have found myself in more total agreement with on the topics of political economy.
Congratulations on the publication Geoff!!!
I must be asleep at the wheel since I failed to notice Arnold Kling giving a shout out to my piece with Klein. The comparison to Chicago as a method to hold constant for ideology is an interesting approach that we didn’t think of pursuing when I was gathering the data.
I don’t plan on voting in the upcoming primary election, nor the 2008 presidential election, nor any election between now and the day I die. I’m an economist, and I just can’t convince myself that the benefits of voting outweigh the costs. So why am I writing this post supporting Ron Paul? There’s loads of other things that I could be doing right now, but because Paul has such a huge internet following I thought this post had some potential to get a bit of traffic for my site. That’s self-interest for you. So if you’re going to vote, If it’s worth it to you, I’d recommend voting for Ron Paul.
First, Alabama has some of the nicest people I’ve ever met. That being said, I had several errands to run yesterday and couldn’t help but make the following observation. While traffic flow in semi-rural Auburn Alabama is swift and fast moving, sales staff and cash register attendants are slow and unhelpful. I’d suspect the opposite to be true in urban areas. It’s a compensating differential. If you choose fast traffic you pay for it with lower levels of human capital. There are both benefits and costs to living in areas with high populations. The question that remains is which do you prefer and why? I feel better prepared to waste time in my car. I can listen to music or plan my day. When I wait in line at a store counter I’m frustrated and the only solace is laughing about it with the other people in line. I think living in a big city with high human capital despite the traffic flow is a net gain.
After reading Bob Higgs’ latest piece on Self-governance. Stephen Bates (one of my former students) commented:
“Stateless societies are wishful thinking. Although the article says, “The alleged absence of significant [or any] historical examples of large [or any], stateless societies during the past several thousand years …” no examples are provided.
And, the tough part isn’t mentioned .. a plan on how to create an organized society without a state apparatus.
I was much more impressed with Higgs’ piece than Stephen. He mentions a few examples of anarcho-case studies (The Indus Valley and Somalia). And he’s modest and humble that they are but a few. I would argue that are body of case studies is larger than we like to give credit. We’ve gotten so accustomed to saying “yeah yeah ancient Iceland, but that’s about it.” We have failed to update our perceptions about how many case studies of functional statelessness we have discovered and explained.
Higgs does a great job alluding to the fact that the other side of the debate has jack in terms of historical support. Historians of primitive societies and lost civilizations (a very small group of examples) rarely if ever blame a lack of statism for observed chaos, violence, or downfall. The strongest implication they make is that the move to statism is a conscious and preferred choice by people throughout society. They would never claim that order or trade was impossible without the state. Yet Locke, Hobbes, Madison, Olson and a slue of political theorists are all quick to assume that states are preferred and necessary to have any stable wealth.
The front of the debate has shifted to a comparative question. The question is not can anarchy work (the answer is yes)? The question that remains is: work at what? What will the self-governed society look like? Will it function better or worse than it’s state counter-part? Better a twhat? Higgs is right on track pushing us forward in comparative economics.
Here is a non-exhaustive list of case studies in anarcho-capitalism. I do not include case studies of ordinary goods like roads, firemen or lighthouses. This list covers laws, contract enforcement, and the protection of social order. If anyone knows of more publications please send them to me and I’ll try to keep the list up to date:
Africa:
Leeson, Peter T. (forthcoming) “Trading with Bandits” Journal of Law and Economics. available at: peterleeson.com
The American Frontier:
Anderson, Terry and P.J. Hill (1979). “An American Experiment in Anarcho-Capitalism: The Not So Wild, Wild West,” Journal of Libertarian Studies. Vol. 3 No. 1 pp. 9 – 29. Available at: www.mises.org.
Anderson, Terry and P.J. Hill (2004). The Not So Wild Wild West. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. For sale on Amazon.com.
Benson, Bruce L. (1991). “An Evolutionary Contractarian View of Primitive Law: The Institutions and Incentives Arising under Customary Indian Law,” Review of Austrian Economics. Vol. 5 pp. 65 – 85. Available at www.mises.org.
Amsterdam:
Stringham, Edward (2003). “The Extralegal Development of Securities Trading in Seventeenth Century Amsterdam,” Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance. Vol. 43 No. 2 pp. 321 – 344. Available at: sjsu.edu.
China:
Friedman, David (2006). “From Imperial China to Cyberspace: Contracting Without the State,” Journal of Law, Economics, and Policy. pp. 349 – 370. Available at: davidfriedman.com.
England:
Benson, Bruce L. (1998a). “Evolution of Commercial Law,” in P. Newman (editor) The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law. London: Macmillan Press. For sale on Amazon.com.
Benson, Bruce L. (1998b). “Law Merchant,” in P. Newman (editor) The New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and the Law. London: Macmillan Press. For sale on Amazon.com.
Benson, Bruce L. (1990). The Enterprise of Law, Justice without the State. San Francisco, CA: Pacific Research Institute for Public Policy, pp. 224 – 230. For sale on Amazon.com.
Europe:
Benson, Bruce (2002). “Justice without Government: The Merchant Courts of Medieval Europe and Their Modern Counterparts,” printed in Beito, Gordon and Tabarrok (editors) The Voluntary City: Choice, Community and Civil Society. Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute pp. 127 – 150. For sale on Amazon.com.
Davies, Stephen (2002). “The Private Provision of Police during the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries,” printed in Beito, Gordon and Tabarrok (editors) The Voluntary City: Choice, Community and Civil Society. Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute pp. 151 – 181. For sale on Amazon.com.
Greif, Avner (1989). “Reputation and Coalitions in Medieval Trade: Evidence on the Maghribi Traders,” Journal of Economic History, pp. 857 – 882. Available on JSTOR.
Milgrom, Paul, Douglass North, and Barry Weingast (1990). “The Role of Institutions in the Revival of Trade: The Medieval Law Merchant, Private Judges, and the Champagnes Fairs,” Economics and Politics. pp. 1 – 23. Reprinted in Anarchy and the Law.
Iceland:
Friedman, David (1979). “Private Creation and Enforcement of Law – A Historical Case,” Journal of Legal Studies. pp. 399 – 415. Available at davidfriedman.com.
Long, Roderick T. (1994). “The Decline and Fall of Private Law in Iceland,” Formulations. Available at: libertariannation.org.
The Indus Valley:
Thompson, Thomas J. (2006). “An Ancient Stateless Civilization: Bronze Age India and the State in History,” The Independent Review. Vol. 10 pp. 365 – 384. Available at Independent.org.
Ireland:
Peden, Joseph R. (1977) ” Property Rights in Celtic Irish Law,” Journal of Libertarian Studies. Vol. 1 No. 2 pp. 81 – 95. Available at www.mises.org.
Mexico:
Clay, Karen (1997). “Trade without Law: Private Order Institutions in Mexican California,” Journal of Law, Economics and Organizations. pp. 202 – 231. Available at Ideas.
Scotland:
Leeson, Peter T. (unpublished) “Laws of Lawlessness.” Available at peterleeson.com.
Somalia:
Coyne, Christopher J. (2006). “Reconstructing Weak and Failed States: Foreign Intervention and the Nirvana Fallacy,” Foreign Policy Analysis. Vol. 2 pp. 343 – 360. Available at ccoyne.com.
Higgs, Robert (2004). Against Leviathan: Government Power and a Free Society. Oakland, CA: The Independent Institute. pp. 374 – 376. For sale on Amazon.com.
Leeson, Peter T. (unpublished) “Better Off Stateless Somalia Before and After Government Collapse,” Available at: peeterleeson.com.
Powell, Benjamin, Ryan Ford and Alex Nowrasteh (unpublished). “Somalia After State Collapse: Chaos of Improvement?” Independent Institute Working Paper Number 64. Available at independent.org.