The Utopia of Liberty
by Gustave de Molinari
Letters to the Socialists 1848
Translation by Roderick T. Long
(full text available at The Molinari Institute.)
LTS-I.19
Let us consider the Roman world. What do we find at the heart of this society, though it was the richest and most powerful of antiquity? On one side, a patriciate composed of a very small number of men enriched by the spoils of the universe. The life of these men, as you know, was a succession of bloody battles and foul orgies! Beside this all-powerful caste, gorging itself on the substance of an entire world as the vultures were seen to gorge themselves on the corpses of those vanquished by Marius [Online editor’s note: the Roman general Gaius Marius was said to have carried two pet vultures on his sanguinary campaigns. – RTL] – beside this engorged and satiated caste, what do we see? the impoverished multitude of proletarians and the debased multitude of slaves! You speak of the miseries of our working class; good God! as painful and pitiable as these miseries may be, you can hardly compare them with those of the Roman proletarians. At least our working class works; it does not beg! The people of our gloomy suburbs are not to be seen lining up at the gates of the splendid mansions of our moneyed aristocracy to beg alms! They are not to be seen hurling themselves like dogs upon the crumbs which the rich brush from their tables with a bored and disdainful hand! Nor yet are they to be raising daily riots to obtain free distribution of food. No! today’s worker undeniably leads a poor life; but he earns this life, he is able to earn it. The Roman proletarian was not in a position to earn his own life. The wealthy patricians had monopolised all the industries and all the soil, which they exploited by means of their slaves. Victims of this unequal competition, the proletarians’ only choice was between begging, exile, and death. They begged. And yet the lot of these degraded proletarians was still a thousand times preferable to that of the slaves. The proletarian, at least, was a man; the slave, for his part, was only one more species of beast of burden, a thing! The slave possessed nothing, not even a name. Admittedly the poor workers of our own countryside deserve our commiseration, they who pass their lives stooped to the ground, most often obtaining in exchange for their hard labour nothing better than a morsel of black bread to eat, a coarse cloth to wear, and a mud hut to sleep in; but however painful this existence, how many Roman slaves would have envied it! Recall the accounts of Pliny and Columella. [Online editor’s note: Gaius Plinius Secundus (or Pliny the Elder) and Lucius Junius Moderatus Columella, Roman writers on agriculture. – RTL] At the heart of the smiling countryside of Italy were to be found, at periodic intervals, those dark and noisome dwellings which were called ergastula. These were prisons, or to speak more accurately stables, of slaves. In the morning they filed out in bands, generally chained; they spread out across the countryside, driven by overseers armed with whips, and each furrow was watered with their sweat and their blood together. In the evening they were led back to the ergastulum, where like base animals they were tied up beside their mangers. For them no family, but a filthy promiscuity! no God, but an inexorable fate which robbed them of their humanity while leaving them not even the hope of a life to come! Such, as you know, was the condition of the labouring masses in antiquity. And yet the world had not yet been subjected to the law of laissez-faire!

What is to be gained by the creation of a state? Well, consider what a state does. First, it taxes, which means taking from the people and giving to the government, which then gives money to its friends. Second, it regulates, meaning that government tells people to do things they would not otherwise do. Third, it creates a central bank to water down the value of money. Fourth, it builds jails in which to put people who disobey, including political enemies.

The preceding quote by Lew Rockwell sums up the general thrust of my research agenda. Here are some more recent popular articles on relevant topics.
Gary North on prison ministries.
Stefan Molyneux on stateless incarceration.
Jeff Tucker gets locked up.

The New Yorker reports on restorative justice.
Enjoy for now…

First up is a list of books on prisons and a few breif words about them. I think I’ll try to find some time to make a guide list in the near future, but for right now I’m just fooling around with this feature for a while. So enjoy
BOOKS ON PRISONS

After drafting the previous document (Field Work Part I) geared at explaining my research agenda as I saw it in-line with potential field work and the general mission of Mercatus, I have drafted this next installment (The Topography of Enforcement), with the intent of mapping the intellectual terrain of enforcement.

Steven Levitt at Freakonomics began a discussion on the possibilities that nutrition has implications on crime rates. An interesting read but rightly being presented with kit gloves as the implications just seem overwhelmingly counterintuitive.
On a seperate but related issue Doug MacKenzie at Mises.org takes qualm against Landburg’s proposal to tax security devices which skirt the effects of crime onto third parties rather than promote social value for everyone. I would tend to agree with MacKenzie’s reluctance against Landsburg’s tax proposal, but not necessarily his particular logical arguments. In my mind Landsburg is more unfounded and unecessary than anything. The process that he deems as the spread of externalities is in fact an tendency of the market to lead to more abundant provision of security, a good commonly asserted to suffer from public good sub-optimal provision.

I wrote this piece to put my thoughts together as to how I viewed my research agenda, the direction it is taking, and the connection to the Mercatus Institute which hosts the majority of semianrs I participate in.
Enforcement, Political Economy, and Field Research.

In preparation for my Constitutional Economics class taught by Peter Beottke, I’ve been reading Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments. It’s a great read thus far and I’m finding Smith’s thoughts very online with both radical subjectivism and my own personal moral position. Many of you who know me may be shocked, as I like to profess that I do not subscribe to any system of morals. But as I said before, Smith seems to be presenting a case for moral subjectivism (or maybe this is just my reading of it). Either way, I would say this phraseology (radical subjective morality) is more descriptive of my own personal position that no moral absolutes exist. Moral reality is nothing more than different people struggling to do their best on this hectic roller coaster we all call life.
On a seperate note, I found the following excerpt most relevant to my general prison research agenda, especially when held against thinkers like Foucault who presents all punishment as political tools to wield authority, and excerpts from Tabarrok’s book which points out that social programs like education and community building are more effective at detering crime than prison when it comes down to governments getting the most bang for their buck in the allocation process.
Taken from Theory of Moral Sentiments by Adam Smith, p35.

A prison is certainly more useful to the public than a palace; and the person who founds the one is generally directed by a much juster spirit of patriotism, than he who founds the other. But the immediate effects of a prison, the confinement of the wretches shut up in it, are disagreeable; and the imagination either does not take time to trace out the remote ones, or sees them at too great a distance to be much affected by them. A prison, therefore, will always be a disageeable object; and the fitter it is for the purpose for which it was intended, it will be the more so.

The process of learning the technological logistics of web publishing is long and winding. It is with great relief that I am pleased to host my presentation from the Austrian Scholar’s Conference 2005, entitled Blacks and Whites behind Bars.