A criticism: the authors note that violent encounters with Native Americans increased with the presence of the US standing army. The way they discuss the earlier period of Indian settlement and re-settlement makes it seem like the Indians did not take into account the potential for violence if they refused to "trade" their land.
If the US government asks you to relocate in exchange for X, then that is more akin to the mafia enforcer coming to your business and saying "that sure is a nice shop you got there I know time trends were most likely used in the regression, but I'm just not sure that this reduced form analysis takes the complexity of the situation. Oct 23, Patrick Peterson rated it really liked it Shelves: academic , economics , enviro , history , libertarian , political. I fully agree with his review and have very fond memories of the book.
It is a marvelous use of property rights and economics analysis for an important historical question - how wild and lawless and violent was the old west? I was impressed by how the book dealt with the question and I bet you will be too, if you give it a chance. Preconceptions about the Wild, Wild West will not survive this book. Anderson and Hill debunk the popular thesis that the Old West was a place of anarchy and lawlessness before the entry of government.
Instead, they argue it was a place of efficient wealth creation and maximization between private parties who came up with creative solutions to the unique challenges presented by the West. Subtitled "Property Rights on the Frontier", it may as well have been called "How The West Was Won" - not through aggression and rent dissipation, but through clear property rights and trade.
Anderson and Hill also skillfully do away with the myth of the savage Indian tribes warring with all settlers, and Americans stealing land by force. Explaining economic systems in the context of scarcity and resources, the authors touch on settlers, homesteading, cattlemen, the military, irrigation and more in this excellent, thoughtful piece.
Jun 15, Sean Rosenthal marked it as to-read Shelves: amer-hist-syllabus. Indeed, war is the ultimate form of rent seeking: one side expends effort to defend its territory and assets against the aggression of another. This form of rent seeking is the very essence of the wild West, where Indians fought the influx of whites into their territori "While rent seeking to influence the government to redistribute property rights might be legitimized by democracy, its impact on the incentive to make productive investments and promote prosperity differs little from that of war.
This form of rent seeking is the very essence of the wild West, where Indians fought the influx of whites into their territories, cattlemen fought sheepmen over grass, miners fought one another for gold claims, and farmers fought over water.
In each of these cases, the game is negative-sum because only one side wins, but in the process, the winners as well as the losers expend resources and human lives. May 20, Jessica DeWitt rated it really liked it Shelves: american-west , economic-history , quirky , bitter-authors. This treatment of the West is an amusing Libertarian take on the good ol' days of the West, when the government didn't get in the way of an individual's right to the land and ability to take care of their own issues.
Although heavily ideologically driven Anderson is a leading champion of the concept of free market environmentalism , one does learn a lot about western property rights, information on which you will be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. I do not necessarily agree with this interpretat This treatment of the West is an amusing Libertarian take on the good ol' days of the West, when the government didn't get in the way of an individual's right to the land and ability to take care of their own issues.
I do not necessarily agree with this interpretation, but I always admire studies that do not hesitate to make provocative and interesting claims. These kinds of studies are particularly welcome in the realm of American West history where studies tend to be seeming duplicates of one another.
View 1 comment. Nov 25, Trey Malone rated it it was amazing. This is one of my favorite books in the "new institutional economics" space.
Anderson and Hill do a masterful job of identifying their key contributions and defending their hypotheses with historical examples from the Western frontier. Even if you are comfortable with how economists think about property rights, you will enjoy the application you will find in this text.
If nothing else, you will find this book different from anything you've ever read about westward expansion in the United States. Oct 04, David rated it it was ok. Overall interesting. Nov 20, Paul S Vigil rated it really liked it. I thought it was a fun read Collin rated it really liked it Sep 10, Samuel Ribeiro Giordano rated it really liked it Jun 09, Josu San Martin rated it it was amazing Aug 19, Shaun Van Beverhoudt rated it liked it Jan 09, Michael DeVinney rated it it was amazing Apr 21, Aaron rated it really liked it Dec 16, Savannah rated it liked it Jul 22, Damien Manier rated it it was amazing Jul 29, Ava Peabody rated it it was ok Oct 28, Janice Ye rated it really liked it Dec 02, Nicko rated it it was ok Jan 03, Pame Escobar rated it really liked it Aug 02, Shelby rated it really liked it Sep 09, Mary rated it liked it Nov 28, Darlene Cypser rated it liked it Jul 25, Adam rated it it was amazing Apr 19, Megan rated it really liked it Jan 13, Cooperation, not conflict, is emphasized in a study that casts America's frontier history as a place in which local people helped develop the legal framework that tamed the West.
Get BOOK. The Oxford Handbook of Austrian Economics. The Austrian School of Economics is an intellectual tradition in economics and political economy dating back to Carl Menger in the lateth century. Menger stressed the subjective nature of value in the individual decision calculus. Books People Community Invite Contribute. Terry L. Guy Swann.
0コメント