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Dobbs, Roe, and the Freakout Over Federalism

25 Wednesday May 2022

Posted by Nuetzel in Abortion, Federalism, Uncategorized

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Abortion, Adoption, Akhil Amar, Artificial Womb, Bill of Rights, Birth Control, CDC, Classism, Court Leak, dependency, Disparate impact, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Due Process Clause, Emergency Contraception, Equal Protection Clause, Establishment Clause, Eugene Volokh, Eugenics, Federalism, Fetal Homicide Laws, Fetal Rights, Fetal Viability, First Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, Great Society, Josh Blackman, Judicial Activism, Later-Term Abortion, Margaret Sanger, Morning After Pill, Personhood, Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Privacy Rights, Pro-Life, racism, Roe v. Wade, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Samuel Alito, Supreme Court, War Drugs, World Health Organization

The leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization has created uproars on several fronts. The opinion, written by Justice Samuel Alito, represented a 5-4 majority at the time of its writing, but it is a draft opinion, and the substance and the positions of other justices might change before a final decision is handed down by the Court by the end of June. The draft would essentially uphold a Mississippi law restricting abortions after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. This would overturn the Roe v. Wade (1973) and Planned Parenthood v. Casey (1992) decisions. The former established that states could regulate abortion only beyond a certain stage of pregnancy (originally the first trimester), while the latter allowed states to regulate once a pregnancy reached the stage of fetal viability. While 24 weeks is often cited as the lower limit of viability, it is considered to be as early as 20 weeks by the World Health Organization, an estimate that could decline with future advances in prenatal and neonatal care (such as artificial wombs). In any case, viability would no longer be the standard if the draft opinion stands. Indeed, it would once again be up to states as to how they wish to regulate abortion.

Here is an update on where things stood on May 11th. Reportedly, the 5-4 majority still stood, and no other draft opinions existed in the case at that time. No news since.

Due Process and Privacy Rights

Was Roe v. Wade a good legal decision? Ruth Bader Ginsburg did not hold the opinion in high regard as a matter of the jurisprudence. Apparently, she felt that the Court should have simply struck down the restrictive Texas law in question without imposing a set of rules, which amounted to an aggressive infringement on the legislative function and the evolution of law, and case law, at the state level. Her words were:

“Doctrinal limbs too swiftly shaped, experience teaches, may prove unstable. The most prominent example in recent decades is Roe v. Wade.”

She also felt the Court should not have leaned on the Due Process Clause of Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits the denial of “life, liberty or property, without due process of law”. And she believed that relying on due process and the privacy rights of a woman and her physician made Roe vulnerable to challenge. She was probably right.

Yale Law School professor Akhil Amar, who is pro-choice, also believes the Roe decision was misguided and calls its reliance on due process “textual gibberish”. The objection to substantive due process is based on the absence of any principle establishing which “rights” not found explicitly in the Bill of Rights are valid, and which are not.

Equal Protection

In fact, Amar defends Justice Alito’s draft opinion and believes, as Ginsberg did, that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is a better defense of abortion rights. The contention is that unless a woman possesses the right to terminate a pregnancy, she is not on an equal footing with similarly situated men in terms of self-determination and life opportunities. Of course, none of this weighs the interests of the unborn child.

Establishment Clause

Josh Blackman has an interesting series of comments about whether the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment may be a valid defense of abortion rights. That seemingly preposterous claim relies on abortion as a right, in some cases, protected by the free exercise of religion. As Blackman sums up in his sixth point:

“… abortion rights groups should be careful what they wish for. If the Court recognizes a Free Exercise right to perform or receive an abortion, then conservatives can cook up even more aggressive religious liberty strategies. I’ll bring the bagels for the next meeting of the Temple of Automatic Weapons.”

Eugene Volokh makes several interesting points on attempts to use the Establishment Clause “to obtain exemptions from generally applicable laws”. A separate, misguided take at the Establishment Clause is that a law must be unconstitutional if it was based on religious beliefs. Volokh handily disposes of that contention here.

Judicially-Prescribed Rights vs. Constitutional Rights

Blackman has written that the Alito draft is a tour de force, addressing many constitutional principles and concerns expressed by other justices. In another post, Blackman explains a very basic rationale for a decision to overturn Roe. It is related to the objections expressed by Ginsberg and Amar, and to the many “lamentations” expressed in the Court’s abortion opinions over the years since Roe. Namely, that rule and establishment of new rights by court decision was not a mechanism intended by the framers of the Constitution, but self-government and federalist principles were:

“It is a mistake to argue that Dobbs extinguishes a right, without also acknowledging that the decision would restore another right. Overruling Roe would extinguish a judicially-created right to abortion, but it would restore a very different right: the right of the people to govern themselves.”

Personhood

Of course, none of these points are really germane to the crux of the pro-life argument to which I subscribe. However, both Roe and Casey acknowledge the state’s interest in protecting the fetus beyond some point in a pregnancy. The closer to term, the greater the interest. The implication is that a fetus gradually takes on degrees of “personhood” through the course of gestation, and that rights attach to that nascent individual at some point. Both Roe and Casey, by allowing states to regulate abortion beyond some point, offer recognition that the closer an abortion occurs to full term, the stronger the case that it may be prohibited.

The law in most European nations carries the same implication, and if anything leans more heavily in favor of fetal rights than Roe. Furthermore, there are 38 states with fetal homicide laws, which treat the fetus as a person in the case of a murder of a pregnant woman. In 29 of those states, the law applies at the earliest stages of pregnancy. This suggests that in most states, sentiments may weigh in favor of treating the fetus as a person imbued with constitutional rights.

In the end, this is not an exclusively religious argument, as the pro-abortion Left always suggests. For me, it’s purely an ethical one. At what point beyond conception are pro-abortion activists willing to concede that a human life is at stake? Apparently a heartbeat is not enough to convince them. Neither does the appearance of small fingers and toes. Nor the ability to feel pain. These are all things that happen before the child is “viable”. But even viability is not enough for some of the more radical abortion activists, who are proposing choice right up to the moment of birth. Incredibly, and despite the real limitations imposed on mid- or late-term abortions in many states (in line with Roe and Casey), some pro-choice advocates are now acting as if overturning these cases causes women to lose such an unfettered right!

Practical Matters

Anyone can obtain a variety of birth control alternatives without a prescription (and often for free). This includes emergency contraception, or the “morning after pill”. Granted, sometimes birth control measures fail, which places the prospective mother (and perhaps an involved or conscientious father) in a difficult position. Nevertheless, careful use of birth control would minimize the abortion problem and obviate much of the debate, but people are often too impulsive or careless about sex.

Late term abortions are a fairly small percentage of all abortions. The CDC reported that in 2018, 50,000 (~8%) abortions occurred after the first trimester (14+ weeks), and 6,200 (1%) took place at or beyond the point of theoretical viability (21+ weeks). This study found that of abortions at 20+ weeks, mothers tended to be younger (20 -24), discovered their pregnancies somewhat later, faced logistical and financial delays in arranging the abortion, or faced other challenging life circumstances. However, the researchers rebut a common rationale for late-term abortion when they say:

“… most women seeking later terminations are not doing so for reasons of fetal anomaly or life endangerment.”

Eugenics and Classism

Pregnancies among black women are terminated at a disproportionately high rate. That’s consistent with the original, eugenicistic and racist goals of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger. This is an outcome to top all disparate impacts. I have witnessed pro-abortion activists counter that these aborted lives would have been miserable, impoverished, and without opportunity — essentially not worth living — but these are value judgements of the most monstrous kind. I’ve also heard the pathetic argument that fiscal conservatives should be happy that abortions will reduce spending on aid programs. Of course, the plight of the would-be mother is also emphasized by pro-abortion advocates, but we should not be so eager to accept the tradeoff here: abortion gets the mother is off the hook, but a child’s life is at stake. No matter the odds of success, human beings are all endowed with potential and opportunity, and it’s not necessary to be economically secure to be happy or pursue dreams.

It’s easy to be pessimistic that public policy can ever mitigate the economic burden on impoverished women who bring unexpected or unwanted pregnancies to term, or to brighten the economic future of their children. After all, over the decades since the Great Society program was conceived, the welfare state has proven no better than a dependency treadmill. Family structure has been decimated by those programs and the destructive consequences of the failed (but ongoing) war on drugs. Likewise, public education is a disaster. However, there are also alternatives such as adoption, and there are many private individuals and organizations working to encourage prospective mothers and ease those burdens.

The Leak

The leak of the draft opinion in Dobbs is unfortunate as it compromises the ongoing integrity of the Court’s internal debates and proceedings. In addition to this institutional damage, the impropriety of staging protests outside the homes of justices and inside places of worship should be roundly condemned by people with respect for judicial integrity, privacy and free exercise. These protests are partly attempts to intimidate, and they have even been accompanied by threats of violence. The belligerent posture of these activists is unconscionable.

Long Live Federalism

Again, the Court’s final decision in Dobbs might not be the opinion in the leaked draft. However, if the Court does indeed overturn Roe, it would not outlaw abortion. Rather, it would allow voters in each state to have a voice in aligning the law with public sentiment. Some states will have more restrictive abortion laws than others, but even the Mississippi law at issue in Dobbs allows abortion up through week 15, almost two weeks longer than the original Roe limitation.

The country is still deeply divided on the issue of abortion. Fundamentally, a broader acceptance of the life-and-death reality of abortion would help bring more consensus on the issue. One theory I have is that many who oppose overturning Roe would simply rather not think about that reality. In their minds, Roe keeps abortion compartmentalized, safely walled off from conscience and sometimes even spiritual convictions. They rationalize Roe based on their inability to observe the person whose life is at stake, and they accept justifications that minimize the value of that life.

A single rule imposed by the Court has not and will not resolve these differences. Indeed, Roe and Casey were failed acts of judicial activism that should be reversed. While bad legislation is regrettable, it is always subject to review and challenge by the people. In a federalist system, a bad law is contained like a single experimental treatment in a large trial with multiple arms. However, in this case, unlike a trial with random selection of subjects, one treatment group may differ from others in important respects, and the objective is not to identify one single-best solution, but different solutions that work best for different groups. That is a closer approximation to real self-government than federal legislation and especially one-size-fits-all Court rule-making.

Rejecting Fossil Fuels at Our Great Peril

18 Wednesday May 2022

Posted by Nuetzel in Central Planning, Energy, Risk, Technology

≈ 2 Comments

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Bartley J. Madden, Biden Administration, Dan Ervin, Don Boudreaux, Electric Vehicles, Energy Mandates, Energy subsidies, EV Adoption, External Benefits, External Costs, Fossil fuels, Grid Stability, Intermittancy, Kevin Williamson, Markets, Power Outages, Price Controls, regressivity, Renewable energy, Russia Sanctions, SEC Carbon Mandate, Sustainability

The frantic rush to force transition to a zero-carbon future is unnecessary and destructive to both economic well-being and the global environment. I do not subscribe to the view that a zero-carbon goal is an eventual necessity, but even if we stipulate that it is, a rational transition would eschew the immediate abandonment of fossil fuels and adopt a gradual approach relying heavily on market signals rather than a mad dash via coercion.

I’ve written about exaggerated predictions of temperature trends and catastrophes on a number of occasions (and see here for a similar view from a surprising source). What might be less obvious is the waste inherent in forcing the abandonment of mature and economic technologies in favor of, as yet, under-developed and uneconomic technologies. These failures should be obvious when the grid fails, as it does increasingly. It is often better to leave the development and dispersion of new technologies to voluntary decision-making. In time, advances will make alternative, low- or zero-carbon energy sources cost effective and competitive to users. That will include efficient energy storage at scale, new nuclear technologies, geothermal techniques, and further improvements in the carbon efficiency of fossil fuels themselves. These should be chosen by private industry, not government planners.

Boneheads At the Helm

Production of fossil fuels has been severely hampered by the Biden Administration’s policies. The sanctions on Russian oil that only began to take hold in March have caused an additional surge in the price of oil. Primarily, however, we’ve witnessed an artificial market disruption instigated by Biden’s advisors on environmental policy. After all, neither Russian oil imports nor the more recent entreaties to rogue states as Iraq and Venezuela for oil would have been necessary if not for the Administration’s war on fossil fuels. Take a gander at this White House Executive Order issued in January 2021. It reads like a guidebook on how to kill an industry. In a column this weekend, Kevin Williamson quipped about “the Biden administration’s uncanny ability to get everything everywhere wrong all at once.” That was about policy responses to inflation, but it applies to energy in particular.

Scorning the Miracle

Fossil fuels are the source of cheap and reliable energy that have lifted humanity to an unprecedented level of prosperity. Fossil fuels have given a comfortable existence to billions of people, allowing them to rise out of poverty. This prosperity gives us the luxury of time to develop substitutes, not to mention much greater safety against the kind of weather extremes that have always been a fact of life. The world still gets 80% of its energy from fossil fuels. These fuels are truly a miracle, and we should not discard such valuable technologies prematurely. That forces huge long-term investments in inferior technologies that are likely to be superseded in the future by more economic refinements or even energy sources and methods now wholly unimagined. There are investors who will still wish to pursue those new technologies, perhaps with non pecuniary motives, and there are a few consumers who really want alternatives to fossil fuels.

Biden’s apparent hope that his aggressive climate agenda will be a great legacy of his presidency is at the root of his intransigence toward fossil fuels. His actions in this regard have had a profoundly negative psychological effect on the oil and gas industry. Steps such as cancellations of pipeline projects are immediately impactful in that regard, to say nothing of the supplies that would have ultimately flowed through those pipelines. These cancellations reinforce the message Biden’s been sending to the industry and its investors since his campaign: we mean to shut you down! Who wants to invest in new wells under those circumstances? Other actions have followed: no new federal oil and gas leases, methane restrictions, higher drilling fees on federal land, and a variety of climate change initiatives that bode ill for the industry, such as the SEC’s mandate on carbon disclosures and the Federal Reserve’s proposed role in policing climate impacts.

And now, Democrats are contemplating a move that would make gasoline even more scarce: price controls. As Don Boudreaux says in a recent letter to The Hill:

“Progressives incessantly threaten to tax and regulate carbon fuels into oblivion. These threats cannot but reduce investors’ willingness to fund each of the many steps – from exploration through refining to transporting gasoline to market – that are necessary to keep energy prices low. One reality reflected by today’s high prices at the pump is this hostility to carbon fuels generally and to petroleum especially. And gasoline price controls would only make matters worse by further reducing the attractiveness of investing in the petroleum industry: Why invest in bringing products to market if the prices at which you’re allowed to sell are dictated by grandstanding politicians?”

The kicker is that all these policies are futile in terms of their actual impact on global carbon concentrations, let alone their highly tenuous link to global temperatures. The policies are also severely regressive, inflicting disproportionate harm on the poor, who can least afford such an extravagant transition. Biden wants the country to sacrifice its standard of living in pursuit of these questionable goals, while major carbon-emitting nations like China and India essentially ignore the issue.

Half-Baked Substitution

Market intervention always has downsides to balance against the potential gains of “internalizing externalities”. In this case, the presumed negative externalities are imagined harms of catastrophic climate change from the use of fossil fuels; the presumed external benefits are the avoidance of carbon emissions and climate change via renewables and other “zero-carbon” technologies. With those harms and gains in question, it’s especially important to ask who loses. Taxpayers are certainly on that list. Users of energy produced with fossil fuels end up paying higher prices and are forced to conserve or submit to coerced conversion away from fossil fuels. Then there are the wider impediments to economic growth and, as noted above, the distributional consequences.

Users of immature or inferior energy alternatives might also end up as losers, and there are likely to be external costs associated with those technologies as well. It’s not widely appreciated that today’s so-called clean energy alternatives are plagued by their need to obtain certain minerals that are costly to extract in economic and environmental terms, not to mention highly carbon intensive. And when solar and wind facilities fail or reach the end of their useful lives, disposal creates another set of environmental hazards. In short, the loses imposed through forced internalization of highly uncertain externalities are all too real.

Unfortunately, the energy sources favored by the Administration fail to meet base-load power needs on windless and/or cloudy days. The intermittency of these key renewables means that other power sources, primarily fossil-fuel and nuclear capacity, must remain available to meet demand on an ongoing basis. That means the wind and solar cannot strictly replace fossil fuels and nuclear capacity unless we’re willing to tolerate severe outages. Growth in energy demand met by renewables must be matched by growth in backup capacity.

A call for “energy pragmatism” by Dan Ervin hinges on the use of coal to provide the “bridge to the energy future”, both because there remains a large amount of coal generating capacity and it can stabilize the grid given the intermittency of wind and solar. Ervin also bases his argument for coal on recent increases in the price of natural gas, though a reversal of the Biden EPA’s attacks on gas and coal, which Ervin acknowledges, would argue strongly in favor of natural gas as a pragmatic way forward.

Vehicle Mandates

The Administration has pushed mandates for electric vehicle (EV) production and sales, including subsidized charging stations. Of course, the power used by EVs is primarily generated by fossil fuels. Furthermore, rapid growth in EVs will put a tremendous additional strain on the electric grid, which renewables will not be able to relieve without additional backup capacity from fossil fuels and nuclear. This severely undermines the supposed environmental benefits of EVs.

Once again, mandates and subsidies are necessary because EV technology is not yet economic for most consumers. Those buyers don’t want to spend what’s necessary to purchase an EV, nor do they wish to suffer the inconveniences that re-charging often brings. This is a case in which policy is outrunning the ability of the underlying infrastructure required to support it. And while adoption of EVs is growing, it is still quite low (and see here).

Wising Up

Substitution into new inputs or technologies happens more rationally when prices accurately reflect true benefits and scarcities. The case for public subsidies and mandates in the push for a zero-carbon economy rests on model predictions of catastrophic global warming and a theoretical link between U.S. emissions and temperatures. Both links are weak and highly uncertain. What is certain is the efficiency of fossil fuels to power gains in human welfare.

This Bartley J. Madden quote sums up a philosophy of progress that is commendable for firms, and probably no less for public policymakers:

“Keep in mind that innovation is the key to sustainable progress that jointly delivers on financial performance and taking care of future generations through environmental improvements.”

Madden genuflects to the “sustainability” crowd, who otherwise don’t understand the importance of trusting markets to guide innovation. If we empower those who wish to crush private earnings from existing technologies, we concede the future to central planners, who are likely to choose poorly with respect to technology and timing. Let’s forego the coercive approach in favor of time, development, and voluntary adoption!

The Fed’s Balance Sheet: What’s the Big Deal?

08 Sunday May 2022

Posted by Nuetzel in Government Failure, Inflation, Monetary Policy

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Allocation of Capital, Bank Reserves, crowding out, Debt Monetization, Fed Balance Sheet, Federal Funds, Federal Reserve, Fiscal Inflation, Inflation tax, Interest Rate Targeting, MBS, Monetary policy, Mortgage Backed Securities, QE, Quantitative Easing, Scarcity, Tapering

The Federal Reserve just announced tighter monetary policy in an attempt to reduce inflationary pressures. First, it raised its target range for the federal funds rate (on overnight loans between banks) by 0.5%. The new range is 0.75% – 1%. Second, on June 1, the Fed will begin taking steps to reduce the size of its $9 trillion portfolio of securities. These holdings were acquired during periods of so-called quantitative easing (QE) beginning in 2008, including dramatic expansions in 2020-21. A shorthand reference for this portfolio is simply the Fed’s “balance sheet”. It includes government debt the Fed has purchased as well as privately-issued mortgage-backed securities (MBS).

What Is This Balance Sheet You Speak Of?

Talk of the Fed’s balance sheet seems to mystify lots of people. During the 2008 financial crisis, the Fed began to inject liquidity into the economy by purchasing large amounts of assets to be held on its balance sheet. This was QE. It’s scope was unprecedented and a departure from the Fed’s pre-crisis reliance on interest rate targeting. QE had the effect of increasing bank reserves, which raised the possibility of excessive money supply growth. That’s when the Fed began to pay interest to banks on reserves, so they might be content to simply hold some of the reserves over and above what they are required to hold, rather than using all of that excess to support new loans and deposits (and thus money growth). However, that interest won’t stop banks from lending excess reserves if better opportunities present themselves.

The Fed has talked about reducing, “normalizing”, or “tapering” its balance sheet for some time, but it only recently stopped adding to it. With inflation raging and monetary policy widely viewed as too “dovish”, analysts expected the Fed to stop reinvesting proceeds from maturing securities, which amounts to about $95 billion per month. That would shrink or “taper” the balance sheet at a rate of about $1.1 trillion per year. Last week the Fed decided to cap the “runoff” at $47.5 billion per month for the first three months, deferring the $95 billion pace until September. Monetary policy “hawks” were disappointed by this announcement.

Monetizing Government

So, one might ask, what’s the big deal? Why must the Fed taper its securities holdings? Well, first, the rate of inflation is far above the Fed’s target range, and it’s far above the “average Joe’s” comfort range. Inflation imposes significant costs on the economy and acts as a regressive form of taxation, harming the poor disproportionately. To the extent that the Fed’s huge balance sheet (and the corresponding bank reserves) are supporting incremental money growth and fueling inflation, the balance sheet must be reduced.

In that connection, the Fed’s investment in government debt represents monetized federal debt. That means the Fed is essentially printing money to meet the Treasury’s financing needs. Together with profligate spending by the federal government, nothing could do more to convince investors that government debt will never be repaid via future budget surpluses. This dereliction of the government’s “full faith and credit”, and the open-armed acceptance of the inflation tax as a financing mechanism (à la Modern Monetary Theory), is the key driver of fiscal inflation. Reducing the balance sheet would represent de-monetization, which might help to restore faith in the Fed’s ability to push back against fiscal recklessness.

Buyer of First Resort

Perhaps just as critically, the Fed’s heavy investment in government debt and MBS represents an ongoing distortion to the pricing of financial assets and the allocation of capital. Some call this interference in the “price discovery process”. That’s because the Fed has represented a market-altering presence, a willing and inelastic buyer of government debt and MBS. Given that presence, it’s difficult for buyers and sellers to discern the true values of alternative uses of capital, or to care.

QE was, among other things, a welcome institutional development for the U.S. Treasury and for those who fancy that fresh money printing is an ever-valid form of government payment for scarce resources. The Fed’s involvement also means that other potential buyers of Treasury debt need not worry about interest rate risk, making public debt relatively more attractive than private debt. This is a dimension of the “crowding out” phenomenon, whereby the allocation of capital and flows of real resources between public and private uses are distorted.

The Fed’s presence as a buyer of MBS depresses mortgage rates and makes mortgage lending less risky for lenders and investors. As a result, it encourages an over-investment in housing and escalating home prices. This too distorts the allocation of capital and real resources, at the margin, toward housing and away from uses with greater underlying value.

Conclusion

The magnitude of the Fed’s balance sheet is an ongoing testament to an increasingly dominant role of central authorities in the economy. In this case, the Fed has served as a conduit for the inflation tax. In addition, it has unwittingly facilitated crowding out of private capital investment. The Fed’s purchases of MBS have distorted the incentives (and demand) for residential investment. These are subtle effects that the average citizen might not notice, just as one might not notice the early symptoms of a debilitating disease. The long-term consequences of the Fed’s QE activities, including the inflation tax and distorted allocations of capital, are all too typical of failures of government intervention and attempts at central planning. But don’t expect anyone at the Fed to admit it.

Collectivism Is Not the “Natural” State

03 Tuesday May 2022

Posted by Nuetzel in Collectivism, Property Rights

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Aché, Capitalism, Collectivism, Covid-19, Friedrich Engels, Hunter-Gatherers, Manvir Singh, Noble Savage, Paraguay, Primitive Communism, Property Rights

There is a great myth that primitive man was some sort of “noble savage”, perfectly attuned to the natural environment and disposed to an egalitarian principle. All that, of course, is balderdash. A related myth is that primitive societies were essentially collectivist and that private property was largely an unrecognized institution. This is something I’ve heard too often from individuals wishing to characterize leftist ideals as natural and wholesome. So I welcomed a recent piece in Aeon called “Primitive Communism”, by Manvir Singh, which reviews evidence on a number of hunter-gatherer societies and cites several scholars on the subject of ownership and the distribution of goods among those peoples. A preponderance of the evidence suggests that private property and private rewards were (and are) quite common in primitive societies, and those practices predated agriculture.

The assertion that the advent of private property and trade was somehow unnatural for mankind, or even unjust, might owe its widespread acceptance to Friedrich Engels’ “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State”. Singh summarizes one of the book’s primary arguments thusly:

“Once upon a time, private property was unknown. Food went to those in need. Everyone was cared for. Then agriculture arose and, with it, ownership over land, labour and wild resources. The organic community splintered under the weight of competition.”

While there were a few primitive societies in which economic output was shared, it is not clear whether any central authority was relied upon for determining the distribution of output. Instead, in those cases, sharing seems to have been a matter of social convention. Singh posits that interdependence played a major role in motivating output sharing, but mechanisms for dealing with interdependence differed in societies with stronger property rights, including voluntary sharing, which was often but not always based on reciprocity. Volunteerism still has a strong role in modern, developed economies, but for better or worse, social insurance is increasingly viewed as a function of the state, with its monopoly on legal coercion.

And how “natural” is social insurance? Not very in a world of extreme scarcity. One of the more interesting passages in Singh’s article has to do with the brutality of subsistence-level societies. The weak were often abandoned or killed, which Singh discusses in the context of the collectivist Aché people of Paraguay. This “culling” applied variously to orphans, the disabled, the unsightly, and the aged. It’s unclear whether these decisions were collective or left up to individual families. Noble savages indeed!

It’s astonishing how often Engels’ faulty premise is accepted as historical fact. The argument, however, often serves as a subtext for collectivist rationales in the modern era. As Singh says:

“For anyone hoping to critique existing institutions, primitive communism conveniently casts modern society as a perversion of a more prosocial human nature.”

I’m not sure whether it’s possible to marshall evidence that primitive societies with strong property rights were more successful than their collectivist counterparts. That would be a good topic of further research, but it would be tough to control for the difficulties posed by varying natural conditions faced by these societies.

On the other hand, suppose we stipulate that property rights developed as a consequence of, or in tandem with, organized production, as Engels would have had it. We’d have to categorize that development as a kind of technological breakthrough in its own right. By aligning incentives with production, property rights were critical to the phenomenal growth in prosperity the world has enjoyed over the past several centuries. Nevertheless, the evidence on primitive societies suggests that the alignment came more “naturally”.

It’s about time to put the fiction of “primitive communism” to rest. Private property was sensible for the denizens of most primitive societies. Even the most collectivist of the those societies made certain concessions to that reality. These facts comport with a view of property ownership as a natural right.

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Ominous The Spirit

Ominous The Spirit is an artist that makes music, paints, and creates photography. He donates 100% of profits to charity.

Passive Income Kickstart

onlyfinance.net/

TLC Cholesterol

Nintil

To estimate, compare, distinguish, discuss, and trace to its principal sources everything

kendunning.net

The future is ours to create.

DCWhispers.com

Hoong-Wai in the UK

A Commonwealth immigrant's perspective on the UK's public arena.

Marginal REVOLUTION

Small Steps Toward A Much Better World

Stlouis

Watts Up With That?

The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change

Aussie Nationalist Blog

Commentary from a Paleoconservative and Nationalist perspective

American Elephants

Defending Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness

The View from Alexandria

In advanced civilizations the period loosely called Alexandrian is usually associated with flexible morals, perfunctory religion, populist standards and cosmopolitan tastes, feminism, exotic cults, and the rapid turnover of high and low fads---in short, a falling away (which is all that decadence means) from the strictness of traditional rules, embodied in character and inforced from within. -- Jacques Barzun

The Gymnasium

A place for reason, politics, economics, and faith steeped in the classical liberal tradition

A Force for Good

How economics, morality, and markets combine

Notes On Liberty

Spontaneous thoughts on a humble creed

troymo

SUNDAY BLOG Stephanie Sievers

Escaping the everyday life with photographs from my travels

Miss Lou Acquiring Lore

Gallery of Life...

Your Well Wisher Program

Attempt to solve commonly known problems…

Objectivism In Depth

Exploring Ayn Rand's revolutionary philosophy.

RobotEnomics

(A)n (I)ntelligent Future

Orderstatistic

Economics, chess and anything else on my mind.

Paradigm Library

OODA Looping

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