Memories of Rosasharn

Honest Toddler author Bunmi Laditan asks: is there something wrong with wet nursing in the wealthy secular West?

ATSRTWT

Cheap, reasonable alternatives abound, so it can't be a matter of BATNA disparity. If anything, the opposite is true. We sort of expect wet nursing to be the recourse of folks who can't afford anything better.

Of course, the same is true of ox tail soup or chitterlings. When I was a boy, those were the foods of poor people. Same goes for growing vegetables in your backyard or canning peaches, or knowing your way around a sewing machine. Time was, there were a whole pile of things that ordinary folks were obliged to do because anonymous, impersonal exchanges were either unavailable or beyond the means of the typical citizen. Not so anymore. We're now wealthy enough to play at being poor. It's a nice thing to be able to claim, that.

I'm on Bunmi's side. Rock on, weird mom. There are a whole lot of other hobbies you might choose that would be a lot worse for you and for them kids. Proust!

h/t Double D

Property Fence

Munger draws our attention to an interesting Proudhon piece here. For those of you who don't already know, Proudhon is the 19th century intellectual famous for launching the modern anarchy movement and for having coined the phrase "Property is Theft," a notion seized upon by my favorite Twitter imp, Matt Bruenig.

Mungo's eye was almost surely caught by the same graf as mine:

Understand once for all: the most characteristic, the most decisive result of the Revolution is, after having organized labour and property, to do away with political centralization, in a word with the state, and as a consequence to put an end to diplomatic relations among nations, as soon as they subscribe to the revolutionary compact. Any return to the traditions of politics, any anxiety as to the balance of power in Europe, is based on the pretext of nationality and of the independence of states, any proposition to form alliances, to recognize sovereignties, to restore provinces, to change frontiers, would betray, in the organs of the movement, the most complete failure to understand the needs of the age, scorn of social reform, and a predilection for counter-revolution.

Delightful. And not just because it fits well with the spirit of Marx that the state shall wither, branch and trunk once ... something something something (I don't believe I have to explain to any of my readers how the central problems of production and exchange cannot be solved by appending residual ownership to the labor force). No, it's delightful because of that subjunctive clause: "after having organized labour and property." Boy howdy, way to pithily pack a punch. A result of all the blood and fury of the Revolution is that labour and property are now properly organized, as if the grand sum of human activity can be arranged as pieces on a chess-board.

Can I get a "yikes", people?

Proudhon's philosophical premise can pretty easily lead to this conclusion: if property occurs as the result of state violence, then it follows that it can be just as easily re-allocated through other acts of violence. And any improvements to the initial endowment of capital (land would probably be the extent of the initial endowment) would regress to that original act of violence (or, coercion, if you enjoy EE terminology), as the leaves regress to the roots. That is to say, if you can I,Pencil my wristwatch clear back to a canton Councillor in Switzerland granting claim to a patch of land (and all the exclusionary rights so appended), then the basis of my ownership of the watch on my wrist rests ultimately on a pseudo-arbitrary exercise of force.

So here's my question: if that initial exercise of force lacks moral validity, does the entire chain of ownership unravel?

Trafficking in stolen goods is illegal. If I buy a nicked radio from a fence, and it ends up confiscated by the police, I am due no recompense whatsoever, even if I thought I was buying it in good faith (though I can sue the fence under the UCC for breach of implied warranty, fwiw). In legalese, this principle is known as nemo dat quod non habet, or (roughly) "no one gives what he does not have." It's bedrock, antique common law, and I have a feeling that if you were to survey ordinary folks they'd agree with it.

Up to a point, anyway. Maritime salvage is a finders-keepers rule. And if you can't trace mens rea back to the initial parting of the legitimate owner with her property, you might find the subsequent adverse possession case contested. Also, there are exceptions for making trades using stolen legal tender. Still, what I'm curious about is what folks' moral intuitions would be about the whole kit and caboodle: if the median jurist were to suddenly accept the Proudhon/Bruenig suite of arguments about the origin of property, would she then be eager to dissolve all current claims, to then reconstitute according to the Spirit of the Revolution? Or would she hew to Hume and Locke when they argue in favor of legitimacy in property as arising from making improvements to existing stocks?

Is property euvoluntary? If not, how far down the rabbit hole would the typical citizen be willing to chase historical injustice?

Survivorship and the Precautionary Principle

Hindsight and Confirmation biases aid each other dearly.

Surely by now you've chuckled into your sleeve at some of the preposterous historical claims about how the Internet would be a flash in the pan, or about how we'd all be living in geodesic domes, eating reconstituted foods, traveling by jet-car, and sending our kids to summer camp on the moon. Prediction is hard, especially about the future.

Note well however, what the Precautionary Principle attempts to do. It slings on the back of mulish regulators the saddlebags of not just ordinary prediction, but anticipation of Calliopic non-ergodic entangled threats, dolloping kaibosh after kaibosh atop the delicate sundae of human invention.

Shannon Chamberlain: Railroads: stopping deaths from turning into famines since 1775...

Lynne Kiesling: [nit picky economic historian] since 1815 [/nit picky economic historian]. Shannon, I may plagiarize you on that in my classes! 1815 is the approximate date when Stephenson's Rocket became commercially available, after Watt's low-pressure steam engine patents expired, which had thwarted the development of high-pressure steam engines since 1776.

Samuel L Wilson: Shouldn't it be 1827, when the B&O first started running?

Why do I adore this exchange? Shannon's claim is that the initial development of commercially viable steam powered travel was the significant evolution of rail. Lynne made the point that the bottleneck in the development of the technology was patent squatting. My approach is to refrain from counting chickens until they're hatched. Each of these claims has some merit, albeit from different approaches. I'd give credit on an exam for any of these, contingent on an appropriate defense of the claim.

"Inevitablity" is immutably ex post. It wasn't "inevitable" in 1602 that the following year Japan would ditch foreign trade, fold its arms, and lionize the warrior class till Commodore Perry crested the horizon, the ruddy light of the rising sun backlighting his sails. Similarly, James Watt's external condenser (this word still gives me the heebie-jeebies two decades after having worked in an engine room for my Naval stint) is a necessary development for intercity rail transportation, but it's not sufficient. Like Professor Kiesling notes, the regulatory environment influences which technologies flourish and which can end up throttled on the workshop floor.

And as I point out, there may be good reason ex ante to indulge patience. Can we count 2009 as quando ex for cryptocurrency? Or will 2014 and the rise of dogecoin matter? Regular circulation sometime in the future? Could the PP have killed rail in 1815? What can the PP kill today?

How much less euvoluntary will the world be if innovation is stifled from overactive applications of the precautionary principle?

The Amber Apostaspiphatry of the Beautiful Baltics

Never let it be said this tiny blue-green globe I keep all my stuff on fails to regularly surprise. Case in point:

What Can Borges Teach Us About Markets?One for @NeinQuarterly http://t.co/veDtgQmGWk
— toomas hendrik ilves (@IlvesToomas) December 19, 2013

If you're wondering what it is you're looking at, that's a tweet from the current sitting president of the sovereign nation of Estonia. Yes, that president of Estonia. The unexpected Deadpool (that's a compliment, Toomas) showing up at the doorstep of Charles Xavier's School for Gifted Freshwater Macroeconomists.

Let me explain why I find this particular tweet worth sharing (almost none of it having to do with the shock of seeing a head of state pick a fight with an American economist of note). First off, the obvious. The link there is to a The Ümlaut piece, which as you know by now, is if not a big sister publication to EE, at least a kissing cousin. I'm irl pals with more than one of the authors there and their work is pretty frequently highlighted by yours truly. So that's cool.

But then there's this whole series I've only just started on about big bad regime changes, constitutional formation, heresy, apostasy, game theory, and the euvoluntary continuum as it applies to governance. Well, one of the wee little inspirational thumbtacks to the buttocks that got me going on this project was scotch-taped to my chair by Steve Horwitz (he of the band-who-must-not-be-named fandom). For the upcoming APEE, he's put together a panel on Francis Spufford's Red Plenty, a "novel" in the same same sense that a Herzog film is a "movie": they both fit the form, but the function is to reach an upturned hand into the light shone by an ecstatic truth. Those of you old enough to remember a befuddled Dan Rather covering the collapse of the Soviet Putsch in the brisk winter of 1991 should remember well the alacrity with which the noble Balts and Ugro-Finns (Latvia/Lithuania and Estonia, respectively) shrugged off the rusty scales of their musty Muscovite oppressors. Hence the timely academic appeal.

But it's the personal touch that really does it for me. My wife of 12 years, mother of my darling daughter, is Lithuanian. I lived in Klaipėda and Jurbarkas for the better part of 2001, and of all the wonderful cities I visited while I lived there, the one that still sticks in my mind like no other is Tallinn. And yes, that includes crown jewels like Prague and Vienna. Don't get me wrong, I adore Prague (I merely kind of like Vienna), but I don't think I'd really want to live there full time. Not in walking distance of Prague 1 anyway. Tallinn is a totally different story. I'd move there tonight if I had a decent job waiting for me. And I don't even know how to say "hello" in Eesti keel. It's a Medieval deep sea port, and here's the amazing thing: its original walls and fortifications from when it was an outpost for Livonian knights are all still intact! Both Riga's and Vilnius's got blown to smithereens between Napoleon and Hitler marching back and forth, roughing the joint up. Seriously you guys, if you ever get the chance to visit the Baltic states, set aside at least a couple of days to hit Tallinn. You will not regret it.

But personal jubilance aside, consider seriously the underlying game theory leading up to January 13, 1991. Ask if the backwards-looking resentments that had been brewing since re-annexment in 1945 contributed to the drama at the Vilnius TV tower. Ask if the two-faced political kayfabe dripping like venom from the forked tongues of party elites had anything to do with the quiet, dignified, white-hot rage that prompted unarmed men and women, descendants of the doughty pikesmen who bent the point of Genghis Khan himself as he was stabbing westward, to stand up to a tank brigade atop a well-worn hill, plant their earthen feet and glower, "no more." Ask if overthrowing tyranny is a prudence-only endeavor, or if it might, just might draw on the strength afforded by the faith of a mighty ancestry, a strength given vigor by the hope for a future free of the twisted talon of oppression, a strength shared through the love of a shared identity, yet a strength tempered by a patient resolve, a clear dedication to justice, and the sort of prudence that comes from surviving first the Blitz then the Purges. My hat is well and fully off to the people of the Baltic states. It has been ever since I lived there. I eagerly await the day my own countrymen show the same unwillingness to toil under increasingly coercive domestic institutions. Till then, I'll simply giggle and titter to myself that my little network of cherished friends isn't going unnoticed by my home away from home.

Hume on Coercion

Essays; Moral, Political, and Literary Part II, Essay XII: "Of the Original Contract"

I shall venture to affirm, That both these systems [divine right of the sovereign and the social contract] are just; though not in the sense, intended by the parties: And, That both the schemes of practical consequences are prudent; though not in the extremes, to which each party, in opposition to the other, has commonly endeavoured to carry them.

Emphasis in original.

 It's quite an essay. Here's a nice little passage: "[Philosophers] affirm, that all men are still born equal, and owe allegiance to no prince or government, unless bound by the obligation and sanction of a promise." Again, emphasis in original. Just prior to this he forwarded a particularly lovely style of historicism, both presaging Strauss and writing with prudent Straussian elision. So here, the social contractarians are right, but only so long as the terms of the contract are met. Unwritten is men owe no allegiance to a prince who upturns the terms of trade, so to speak. A sovereign who breaks the agreement no longer retains legitimate authority.

Likewise, "a sovereign cannot, properly speaking, be called [the Deity's] vice-regent, in any other sense than every power or force, being derived from him, may be said to act by his commission." Again, a Straussian call to revolt when the sovereign ceases to act in accordance with the Will of the Divine. You can almost hear him snickering into his sleeve here.

A little later on though, we find the following (keep in mind this was written in 1748, fifty years before M. Guillotine began his bloody rampage): "In reality, there is not a more terrible event, than a total dissolution of government, which gives liberty to the multitude, and makes the determination or choice of a new establishment depend upon a number, which nearly approaches to that of the body of the people: For it never comes entirely to the whole body of them." If you're reading Buchanan into that, you're not alone. Heck, if you're reading Caplan into that, you're not alone. Hume was mightily skeptical of the ability of regular folk to re-design from whole cloth either the terms of a social contract or to re-interpret the Word of God.

Of course, in practice, the post-Enlightenment revolutions tended to be based on the principles of "reason" or "science" or some such nonsense. They also tended to be rather bloody and messy. Being proven right in this case seems little cause for joy.

At any rate, the whole essay is great fun, and if you'll indulge me, there's one more passage in there that answers the question Hayek asks by way of Munger's post below:

Can we seriously say, that a poor peasant or artizan has a free choice to leave his country, when he knows no foreign language or manners, and lives from day to day, by the small wages which he acquires? We may well assert, that a man, by remaining in a vessel, freely consents to the dominion of the master; though he was carried on board while asleep, and must leap into the ocean, and perish, the moment he leaves her.

Hard coercion by untenable alternatives. QED. Take it from a guy who's lived in a place where he knows no foreign language or manners, and lived from day to day, by the small wages which he acquired.