Asimbonanga (Mandela)

Asimbonanga (We have not seen him)

Asimbonang' uMandela thina (We have not seen Mandela)

Laph'ekhona (In the place where he is)

Laph'ehleli khona (In the place where he is kept)

Oh the sea is cold and the sky is grey

Look across the island into the bay

We are all islands 'til comes the day

We cross the burning water

Asimbonanga (We have not seen him)

Asimbonang' uMandela thina (We have not seen Mandela)

Laph'ekhona (In the place where he is)

Laph'ehleli khona (In the place where he is kept)

A seagull wings across the sea

Broken silence is what I dream

Who has the words to close the distance

Between you and me

Asimbonanga (We have not seen him)

Asimbonang' uMandela thina (We have not seen Mandela)

Laph'ekhona (In the place where he is)

Laph'ehleli khona (In the place where he is kept)

Steven Biko. Victoria Mxenge. Neil Aggett.

Asimbonanga Asimbonang 'umfowethu thina (We have not seen our brother)

Laph'ekhona (In the place where he is)

Laph'wafela khona (In the place where he died)

Hey wena (Hey you!)

Hey wena nawe (Hey you and you as well)

Siyofika nini la' siyakhona? (When will we arrive at our destination)

Review - Economics Evolving (Agnar Sandmo)

Following an email exchange with Dan Kuehn and Jon Catalán, I decided that it was finally time to write up a review for Agnar Sandmo's "Economics Evolving" (which I have been punting for some time). Full disclosure is that I know Agnar personally and think that he is a tremendous economist. That said, I started his book before I had actually spoken much to him and honestly believe that I judged it on nothing else but the merits of its content.

And with that, here is the review which I have just posted on Amazon:

...

In his masterful Wealth & Poverty of Nations, economic historian David S. Landes opens with a quip that "Geography has fallen on hard times." I have often wondered whether the same might said of history -- at least when it comes to cataloguing the development of economic thought. Despite the efforts of Landes and co. (who arguably tend to focus more on events rather than thinkers), this subject is sorely absent from the modern economic curriculum.

Agnar Sandmo's excellent Economics Evolving (EE) will hopefully go some way towards remedying that. The book is a compelling history of economic thought, told through the lives and works of the key figures that have shaped the field. The text is lucid and jargon free, so that even complex ideas are conveyed with a clear simplicity. My impression is that any lay person with an interest in economics could pick up the book and gain a deep understanding of the subject. (I personally happened to read EE while doing my graduate studies in economics and it really helped to keep the overarching ideas clear in my head. This can be surprisingly difficult at times, when getting wrapped up in the mathematics or technical arguments of a particular theory might hinder you from seeing the wood for the trees. The concise description of various concepts -- from Walrasian Equilibrium to growth theory -- thus provided a welcome foil to the analytical rigour required by my core grad courses.)

Each chapter or subsection opens with an brief biography of the featured economist(s). These provide valuable context to the overall discussion and are typically interspersed with interesting vignettes and anecdotes. One of my favourites occurs on p. 90, where Sandmo reproduces a letter from John Stuart Mill to the philosopher Jeremy Bentham. The former is enquiring after the 3rd and 4th volumes of Hooke's Roman History, having "recapitulated" the 1st and 2nd volumes. Sandmo points out that this seemingly unremarkable correspondence between two leading intellectuals of the time was actually written when Mill had only just turned six! Mill's almost impossible precocity serves as the ideal backdrop for describing his many later contributions -- in both economics and philosophy -- during the pages that follow.

Sandmo, a fairly eminent economist in his own right, is never less than evenhanded in his discussion of the key figures and thinkers that have shaped the development of economics. His writing is admirably free of ideological bias and I appreciated not being able to necessarily tell which side the author would personally lean to on different economic questions. That is not to say that he is never critical, however, as EE succinctly highlights the faults in many arguments and theories. (E.g. In an interesting chapter on the economic theories of Karl Marx, we are told how a falling rate of profit is a supposedly inevitable feature of capital accumulation, and how this in turn would eventually lead to the entire system collapsing. Sandmo counters (p. 133): "Each element in his chain of reasoning may be criticized", and convincingly proceeds to do exactly that.)

Of course, not everyone's favourite economist can feature prominently (or even at all) in a book that is designed above all to be concise and readable. However, I think it is fair to say that the major players are all covered in admirable depth, as well as numerous others. I particularly enjoyed the sections on the classicists (Malthus, Say, Ricardo, and Mill) and the forerunners to the "Marginal Revolution" (Gossen, Dupuit, Cournot, and Thünen). These are the kinds of tremendously important figures that are normally relegated to the footnotes in most modern economic curricula, and it was refreshing to get a full sense of their contributions and beliefs. I found it intriguing, for instance, to see how well they had often anticipated later developments in the science and continued to have relevant insights for our own economic circumstances of the present day. (It was equally interesting to get a sense of how their views have either been distorted or successfully reproduced by later thinkers.)

In summary, this book is a wonderful companion to any student of economics, and many others besides. I can easily recommend it.

More on Malthus

If you don't wish to take my word on Malthus, here's a snippet from Econlib's excellent encyclopedia entry that I've just stumbled upon:

Malthus is arguably the most misunderstood and misrepresented economist of all time. The adjective “Malthusian” is used today to describe a pessimistic prediction of the lock-step demise of a humanity doomed to starvation via overpopulation. When his hypothesis was first stated in his best-selling An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798), the uproar it caused among noneconomists overshadowed the instant respect it inspired among his fellow economists. So irrefutable and simple was his illustrative side-by-side comparison of an arithmetic and a geometric series — food increases more slowly than population — that it was often taken out of context and highlighted as his main observation. The observation is, indeed, so stark that it is still easy to lose sight of Malthus’s actual conclusion: that because humans have not all starved, economic choices must be at work, and it is the job of an economist to study those choices.

Need I remind you, Econlib is a libertarian initiative, so it's not like this is grandstanding from some left-leaning environmental institute.

Don't let be misunderstood: Malthus edition

Poor Thomas Malthus. Has there ever been a more maligned and misunderstood figure in the history of economics?

With depressingly few exceptions, both his critics and supporters seem equally uninterested in discussing what the man actually wrote. Hardly a day goes by without some mocking reference to the Malthusian Doom that never seems to arrive and its progenitor's endless list of imagined shortcomings. For their part, most "modern Malthusians" in the environmental movement are equally ignorant of what the good Rev'rend was trying to get at, despite their appeals to his authority.

To try and illustrate by way of an example, consider this article by Ivo Vegter in South Africa's Daily Maverick. I'm going to ignore the general thrust of the post -- parts of which I agree with -- and focus specifically on what he writes about Malthus:

Malthus’s theory was simple. In fact, “simplistic” would be a better word for it. He postulated (though did not prove) that human population increases geometrically, while resources increase arithmetically. Geometric growth (often called exponential growth) occurs by multiplying a given quantity every year. Arithmetic growth (also known as linear growth) involves merely adding a fixed quantity each year. No matter what, the former will always outpace the latter over time. 

Let Malthus illustrate it himself: “Taking the population of the world at any number, a thousand millions, for instance, the human species would increase in the ratio of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, &c, and subsistence as 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, &c. In two centuries and a quarter, the population would be to the means of subsistence as 512 to 10.” 

Even a non-economist can understand this trivial piece of arithmetic. The problem is that neither postulate – not geometric growth in population nor arithmetic growth in resources – was supported by empirical evidence or economic theory. In fact, since neither has anything to do with reality: asserting them probably qualifies for at least some definitions of the word “mad”.

Okay, there's a lot that needs correcting here... and this despite the fact that Ivo spends a third of his time directly quoting the man! The first thing to note is that “postulates” is the wrong word to describe Malthus’s characterisation of population and resources [read: food] growth rates. Rather, he deduced these growth rates from preceding postulates and observations about the real world. Indeed, Malthus is quite clear about what his actual postulates are: “I think I may fairly make two postulata. First, That food is necessary to the existence of man. Secondly, That the passion between the sexes is necessary and will remain nearly in its present state.”

So, we're not off to the best of starts. Still, you could argue that mixing up assumptions and subsequent deductions is perhaps a harmless offence in this case... so long as Ivo gets his basic critique right. Let's look a bit deeper at his specific criticisms then:

“The problem is that neither postulate – not geometric growth in population nor arithmetic growth in resources – was supported by empirical evidence or economic theory.”

This, particularly with regards to Malthus’ “postulate” on population growth, is quite false. Among other things, Malthus supported his theoretical arguments with empirical evidence from the newly established USA, which had doubled in size every twenty-five years. (Adam Smith had made similar observations in The Wealth of Nations two decades earlier.) The richly-endowed and untapped New World was especially relevant to Malthus, because his entire theoretical argument hinged on how population levels would hypothetically evolve free of natural constraints. Far from claiming this as the expected order of things, Malthus is very clear in his thinking [emphasis added]:

I said that population, when unchecked, increased in a geometrical ratio[...].

Let us examine whether this position be just.

I think it will be allowed, that no state has hitherto existed (at least that we have any account of) where the manners were so pure and simple, and the means of subsistence so abundant, that no check whatever has existed to early marriages; among the lower classes, from a fear of not providing well for their families; or among the higher classes, from a fear of lowering their condition in life. Consequently in no state that we have yet known has the power of population been left to exert itself with perfect freedom.

As a stylized biological assumption, I really don’t see what the problem is. Ivo again misconstrues the matter when he later writes: “Therefore, assuming geometric growth in human populations is a simplistic fallacy.” No, it is a reasonable benchmark upon which we can compare observed population growth rates!

Malthus later provided further empirical justification for his theoretical arguments in his second Essay on the Principle of Population; for instance, citing evidence from his travels in Scandinavia. I mention this not only to show that Malthus didn't simply pull these figures from his nether regions... but because it is important to note that he substantially revised upon his original essay after it was first published. Each time he undertook such a revision, he would address criticism and seek to add further evidence in support his arguments. By the 6th edition of Population, he had pulled together evidence from over 20 different countries and cultures.

If Malthus provided sound reasoning and evidence for his arguments on population growth, then he was undoubtedly on shakier ground with his assertions on food production. In fact, his downfall here was to base his arguments largely on historical observations of agricultural yields... so even then I don’t see how you could argue that there was no appeal to empirical evidence.[*] That's not to say that he didn't try to provide any theoretical underpinnings to his position, as he effectively described agricultural production as being subject to -- what we would today call -- diminishing returns to scale. From his second essay [emphasis added]:

The science of agriculture has been much studied in England and Scotland; and there is still a great portion of uncultivated land in these countries. Let us consider at what rate the produce of this island might be supposed to Increase under circumstances the most favourable to improvement. 

[...]In the next twenty-five years, it is impossible to suppose that the produce could be quadrupled. It would be contrary to all our knowledge of the properties of land. The improvement of the barren parts would be a work of time and labour; and it must be evident to those who have the slightest acquaintance with agricultural subjects that, in proportion as cultivation extended, the additions that could yearly be made to the former average produce must be gradually and regularly diminishing.

Malthus failed to grasp how technological innovation would revolutionize agricultural production, it is true. One could argue that this was at least partially due to the fact that he couldn't foresee how future discoveries of fossil fuels -- oil in particular -- would completely transform the way in which people farmed... from agricultural mechanisation to petroleum-based fertilizers.[**] However, it is abundantly clear that Malthus didn't think up baseless assumptions from which he could then make wild claims about mass starvation and future misery. His much more conservative point was that population increases would be subject to natural checks on food supply.

I'm just a soul whose intentions are gooood

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Ivo is not alone in drawing a crude caricature of Thomas Malthus. Indeed, to repeat what I said at the beginning of this post: the man might be the most misrepresented person in the history of economic thought ... which is saying something in of itself. I’m not suggesting that Malthus was correct in his Population Essay(s), because he clearly overlooked the likelihood of tremendous advances in agricultural technology. However, it’s extremely discouraging that such a profound thinker is tied to his “worst” idea, and a cartoon version at that.
__
[*] A more sophisticated argument might be to criticize Malthus for relying on a form of historicism, as opposed to empirical evidence. This is certainly a better line of attack, although not incontestable given the very broad context of his writings.
[**] In this way, he partially foreshadowed William Stanley Jevons, who actually wrote about energy matters... see here.

The best blog post that I've read so far in 2012...

... is really a reprint of this 1865 letter from an ex-slave to his old master. I'll let Letters of Note take it away:

To My Old Master

In August of 1865, a Colonel P.H. Anderson of Big Spring, Tennessee, wrote to his former slave, Jourdan Anderson, and requested that he come back to work on his farm. Jourdan — who, since being emancipated, had moved to Ohio, found paid work, and was now supporting his family — responded spectacularly by way of the letter seen below (a letter which, according to newspapers at the time, he dictated).

Rather than quote the numerous highlights in this letter, I'll simply leave you to enjoy it. Do make sure you read to the end.

(Source: The Freedmen's Book; Image: A group of escaped slaves in Virginia in 1862, courtesy of the Library of Congress.)

Dayton, Ohio,

August 7, 1865 

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee 

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance. 

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again. 

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire. 

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits. 

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me. 

From your old servant, 

Jourdon Anderson.

Given some of the reignited debates over the American Civil War and Abraham Lincoln's legacy that we've been exposed to recently, I find this a wonderfully serendipitous discovery. Beyond the simple matter of timing, it's contents serve to show up some contrarian notions of slave-owner compensation with an wistful humour and stark clarity that even Ta-Nehisi Coates can only envy.

HT: Michael Clemens

Easter Island - History revisi(onis)ted?

I've just handed in a fat micro assignment and thus finally seen the back of a hellish two weeks. Twelve-hour days (plus) have become the new norm... and then working on weekends as well. Who said university life was lark? Still, I'm acutely aware that I need to keep the odd post going so that I don't lose my readership entirely. In that spirit, I recently came across a fascinating debate concerning Easter Island.

"What's so important about Easter Island?", you may find yourself asking. Well, in short, people have long used it as cautionary tale of the human risks associated with environmental degradation. A once-stable and relatively prosperous civilization suddenly imploded as the supporting systems of their natural environment began to fail. Worse still, these wounds were self-inflicted; it was the islanders that caused the very environmental damage that brought about their demise. This idea was perhaps most memorably outlined by Jared Diamond, in his 2005 book Collapse.

Earlier this month, however, the British environmentalist Mark Lynas (whom I've mentioned favourably before) wrote a blog post that sought to overturn this standard, "ecocide" account of Easter Island's downfall. Drawing on some new archaeological research, Lynas shaped to explain why many of the traditional ideas on the subject are completely wrong. Most importantly, he claimed that the Easter Islanders were actually good stewards of their environment and were thus largely blameless for the fate that befell them. Instead, the tipping point for environmental collapse came with the arrival of European settlers, who brought the disease and invasive species (most notably rats) that ultimately decimated the indigenous plant and animal life. As Lynas's post was one aimed at refuting the orthodoxy, it probably won't surprise to learn that Jared Diamond was the primary focus of much the criticism.

So what happened next?

Well, Diamond responded to this stinging critique by penning an excellent rebuttal, which describes in some depth why the revisionist view is highly implausible (to put it kindly), and why the traditional account continues to provide the most compelling thesis. Ever the scholar, Diamond's tone is never less than respectful and thoughtful, although the evidence he cites is rather damning. I was particularly struck by his concluding paragraph:

The islanders did inadvertently destroy the environmental underpinnings of their society. They did so, not because they were especially evil or deprived of foresight, but because they were ordinary people, living in a fragile environment, and subject to the usual human problems of clashes between group interests, clashes between individual and group interests, selfishness, and limited ability to predict the future. Does that remind you of any problems that we ourselves face today? That’s why we find Easter’s story so gripping, and why it may offer us lessons.

Sage words indeed.

PS - Kudos must also go to Lynas for publishing Diamond's reply. (I believe he is currently seeking a response from some of the researchers that he initially quoted. ) This is what scientific and, I daresay, moral progress looks like. No room for sacred cows... but no indulgence of second-rate science either.

Privileging theory over evidence

It's late and my brain is in desperate need of sleep, but I've just read something very interesting on the Mises.org blog (via Twitter). In particular, Bob Murphy shapes to provide a takedown of a new book by economic anthropologist, David Graeber, on the true origins of money: Debt: The First 5,000 Years. Bob's motivation appears to stem, in large part, from the awkwardness that Graeber's thesis would imply for adherents of Austrian economics. As he writes in the introduction to his article:

Last week the popular blog "naked capitalism" ran an interview with David Graeber, an "economic anthropologist" whose new book allegedly destroys the standard account of the origin of money. If correct, Graeber's views would prove embarrassing to the Austrian School, because it was none other than Carl Menger who developed the first systematic explanation for how people went from barter to a full-blown monetary economy.

Bob then goes on to summarise Menger's position, before refuting Graeber's challenge in the body of his post... Which is all good and well, except that Graeber has provided an outstanding reply in the comments section, which rather eviscerates the original critique.

Graeber's comment is very long (broken up into six parts), but well worth reading through the whole thing to get a full sense of his arguments. In the interest of being fair to any Austrian readers, at this point I should probably say that -- as suggested by the quoted text above -- this is more a matter of pride than a fundamental attack on, say, ABCT. While awkward for Austrian sympathisers, I'm not trying to claim that the possibly of Menger being wrong in this instance serves to invalidate the edifice of Austrian Theory...[*]

That being said, it remains a very interesting topic, especially in these fractious times where the proponents of "hard money" and fiat currency are clawing at each other's throats. More fundamentally, the debate serves to highlight something closer to my own heart: The dangers of privileging theory above evidence.

As Graeber's writes:

As for the supposed refutation of my example of the village where people loan things to one another, no, [Murphy] does not get my argument right at all. First of all, we are not dealing with a situation where people borrow things from one another and expect an equivalent of exactly the same value. I suppose the certain Austrian school theories of human nature assume that's what neighbors in a moneyless economy would do with one another, but again, this just shows a flaw in those theories of human nature, because when tested against the empirical evidence, this is not what one finds.[...]  

[snip] 

I think the participants in this forum should reflect on what they consider the status of economics to be. Is it a science that generates hypotheses about empirical reality that can then be tested against the evidence, and changed or abandoned if they don’t prove to predict what’s empirically there? Or is it a kind of faith, a revealed Truth embodied in the words of great prophets (such as Van[sic] Mises) who must, by definition be correct, and whose theories must be defended whatever empirical reality throws at them – even to the extent of generating imaginary unknown periods of history where something like what was originally described “must have” taken place? 

Well said. I've expressed my scepticism about the extreme a priori approach adopted by certain Austrians before (e.g. here and here). Yes, it's true that we can deduce much about human behaviour and economic systems based on a few key assumptions -- indeed, all theory aims to do something along those lines. However, I find the notion that these simple axioms provide the foundation for understanding the full complexity of economic activity, without the need for supporting empirical evidence to be... well, nothing short of the pretence of knowledge.

[*] Indeed, from my reading of things, Graeber appears to be refuting Adam Smith's account of the barter economy as much as anyone. Let me also state for the record that I actually look forward to Bob's response. I've seen him stage a comeback before after appearing completely cornered on an issue before, so you never know...

Exploitation and Industrialisation

In the comments thread of the Meat and Veg(etarianism) post, I drew a parallel between the ethical treatment of animals and the banning of child labour. That is both involved society making a collective decision about the appropriate regulations rather than simply leaving it up to individuals to decide upon the standards themselves. The exact quote, if you're interested, was: "[L]ike many cases, I actually think that the decent treatment of living creatures is a social good deserving the requisite levels of public discourse and debate. Similarly, we have not outlawed child labour in modernised countries because it is unprofitable to firm owners, but because it is morally repugnant."

By coincidence then, here is something I happened to read last night in David Landes' masterful The Wealth and Poverty of Nations. Providing some afterthought on the industrialization of Japan and other countries (pp 381-383), Landes writes:

  The traditional account of Japan's successful and rapid industrialization rings with praise[...] It is a good, even edifying story. Yet one aspect of the Japanese achievement has not caught the attention of celebratory historians: the pain and labor that made it possible. The record of early industrialization is invariably one of hard work for low pay, to say nothing of exploitation. I use this last word, not in the Marxist sense of paying labor less than its product (how else would capital receive its reward?), but in the meaningful sense of compelling labor from people who cannot say no; so, from women and children, slaves and quasi-slaves (involuntary indentured labor). The literature of the British Industrial Revolution, for example, is full of tales of abuse[...]

  The most common ailment of these wretchedly unhappy children  [sent to work in the textile mills, coal mines and so on] was a nervous stomach. Small wonder that many fell victim to sexual predators and went on to prostitution. It seemed a promotion. 

  The high social costs of British industrialization reflect the shock of unpreparedness and the strange notion that wages and conditions of labor came from a voluntary agreement between free agents. Not until the British got over these illusions, in regard first to children, then to women, did they intervene in the work place and introduce protected labor legislation. [...]

  The European countries that followed England on the path of modern industry had their own labor problems and scandals, though less serious, largely because they had had warning and were able to introduce protections by anticipation.

Remember, this from arguably the foremost economic historian of recent times and in a book that was, among other things, praised for "unashamedly bang[ing] the drum for the liberal ideals of freedom, hard work and open markets" by the FT and a score of other reviewers. Your dyed-in-red, protectionist, trade-unionist Landes is not. (His snipe at the Marxist conception of "exploitation" direct evidence of this.) Yet his views on the dangers of unfettered industrialism (capitalism?) are laid out quite succinctly above. Like him, I believe that history clearly shows there to be asymmetries of power and information in economic relationships which warrant the protection of certain parts of our society.

"But the one on the left looks happy!"

As an afterthought on the paragraph highlighted above ("the strange notion that wages and the conditions of labor came from a voluntary agreement between free agents"), this is surely analogous to cases of domestic violence. We don't stand idly by while women (or men) suffer abuse at the hands of their partners on the flimsy defense that they are engaged in a relationship of their own accord. Instead, we actively support them through protective structures (legal and police enforcement) that are decided upon and borne by society as a whole because that is the only morally just course of action.

Passage of the day - Of Columbus, Conquistadors and Cruelty

So I'm a few days late, but Monday was Columbus Day for our friends over States' side. I know this because Aguanomics mentioned it at the time, offering the following aphorism:

The Europeans brought technology and used resources for population growth. The locals would have preferred to use the technology for themselves, but they didn't have the guns.

Anyway, the above reminded me of a great passage I read a while ago in David Landes' The Wealth and Poverty of Nations:

The scarcity of gold was a disappointment, but [Columbus] made the best of things and assured that these islands could be an abundant source of slaves[...] Caribbean history after the coming of the white man was in large part the replacement of people by cattle, followed by a repeopling with black slaves to work the sugar plantations. 

The process of depopulation was hastened by massacre, barbarous cruelty, deep despair. The natives committed suicide , abstained from sex, aborted their fetuses, killed their babies. They also fell by the tens and hundreds and thousands to Old World pathogens (smallpox, influenza). The Spanish debated whether the savages they encountered had a soul and were human; but the record makes clear where the savagery lay. When Columbus met his first Indians, he could not get over their friendliness; to this the Spaniards, frustrated for gold, returned bestialities unworthy of beasts. (p. 71)

You can read the whole chapter here. (The most graphic bit actually follows directly from the quoted section. Among other acts of savagery, there is a particularly gruesome sentence involving the treatment of pregnant women...)

On the subject of brutal Spanish incursions into the Americas, it would be rude not to include the following Neil Young classic:

Young does, of course, rather play down the violence that was endemic in some parts of South America prior to the Europeans arriving. Landes actually has a very good line on this issue in a later chapter when discussing a question posed by another eminent scholar, Jared Diamond: Why did the Incas behave so naively (stupidly?) in their dealings with the Spanish, when the latter were so consistently treacherous? Diamond suggested that it was a matter of innocence: The Spanish were well versed in the devious history of man and empires, while the Incas had "no personal experience of any other invaders from overseas... had not even heard (or read) of similar threats to anyone else, anywhere else, anytime previously in history". However, having listed some of the stark cruelties which had characterised the pre-European Inca Empire, Landes reasonably counters: "But the Incas should have known themselves." (p. 108)

PS - If you're into covers... well, I am. The Dave Matthews Band and Warren Hayes do a very respectable version of "Cortez the Killer" live in Central Park here.