From: mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,soc.culture.usa,alt.activism
Subject: Re: [misc.activism.progressive] Clinton Office Requests Comments
Date: 22 Jan 1993 17:35:32 GMT
Organization: CenterLine Software, Inc.
NNTP-Posting-Host: 140.239.2.36

In article <SLAGLE.93Jan20155257@sgi417.msd.lmsc.lockheed.com> slagle@lmsc.lockheed.com writes:
>In article <1jet6aINNp5j@armory.centerline.com>, mrh@centerline.com (Mike Huben) writes:
>
>> In article <SLAGLE.93Jan16012830@sgi417.msd.lmsc.lockheed.com> slagle@lmsc.lockheed.com writes:
>
>>>Perhaps then you will explain to us why the same sort of economic
>>>boom did not accompany the similar scope of land redistribution
>>>in Mexico and in our sister continent of South America.  Looks
>>>to me like a reasonably useful set of control cases.
>
>> You really ought to be able to answer this one yourself, so let's play
>> Socratic Method.
>
>> 1)  Was the scope really similar?  What was the cultivated acreage at the
>> beginning and end of the two redistributions?  (Hint: the entire acreage
>> of the original 13 colonies in cultivation was probably less than the
>> acreage of Iowa.)
>
>> 2) Was the farmland redistributed top-quality, virgin land as
>> it was in the US, or was it marginal, or already exhausted?
>
>> 3) Was the distribution in quantities that created economically
>> strong farmsteads (40 acres in much of the US for prime land)
>> or was it around enough for subsistance?
>
>> 4) Was there an agricultural system (such as northern-European
>> style farming) held in abeyance until the redistribution,
>> resulting in a change to a more productive style of
>> agriculture?
>
>> 5)  What other differences can you think of that might apply?
>
>You're just blowing smoke with numbers one and two, unless you
>think there was more arable land in what is now the US than in
>Mexico and South America combined.

Well yes, there is.  Both in terms of amount suitable for sustainable crop
production and amount suitable for livestock.  Keep in mind that most tropical
soils are easily exhausted in just a few years, which is one of the reasons
why native peoples have used slash and burn methods.

>Number four assumes facts not in evidence.

What do you mean?  With the exception of a few additional crops, there was
almost a direct transplant of northern european agricultural practices
throughout the northeast and midwest, which have proven to be more or less
sustainable over vast acreages.  Unlike Central and South America.

>And number five is just a sneer.

Only if you're too ignorant to think of more.  :-)

>As for number three, we can agree it would seem, that governments
>have the power to interfere negatively on the ability of the
>people to perform, since the distribution of lands in the
>southern tier tended to be to larger, wealthy landholders.  I've
>got no problem with that conclusion.

A clear example here of libertarian filtering: only able to see the negative
side of government, never granting any positive acheivement.

One of the major alternatives to giving the land away in allotments was to
sell it.  Selling it would have resulted in a few, rich absentee landowners
at the end of the speculation (which would have priced the land out of the
range of farmers.)

>But what you haven't yet
>demonstrated is that the scheme perpetrated on the homesteaders
>in the US was in any sense optimal.

Please demonstrate that any event in the past was optimal, and then we'll
see if I can use those methods.

>Perhaps even less government
>interference in the distribution of land would have worked
>better.  Perhaps the hands off result would not have differed
>appreciably from the situation that obtained.  Perhaps it would
>have been worse.  But you're guilty of the same charge that you
>hurl at others, of assuming the effect is a result of your pet
>theory.  We know that governments can foul up the works, but we
>can never know if they got it right.

The US created an enormous class of propertied, prosperous farmers for more
than 100 years, a social engineering success unparallelled in history.
This wasn't "an effect of my pet theory": it was a deliberate, public
decision that worked the way it was expected to.  It was a decision based
on a vast amount of (then recent) experience in observing redistribution of
land in the New World over 200 years in many states and nations.  Read some
history.

Perhaps it was not optimal.  You would be hard pressed to show that it was
not the best done yet, let alone present a methodology that would make
better results (once you define what flavor of optimality you want.)

Mike Huben

"Enough of acting the infant who has been told so often how he was found under
a cabbage that in the end he remembers the exact spot in the garden and the
kind of life he led there before joining the family circle."   Samuel Beckett
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian