Libertarian Book Reviews

The Origins of Poverty and Wealth

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I, like most Americans, remain rationally ignorant of the political currents outside of my own country. Other countries might be better suppliers of opera, cheese, or ancient ruins, but they have had little new to teach us about liberty, at least not since Hayek came to Chicago in 1950. That’s my prejudice and I want to make that clear up front. However, after reading Rainer Zitelmann’s new book, The Origins of Poverty and Wealth, I’ve somewhat revised my views. More on that later.

The title of Zitelmann’s book is an apparent nod to Adam Smith’s pivotal An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, a book which is still highly relevant 249 years after its publication. Why are some nations prosperous while others languish in backwards poverty? The question was timely in Smith’s day and has remained so ever since.

Zitelmann, who comes to the question from the perspective of a sociologist and historian, earlier had commissioned public opinion surveys around the world on perceptions of wealth and capitalism. The results from these surveys featured prominently in two earlier books, The Rich in Public Opinion (which we reviewed here) and The Power of Capitalism.

Zitelmann’s new book is a travelogue of sorts, covering a tour he made of 30 countries he visited over the last couple of years, where he spoke to various liberal groups, at universities and other institutions, and with liberal politicians. Each chapter follows roughly the same course: the author describes the country’s recent political and economic history, tells of the various pro-market groups and individuals he meets with, discusses prospects for the growth of liberalism in those countries, and relates outcomes back to perceptions regarding capitalism. Generally, countries that harbor resentment toward capitalism and the wealthy, like Serbia, are doing poorly, and those who have positive attitudes toward wealth and free markets, like Poland and Vietnam, are doing better.

This is not a deeply analytical book. It is anecdotal and entertaining. I enjoyed it. But did I profit from reading it? I believe I did. The great investor, Warren Buffett, one said, “It’s good to learn from your mistakes. It’s better to learn from other people’s mistakes.” And, one might add, to learn from the successes of others. Any nation has but one timeline, one history, and one path to its future. To the extent we can learn from the successes and failures of other nations, which decisions lead to wealth and which to poverty, we can better guide our own path. That’s the value here, the opportunity to learn about alternative timelines for a society, and perhaps discern warnings signs in our own.

(This review was based on complimentary review copy of the book.)

Reclamation

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In the not too distant future, after the Second Civil War, two seceded territories share a precarious détente with the United States. The Texas Territory, which includes much of the south, is a conservative state. The Colorado Territory, on the other hand, contains the southwest and the Great Plains, and is a pacifist, anarchist stateless society. The rump United States, suffering from bad economic policies and cut off from the Texas oil, struggles, resentfully, through a deep depression. This is the setup at the start of Jon Christian’s novel, Reclamation.

Amidst this uneasy balance, the United States brutally attacks the Colorado Territory, attempting to reclaim that territory. This act sets in motion a series of actions and reactions, involving a group of family members, friends, colleagues, an old love interest and a new one, who work through official channels and outside of them, to keep Colorado free.

This is a quick and fun read. Christian keeps the plot moving, cutting between events in Colorado, Texas and United States, as the protagonists converge toward the amor vincit omnes ending.

If I could make one change, it would have been to give a more in-depth illustration of how the economy in the Colorado Territory worked. One of the benefits of libertarian fiction, or for that matter any kind of utopian/dystopian fiction, is that it gives us the opportunity to explore other possible systems, to experience, through the lens of fiction, a society constructed on different principles than our own. Perhaps there is room for a prequel here?

The Micronation Revolution

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Four hundred years ago an oppressed religious minority, after escaping England and after a sojourn in the Netherlands, arrived on the shores of New England to start a life in the New World.

Certainly there was no shortage of people who were oppressed for their religion in those days. In recent memory, Protestants and Catholics had fought against each for control in England. But there were also the minority sects within Protestantism, the dissenting churches, who faced various legal liabilities for their non-participation in the established Church of England. Among these were the Puritans, who sought to reform the established Church to eliminate what it saw as remnants of Pagan and Popish ritual.

But among the Puritans was an even smaller group, the Separatists, who saw the Church in England as irredeemably fallen. They were a minority of a minority. They wanted to remove themselves from this corruption and start again in a new land. These families were the Pilgrims who settled in Plymouth Colony in 1620, and their separatist colony is a historical metaphor motivating the need for, and the prospects for success for micronations, in William Otey’s new book, The Micronation Revolution: How the Creation of Small, Free and Sovereign Nations Will Peacefully Transform Government on Earth.

Otey’s book is in four parts, the first of which makes the argument for why a divorce is necessary, why the U.S. government is irredeemably fallen, and why no amount of internal reform can fix it.

The second part describes how the liabilities outlined in the first part can be addressed by the “clean sheet” approach of a micronation. Part of the argument is that a micronation, by doing well, would tend to provide a form of competition that might exert pressure on other states to reform.

The third part looks at some specific modes by which a micronation might come about. Seasteading and the purchase of land from a money-poor/land-rich nation are given as the two most promising approaches.

The fourth and final part recapitulates and summarizes the argument.

There is much here to like and agree with, and also much I might want to question. I think this largely comes down to whether you are an optimist or pessimist. I’m the latter, and Otey the former. For example, Otey is optimistic about the ability of the press and public opinion to keep large nations from predatory behavior toward micronations:

[I]f large, violent and corrupt governments want to try and stop seasteading illegally and through brute force, they will have a galaxy of cameras pointed directly at them and the images will be broadcast across the entire globe.

I tend to expect the worst. I’d give even odds that the “free” press is actually the lackey of the state, and that large social media companies can and would bury stories at will. And all a government needs to do is allege (no actual evidence needed) “child abuse” or “sex trafficking” in the micronation and the press will fall in line behind the government. Remember Waco?

And as far as a classical liberal micronation being a beacon to other countries, inspiring their citizens to expect more, and demand more from their own governments, I think this is a double-edged sword. Alexander Dubček was such a beacon in Czechoslovakia in 1968. Many thought his reforms would inspire change in neighboring states. It did motivate change, of a sort. “Prague Spring” ended with tanks in the streets, when Czechoslovakia was simultaneously invaded by the Soviet Union, Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary, and Dubček removed from office. Evidently, not all states welcome competition.

That said, Otey’s argument is worth hearing and making your own judgement about. It is an important topic, one we should be thinking about and debating. For this reason, I’d recommend getting a copy of The Micronation Revolution and giving it a read.

The Rich in Public Opinion

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My 11th grade honors English teacher was fond of the New England poets, Frost, Dickinson, Millay, etc. One day we read we read the poem “Richard Cory,” by the Maine native, Edwin Arlington Robinson. I encourage you to read it at the above link, or even better, watch someone else read it and gauge their reaction.

How did you feel after reading the poem? I can say that in our classroom, in 1985, there was an audible chuckle after the last stanza:

I remember Mr. Fyhr’s response to my front-row laughter, perhaps the loudest in the classroom: “Mr. Weir, are you a sadist?” I thought that term referred to men who like to spank or be spanked (which one was unclear to me at the time), so I blushed and said, “No, sir” and was quiet for the duration of the class.

This was 35 years ago. Until today I had entirely forgotten about this incident. But today I question that past me. How is it that I, a sixteen-year-old boy, had views regarding a fictional wealthy man when I, at the time, knew no wealthy person in real life? Why did I take some pleasure in a depiction of a rich man’s demise? And why was this poem assigned?

These questions come to me after reading Dr. Rainer Zitelmann’s new book, The Rich in Public Opinion: What we Think When We Think About Wealth (Washington, D.C.: Cato Institute, 2020). This is an important contribution into public perceptions regarding the wealthy and how these perceptions vary according to a wide range of variables (country, age, education level, sex, income, etc.)

The book is in three parts, the first being a review of the literature concerning prejudice and stereotyping in general. Zitelmann focuses in on a model of how we evaluate members of out-groups, along the two dimensions of competence and warmth. There is a good treatment on theories of envy and how it can be measured. He also discusses a psychological “compensation” tendency by which members of a high-competence out-group are ascribed low moral attributes, or are thought to be less happy or satisfied, as a way to resolve our own cognitive dissonance. He also discusses how these tendencies can manifest themselves as schadenfreude, that delicious German word meaning “sadness-joy,” where we sometimes take pleasure in the harm that comes to to others.

Zitelmann notes that, although there has been a fair amount of research looking at downward-classism (public perceptions of the poor), there has not been an adequate treatment of upward-classism (public perceptions of the rich).

(One work I wish he had noted is The Anti-Capitalist Mentality (1954) by Ludwig von Mises. It would have been interesting to read Zitelmann’s thoughts on this early contribution on the subject.)

The second part of the book reviews in depth the results of a survey Zitelmann commissioned, looking at perceptions of the rich. This survey involved the same questions asked in Germany, France, the United States and the United Kingdom. (The complete text of the survey is in an appendix.)

There are numerous tables and charts here, and many interesting findings, though the prose in this section does tend to be a forced march of passages like:

Thus, 28 percent of low earners but only 12 percent of high earners thought people who are rich mainly have good luck. Moreover, 33 percent of low earners but only 15 percent of those in the highest-income group…

This is the meat of this section, but it is hard to digest in large doses. I think it might have worked better to have the survey summarized in a set of infographics and tables, and omit the verbal recapitulation.

The survey questions also yielded information on the prevalence of certain patterns of thinking, including scapegoating, zero-sum thinking, and what Zitelmann calls the “employee mindset,” where by a person thinks of compensation in terms of hours and exertion, rather than supply and demand, and holds this as a norm against high executive compensation.

There were several notable findings in the survey, including:

  • Americans and English perceptions of the rich were far more positive than in Germany and France.
  • Although in other countries (Germany, France and UK) the tendency was for younger respondents to view the rich more favorably than the older respondents did, in the U.S. the trend went the opposite way, and the young were the ones who looked most disfavorably on the rich.
  • Most respondents, across the board, were not personally acquainted with a millionaire. But of those who were, the traits they ascribed to wealthy people were far more favorable.

Part three, in a sense, suggests how that last bullet point might have come about. It looks at representations of the rich in newspapers and magazines, in online forums, and in movies. It essentially finds that the portrayals are quite close to the perceptions measured in the survey, in other words, biases against the rich.

Weighing in at 410 pages, plus 673 endnotes and a lengthy bibliography, The Rich in Public Opinion should be the standard reference on the subject for years to come. I join with Zitelmann in hoping that his survey approach can be extended to look at a wider range of geographies. This is a thought-provoking book, and I’ll certainly be referring to it in the future.

(This review was based on complimentary review copy of the book.)

iPony: Blueprint for a New America

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Conventional wisdom says that a presidential candidate’s campaign book ought to strike a balance between erudition and populism, demonstrate deepness of thought as well as make an appeal to the working man. Vermin Supreme is unconventional, so his political manifesto, iPony: Blueprint for a New America, is none of these things. Or all of these things. It is really hard to say.

At one level we have here an dystopian, post-apocalyptic thriller, a mashup of Planet of the Apes, Omega Man (one of the characters is named “Chuck Heston”), the Chronicles of Narnia, 1984, King Kong, and every schlocky B-film from the 1950s that featured a brain in a jar.

At another level this book provides barbed commentary on our own political system. Unintended consequences abound. An entrenched bureaucracy is everywhere. Regulations are overbearing and intrusive. Political leadership inept. And in a further break from tradition, the author places himself as the inept leader in his own political manifesto:

Dictator Forever Vermin Supreme was completely and utterly insane…How these deranged hobo made it all the way into the White House was still not completely understood.

Imagine Bastiat meets Swift meets the Harvard Lampoon meets Netflix, and you get the idea.

Accompanying the text are full-page drawings from a a dozen or so artists.

I can’t say I entirely “get” Vermin Supreme and his style of political protest, but I think I understand him more than I did before. Yes, he is absurd. But perhaps that is the very point. Is it not also absurd that the government simultaneously spends taxpayer money to subsidize tobacco farmers as well as to persuade people not to smoke? That we have waged a 70 year “war on poverty” that has left the poverty rate right where it started? That we spend $50 billion/year on foreign aid but have 15 million children here living in poverty? That I’m writing this from a government-enforced quarantine here in the “Live Free or Die” state? That Donald Trump is president? Given what we have as reality, perhaps Vermin Supreme is the sanest among us? Probably not…