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The Not So Wild, Wild West (2021)mises.org/mises-daily/not-so-wild-wild-west
211 sats \ 22 comments \ @Undisciplined 5h econ
By Terry Anderson & P.J. Hill
It appears in the absence of formal government, that the Western frontier was not as wild as legend would have us believe.
  • The West, although often dependent upon market peacekeeping agencies, was, for the most part, orderly.
  • Different standards of justice did prevail and various preferences for rules were expressed through the market place.
  • Competition in defending and adjudicating rights does have beneficial effects. Market agencies provided useful ways of measuring the efficiency of government alternatives. The fact that government’s monopoly on coercion was not taken as seriously as at present meant that when that monopoly was poorly used, market alternatives arose.
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69 sats \ 16 replies \ @kepford 5h
I've heard this before and it makes sense. Our view of the frontier west was mostly shaped by Hollywood and even during the time it was dramatized.
I recently saw a video that is supposed to be of Virgil Earp the nephew of Wyatt Earp talking about how much more honest the people were.
My takeaway which is an over-simplification is that when we go back to the earlier days of the US you had a more cohesive moral culture largely based on the influence of Christianity. Not to say that people were perfect or good Christians but even when you have a plurality of people that hold to a moral virtue system this has affects on those that do not follow that moral system from the place of an actual belief in God.
The problems with multiculturalism are numerous. When people do not have a general agreed upon view of morality democracy isn't gonna fix that. Nor is any other system. Monopoly government doesn't fix this. Any governance system works better when you have a people with more commonly held worldviews to each other.
There is a value in diversity and general curiosity about other cultures but this in and of itself isn't a moral ethic. Even a system as terrible as socialism will work better on a small scale with a more monolithic culture. It will fail as it did in Sweden but social welfare programs work better in a monolithic culture.
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42 sats \ 15 replies \ @kepford 5h
I know this will trigger a lot of people that hate Christianity or maybe more fairly have had very bad experiences with "Christians" but I think you can point to Japan as well. Many of the issues we see in our society seem to be less of an issue there.
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95 sats \ 14 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 4h
I'd be curious for a deep dive on why violent crime is so rare in East Asian cultures.
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42 sats \ 9 replies \ @kepford 3h
I assume you aren't including war...
Honor based culture has to be a factor.
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0 sats \ 8 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 2h
Yeah, basically just individual level assaults and murders are extremely rare.
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42 sats \ 7 replies \ @kepford 2h
I think it would easier to make a case for the culture vs genetics. I will put it this was. Where I live gangs with tons of violence are very common with descendants of these nations. Just a couple generations removed from their home cultures. I'd need to see some pretty hard evidence
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42 sats \ 6 replies \ @kepford 2h
on the other hand gangs are common in honor cultures.
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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 2h
One of my Chinese friends thinks East Asians just more naturally comply with authorities.
In a gang context, the gang becomes the authority over the "official" government.
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42 sats \ 3 replies \ @SimpleStacker 4h
Is genetic predisposition an allowable explanation?
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 4h
I'll allow it, if you think it's supportable. Please elaborate.
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42 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 3h
I don't have any evidence, I just wanted to know if that's an allowable conclusion, should the evidence lead there.
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30 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 3h
It's a fairly obvious hypothesis to entertain.
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42 sats \ 2 replies \ @k00b 5h
I have a book I bought hoping to read about their legal systems then. It's on my short list of i-hope-i-get-the-desire-to-read-this books.
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50 sats \ 1 reply \ @Undisciplined OP 5h
Does it have the same title? The authors of this article expanded it into a full book.
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42 sats \ 0 replies \ @k00b 5h
oh lol, it does. I just went looking for it on my bookshelf. small book world
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42 sats \ 1 reply \ @SimpleStacker 4h
In Abilene, supposedly one of the wildest of the cow towns, “nobody was killed in 1869 or 1870. In fact, nobody was killed until the advent of officers of the law, employed to prevent killings.” Only two towns, Ellsworth in 1873 and Dodge City in 1876, ever had 5 killings in any one year. Frank Prassel states in his book subtitled A Legacy of Law and Order, that “if any conclusion can be drawn from recent crime statistics, it must be that this last frontier left no significant heritage of offenses against the person, relative to other sections of the country.”
When I read a paragraph like this, I get kinda suspicious. Perhaps instead of saying "no one was killed", it might be more accurate to say "no kills were recorded"
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30 sats \ 0 replies \ @Undisciplined OP 4h
True, but these were also fairly small towns where a killing would have been big news.
I've seen other accounts of how little ammunition was actually available at the time and how that alone made widespread violence pretty implausible.
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