The The Not So Wild 1st (first) editon Text Only

by Terry L. Anderson

Mention of the American West usually evokes images of rough and tumble cowboys, ranchers, and outlaws. In contrast, The Not So Wild, Wild West casts America's frontier history in a new framework that emphasizes the creation of institutions, both formal and informal, that facilitated cooperation rather than conflict. Rather than describing the frontier as a place where heroes met villains, this book argues that everyday people helped carve out legal institutions that tamed the West.The authors emphasize that ownership of resources evolves as those resources become more valuable or as establishing property rights becomes less costly. Rules evolving at the local level will be more effective because local people have a greater stake in the outcome. This theory is brought to life in the colorful history of Indians, fur trappers, buffalo hunters, cattle drovers, homesteaders, and miners. The book concludes with a chapter that takes lessons from the American frontier and applies them to our modern "frontiers"—the environment, developing countries, and space exploration.

Genres: History, Economics, American History, Nonfiction, Law, American, Westerns

Hardcover

First published May 4, 2004

About the author

Terry Lee Anderson

Reviews

[Chris Pacia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Certainly among the political mainstream but even among certain groups of libertarians there is a belief that government is necessary to define and enforce property rights. It is thought that property rights must be imposed by an outside force and cannot evolve endogenously. The Not So Wild, Wild West demonstrates conclusively time and again that in areas of the Western Frontier that were settled before governments arrived property rights did evolve naturally with the help of institutional entrepreneurs who defined and protected such rights.

Not only did a vibrant, peaceful, and cooperative social order develop absent formal government, but in almost all cases where the government attempted to impose order, such as with the Homestead Act, it disrupted the natural social order and left settlers worse off than if it had simply done nothing.

The Western Frontier offers up a case study in practical anarchism and Anderson and Hill have done an excellent job of documenting the achievements of institutional entrepreneurs and debunking the Hollywood caricature of the West as a wild, lawless place.

[Jason Hallmark · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an important book! I picked this up to read initially because I became very tired with the worn out old charge that free market solutions are simply a recreation of "the Wild Wild west". What I was treated to was a very through analysis of the historical record that clearly demonstrated that free individuals can, and do, tend to produce systems that reduce conflict and enhance conservation of resources. Hollywood, simply put, has it completely wrong. The conclusions of what this book lays out has far reaching implications for issues pertaining to the environment, and the developing world. It is a must read!

[Shane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four and a half stars. An economics treatise on the wild west; it seems highly unusual. To tell the truth it is very unusual. This only helps to prove it's many points however. Chief among them, the wild, wild west wasn't.

The book starts off slowly and seems a bit dry. This passes by the third chapter when the author starts to delve into the overlooked realities supported by historical examples. This book examines settler relations with Amer-Indians, the '49ers and other miners with their claims not only for mining but also water, it also examines the impacts of the fur trade in both beaver and bison lastly it examines the governance of the many wagon trains that crossed the plains. These many and diverse examples are each examined through the lens of property rights and the 'rents' (property values) they generate.

There was violence in the west through-out it's frontier history. However most of that violence was committed by the federal government either against it's citizens or against the native populace. This book uses basic economic principles to examine and explain when and why the transition from trading to taking took place in many instances.

The last chapter was a bit of a surprise but thoroughly enjoyable. It took the fundamentals examined in the earlier chapters and then applied them in a 'what if' fashion to present and future frontiers.

For anyone interested in either economics, frontier history or both this is a highly recommended read.

[Braden · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm sure most of us think of the wild west and picture John Wayne-style westerns, filled with anarchy, duels, and battles with Indians. But the reality is that the mid-19th century settlers of the western frontier were able to avoid violence and anarchy in a lawless area through collective action. Where property rights are poorly defined, they cooperated to clarify them. The institutional savvy that these pioneers had is initially mind-blowing, and then inspiring.

I recommend for anyone who wants to learn more about law, voluntary social groups, collective action, and politics.

Theme: collective action

[Jerrod · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a wonderful introduction to how to think about the development of institutions. I read this before reading a few fictional westerns. The details of cattle rustling and the organization of wagon trains were great. Beaver trappers in the Rockies would set up meeting spots months in advance with re-supply wagons. In the chapter about beavers and buffalo, the authors remind the readers of the important point that, when describing something as a tragedy of the commons, the total value of collective action for conservation must be greater than the sum of individual benefits from exploitation. In the cases of the beaver and buffalo, it appears that this was not the case. This, however, is done through reasoning about data that participants in these markets only had access to after exploitation. Identifying commons tragedies ex ante would be much harder. The analyses are very Coasean with regards to externalities and bargaining through property rights (with the concomitant criticisms that come with that). Because a big part of the authors' thesis is about violence in the West, I wish they had included some mortality measures or actual measures of violence (beyond the number of violent encounters between US Army and Indians). This would have given a better perspective on the transition from wild to not so wild facilitated by the development of institutions.

A criticism: the authors note that violent encounters with Native Americans increased with the presence of the US standing army. The way they discuss the earlier period of Indian settlement and re-settlement makes it seem like the Indians did not take into account the potential for violence if they refused to "trade" their land. If the US government asks you to relocate in exchange for X, then that is more akin to the mafia enforcer coming to your business and saying "that sure is a nice shop you got there... hate to see anything bad happen to it." In addition, while the violence did increase with the standing army's presence (lower the costs to citizens for calling on the government's help), this also occurred later in the century when the available options for Indians were more limited. I know time trends were most likely used in the regression, but I'm just not sure that this reduced form analysis takes the complexity of the situation.

[Evan Þ. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just like so many fun history books, this's a close look at people being people and setting things up together in an area of history that I hadn't really looked at since my childhood. Here, it's people in the American West, and unique sorts of property rights.

Anderson digs into things like "rights to graze this many cattle in this valley," or "rights to round up someone else's cattle but you need to compensate them," or "rights to follow this vein of silver," or contracts chartering wagon trains, which were invented by the people involved without any government action till after the fact if then. He also looks into times it didn't work, such as the beaver trade which "trapped out" most of America too quickly with different sources not talking to each other fast enough. I can see how this worked after the fact - and I can marvel at how it worked so well for so long.

The other thing that I hadn't noticed till this book is how dynamic the West was. The beaver trade and Oregon Trail each only lasted a decade or two from their first tentative pioneers; the great cattle drives lasted longer but only by changing their destinations. The West was settled so quickly.

[Patrick Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

23 Oct. 2018 - I read this about 15 years or so ago and just got reminded of it by a very good review by Shane here on Goodreads. I fully agree with his review and have very fond memories of the book. It is a marvelous use of property rights and economics analysis for an important historical question - how wild and lawless and violent was the old west? I was impressed by how the book dealt with the question and I bet you will be too, if you give it a chance.

[Liberté · Rating 5 out of 5]

Preconceptions about the Wild, Wild West will not survive this book. Anderson and Hill debunk the popular thesis that the Old West was a place of anarchy and lawlessness before the entry of government. Instead, they argue it was a place of efficient wealth creation and maximization between private parties who came up with creative solutions to the unique challenges presented by the West. Subtitled "Property Rights on the Frontier", it may as well have been called "How The West Was Won" - not through aggression and rent dissipation, but through clear property rights and trade. Anderson and Hill also skillfully do away with the myth of the savage Indian tribes warring with all settlers, and Americans stealing land by force. Explaining economic systems in the context of scarcity and resources, the authors touch on settlers, homesteading, cattlemen, the military, irrigation and more in this excellent, thoughtful piece.

[Sean Rosenthal]

"While rent seeking to influence the government to redistribute property rights might be legitimized by democracy, its impact on the incentive to make productive investments and promote prosperity differs little from that of war. Indeed, war is the ultimate form of rent seeking: one side expends effort to defend its territory and assets against the aggression of another. This form of rent seeking is the very essence of the wild West, where Indians fought the influx of whites into their territories, cattlemen fought sheepmen over grass, miners fought one another for gold claims, and farmers fought over water. In each of these cases, the game is negative-sum because only one side wins, but in the process, the winners as well as the losers expend resources and human lives . . . [H]owever, such fighting was far less prevalent than suggested by traditional historians."

-Terry Anderson & Peter Hill, The Not So Wild, Wild West,

[Jessica DeWitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

This treatment of the West is an amusing Libertarian take on the good ol' days of the West, when the government didn't get in the way of an individual's right to the land and ability to take care of their own issues. Although heavily ideologically driven (Anderson is a leading champion of the concept of free market environmentalism), one does learn a lot about western property rights, information on which you will be hard-pressed to find elsewhere.

I do not necessarily agree with this interpretation, but I always admire studies that do not hesitate to make provocative and interesting claims. These kinds of studies are particularly welcome in the realm of American West history where studies tend to be seeming duplicates of one another.

[Trey Malone · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books in the "new institutional economics" space. Anderson and Hill do a masterful job of identifying their key contributions and defending their hypotheses with historical examples from the Western frontier. Even if you are comfortable with how economists think about property rights, you will enjoy the application you will find in this text. If nothing else, you will find this book different from anything you've ever read about westward expansion in the United States.

[Paul S Vigil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought it was a fun read...especially since I was able to meet the author and he sat in on a class for us.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

Overall interesting.