From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Wed Apr 09 2003 - 02:40:36 MDT
Damien S. writes
> Lee Corbin wrote:
>
> > one owns, any effort to remold economies into "preferred"
> > directions is harmful. The sad story of what happens when
>
> Do you believe there are any malignant distributions of property?
Oh, yes!
> Such as one where one person owns all the land? Or would
> redistribution there still be a violation of the sacred
> rights of property?
That's exactly the right question, and it was the one asked
by a number of American administrations in the 1950s - 1980s,
when they were doing whatever they could---hang preconceptions
and ideology---to keep nations in Latin America and Africa
from falling into the hands of the Russians.
So they *encouraged* redistribution of land in a number of
notable instances. They too (like you and me, I think)
understood that for all the land to be concentrated in the
hands of so few people was far from optimal in terms of the
incentives of the people and the economy to generate wealth.
Unfortunately, the forceful redistribution of the property
UNDERMINED what existing respect there was for property rights,
and the new beneficiaries didn't feel that they had come by
the property legally, and neither did anyone else.
Here is what Tom Bethell writes in "The Noblest Triumph"
in the introduction to the chapter "Why Isn't The Whole World
Developed?", p. 186:
"Observing the maldistribution of property and income in the
Third World, experts from the West could see that something
needed to be changed. But their diagnosis was usually in error.
The underdeveloped countries were some how "feudal,", it was
believed. Addressing the General Assembly of the United
Nations in September 1950, Secretary of State Dean Acheson
discussed "the problems of the use oand ownership of land",
in the underdeveloped world. As he waw it, the problem was
one of "distribution." Where redistribution had been carried
out, the result had been "to give the individual farmer an
opportunity to work for himself and to improve his status."
Thereafter, land reform was doggedly pursued by American
officials for 35 years. But it did not go to the root of
the problem. In fact, it created new ones. It is exceedingly
difficult to create property rights that are legitimate, and
respected by all, by expropriating the property of some purely
on the grounds that they are the wealthiest ownwers. Frequently,
the effect was more to delegitimize property than to redistribute
it. In a number of countries, including Chile, Vietnam, Iran,
and El Salvador, the efforts of land reformers undermined the
local economy and contributed to the political turmoil that for
a number of years made new on the front pages of our newspapers.
And in the chapter he discusses what happened to property in all
those countries. Often, he quotes De Soto. Land reform had been
instituted by the Americans in Japan in 1945, and had been a
great success. Ever since then, "well intentioned people felt
that they could be entrusted with Leninist means in order to
achieve Jeffersonian ends. And to them, the distribution of
property was more important that its security" (big mistake).
In a subsection entitled "Things Go Wrong", he writes
Latin American leaders saw billions of foreign aid dollars
heading their way if they obliged Washington. But they
could not longer "be bought off with trinkets," one warned.
At the conference wetting up the Alliance for Progress,
Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon said that perhaps 20
billion would be forthcoming by the end of the 1960's.
Che Guevera challenged Dillon to put that in writing. The
Americans, led by Richard Goodwin and Arthur Schlesihger,
made sure that progressive policies---land reform, higher
taxes on the rich---were implemented in return.
Then he tells the sad story of Chile, where the new program was
to be tried out first. In the 1964 election, the CIA spent three
million dollars to defeat the Marxist candidate Allende, and the
U.S. ambassador
told an interviewer that the U.S. believed in land reform
"as an act of humanity". He caused a stir by adding that
"from a social viewpoint, private property is not an unlimited
right."
As you read the whole book, you see how fatal an attitude this is,
and how it fits in with the explanation that from 1825-present,
people in the West have forgotten the importance of private property.
(Adam Smith and quite a number of recognizable people knew quite
well and said so, but not often enough, so taken for granted it
was, before 1825 or so.)
Anyway, an ally of Castro's working in Chile oversaw the redistribution,
which stripped huge amounts of the land from its owners. But it worked
out so badly, that it actually helped Allende come to power. Then
under Allende, the process was completed. The author takes several
more pages to tell the whole story, and I'd like to quote it all,
but cannot.
Lee
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