Friedrich Hayek dedicated The Road to Serfdom to “the socialists of all parties.” In part, the book was an extension of his 1933 memorandum to Beveridge asserting the socialist origins of Nazism. Hayek argued that the idea of German National Socialism came from the writings of Johann Fichte, Johann Rodbertus, and Ferdinand Lasalle, all prominent socialist thinkers in the mid-nineteenth century. Further, the founders of European fascism were often themselves former left-wing socialists, like Mussolini, Laval, and Quisling. According to Hayek, the National Socialists happened to be the victors in the interwar struggle between various German socialist parties. While left wing socialists appealed to the working class, the National Socialists represented lower middle class workers. Although different classes supported the various socialist parties, all the socialist parties shared an antipathy to liberalism. Once triumphant, Nazism favored corporatism, tight state regulation of monopolized industry. Hayek thought that the theory that Nazism was a pro-capitalist reaction was pernicious because it created an artificial divide between socialism and fascism. Instead, Hayek argued “that the rise of facism and naziism was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies.” Hayek was not proposing that socialism necessarily turned into facism, but that socialist planning inevitably led to some form of totalitarianism.^[i]

Hayek was concerned that British socialists would imitate their German counterparts. He noted the prewar admiration that many left wing intellectuals had for fascist economic organization and believed that the intellectual climate in Britain in the 1940s was similar to that in Germany during the 1910s and 1920s. Hayek feared that the popular consensus on the desirability of central economic planning would put Britain on the slippery slope toward totalitarianism, “the road to serfdom.” He was particularly alarmed by statements from Labour Party leaders, like Harold Laski, who was willing to ask “whether in a period of transition to Socialism, a Labour Government can risk the overthrow of its measures as a result of the next general election.” Hayek did not doubt the sincere desire of socialists to improve the wellbeing of their fellow citizens, but he questioned whether socialism and democracy were compatible in fact as well as in theory. After electoral victory, parliamentary bickering and partisan gridlock would quickly frustrate socialists, leading to calls for someone who could mandate socialism, a popular dictator. “The whole system will tend toward that plebiscitarian dictatorship in which the head of the government is from time to time confirmed in his position by popular vote, but where he has all the powers at his command to make certain that the vote will go in the direction he desires.”^[ii]

Certainly, socialists in the twentieth century overwhelmingly used a rhetoric of freedom and articulated their belief in democratic culture, but Hayek suspected that socialism would revert to its anti-democratic roots. In the early nineteenth century, socialist thinkers, like Henri Saint-Simon, favored authoritarian styles of government and were hostile toward democracy. Under the influence of the democratic fervor preceding the revolutions of 1848, socialists adopted a rhetoric of freedom in order to “harness to its car the strongest of all political motives—the craving for freedom.” Hayek accused socialists of using the language of democracy and freedom but turning the words into “empty shells deprived of any definite meaning.” Socialists proposed a “new freedom” by which they meant “economic freedom,” a freedom from necessity. Hayek believed that “the demand for the new freedom was thus only another name for the old demand for an equal distribution of wealth. But the new name gave the socialists another word in common with the liberals, and they exploited it to the full.” Hayek feared that the socialist pursuit of economic freedom would destroy true “political freedom,” which he defined as “freedom from coercion” and “the arbitrary power of other men.”^[iii]

Socialists would abolish the “despotism of physical want” by erecting despotism of state in its place. Socialists would try to distribute power equally by centralizing its exercise under the aegis of the state for the benefit of the people. Hayek feared this centralization of power and quoted Lord Action, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Despite the socialist desire for a dictatorship of the good, the corrupting nature of power ensured that the worst sort of people would rise to the leadership of an authoritarian government. Hayek claimed that property was the traditional source of power. When the means of production remained divided among many private owners, no single person had absolute power over another. By negating the right of private property, socialism undermined the basis for all other democratic freedoms.^[iv]

To make this point, Hayek relied upon the first-hand testimony of a former communist activist, Max Eastman. While visiting the Soviet Union during the 1920s, Eastman became disillusioned with Stalin’s autocratic government; he supported Trotsky until Stalin’s agents murdered the Russian expatriate. By the 1940s, Eastman had renounced communism and become an advocate for Friedrich Hayek and other libertarian intellectuals (it was Eastman, then working for Reader’s Digest, who abridged The Road to Serfdom for the Book-of-the-Month Club). Eastman asserted that Marx “was the one who informed us…that the evolution of private capitalism with its free market had been a precondition for the evolution of all our democratic freedoms.” Unfortunately, “it never occurred to him…that if this was so, these other freedoms might disappear with the abolition of the free market.”^[v]

In order to ensure the survival of democratic freedoms, Hayek believed that private property had to remain sacrosanct and the economy unplanned. Central planning prevented effective competition and created an all-encompassing state wielding “coercive power.” Instead of competing in the marketplace, people would be forced to lobby the state for “a share in the exercise of this directing power,” which would become “the only power worth having.” For Hayek, socialism created a new aristocracy of state planners and bureaucrats who decided who would receive government largesse and who would pay for it. Hayek argued that the socialist goal of giving people the security they needed so that they could confidently take risks would actually create a risk-averse culture. The British state would become like the old German beamtenstaat (“bureaucratic state”); people would search for security rather than entrepreneurial opportunity. Social security would have debilitating effects on the British psyche.^[vi]

We know less about the history of ancient  and medieval Africa than any other region of the world. Much of what we know about early Africans today has been uncovered in just the last five decades. In fact, the more archaeology reveals about life in ancient and medieval Africa, the less we seem to agree with many of our long-held assumptions about the continent and its people. For instance, historians used to believe that ironwork was first discovered in Turkey around 1500 BC, but new evidence proves that ironwork was in wide use around the same period—or even as early as 1800 BC—in central Africa.^[1] We also know that early eastern African tribes were building sophisticated structures about the same time the ancient Greeks were building the Parthenon, contrary to the widespread belief that early Africans only lived in huts without civilization.

These sorts of revelations are why it is necessary not to make assumptions about how early Africans lived, and definitely not about their philosophical way of life. Each African tribe and community can be radically different from others in terms of social structure and values. But we can isolate and study specific communities, tribes, and significant individuals to give us a better understanding of such group’s or individual’s social and philosophical values. In this series, we will revisit how unsung African heroes contributed to the survival and prosperity of their tribes. Since these individuals will be drawn from ancient and medieval African history, I will rely on archaeological references, folkloric accounts, and sometimes on the role of spiritualism in African life. In this first study, we will learn of the remarkable story of Queen Moremi Ajasoro—Africa’s lady liberty—from the medieval Kingdom of Ile-Ife (also called Ife) in modern-day Nigeria.^[2]

Moremi and the Yoruba People

Moremi made significant contributions to African freedom but her life has received little scholarly attention. She was a queen of the Yoruba tribe, which is one of the most famous and influential black tribes in history. Moremi’s exploits helped preserve the commercial life of her people and freed them from oppressors. Today, there are over 41 million ethnic Yorubas who live predominantly in sixteen countries in West Africa, although, because of the transatlantic slave trade, large Yoruba communities have taken root in countries like Brazil, Cuba, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and other parts of the Americas. There are also Yoruba communities in many European countries—most having migrated in the immediate decades after the end of colonialism in the 1970s and 1980s while fleeing economic and political instability in their home countries. But the Yorubas would have never survived to become a prominent black ethnic group in the 21st century if it were not for the bravery of some of its early heroes, among which is the remarkable Queen Moremi.

Unfortunately, there are hardly any original written documents to validate most of the things we know about Moremi. We must rely on folkloric accounts passed down over generations by the Yoruba themselves—which is a common limitation when studying ancient and medieval African history. Although accounts of Moremi’s exploits are now sparsely documented in popular culture, the Yorubas have always considered folklore (called ‘Aroba’ in the Yoruba language) the strongest medium for teaching and preserving history, rather than written documents or wall-carvings. This medium of preserving history is a feature common to many Sub-Saharan Africa tribes. We also do not know for certain exactly what year Moremi was born or when she died owing to the absence of written evidence. But we do know that she was a princess from the town of Offa^[3] and was later married to the Ooni (king) of Ile-Ife. Her husband was either Ooni Obalufon Alayemoye II^[4] or Ooni Oranmiyan—both direct descendants of Ooni Oduduwa, the legendary founder of the Yoruba tribe and the first Ooni of Ile-Ife.^[5] There are also claims that she was married to both Oonis at different times.^[6]  To figure out when Moremi most likely lived, we can consider the dates of some related entities. For instance, the Copper Mask of Obalufon II—first introduced to the world in 1937 by Ooni Adesoji Aderemi in Ile-Ife—is believed by archaeologists to have been created around 1300 CE while Obalufon II was still alive. We can peg Moremi’s lifetime to around this period since she was likely married to Obalufon II. Even if she was actually married to Oranmiyan, who succeeded Obalufon II, the timeframe of her life would not be much further from circa 1300. This is because Moremi’s hometown of Offa was founded in 1359 by a crown prince (Olalomi Olofa-gangan) from one of the older kingdoms (Kingdom of Oyo) founded by Oranmiyan. 

Since Offa is an offshoot town of the Kingdom of Ife, Ife is the spiritual home of Moremi just as it is for any contemporary of Yoruba origin. Spirituality has a huge influence on the story of Moremi. The original religion of the Yoruba people, which is practiced in Ile-Ife and throughout the old Yorubaland, was the Ifa Religion—a divination system that considers the world controlled by Olodumare (the Supreme Being) through spiritual energies.^[7] Ifa practitioners—including Moremi and the early Yoruba people—communicate with Olodumare through the Orishas (gods) and the Irunmoles (deities).^[8] Moremi’s quest for freedom was informed by this spiritualism. But the popularity of Moremi started while she was still a young princess in Offa. She was well-known throughout the town and its neighboring territories as a beautiful woman and is still revered today as one of the most beautiful Yoruba women that ever lived.

Ugbo Invasions and Moremi’s Classic Spy Plot

There is a gap in history between Moremi’s youth and when she moved to Ile-Ife where she married the Ooni. We do not know what influenced her thought process while growing up or what might have influenced her zeal for freedom. But we know that while she was a queen in Ife, the kingdom was greatly troubled by raiders who occasionally looted the market in Ife and abducted citizens of the kingdom into slavery. These raiders also often stole properties, staple foods, and domestic animals. They are believed to be from a neighboring community called Ugbo.^[9] Although the people of Ile-Ife were furious about these raids, they did not have the means to defend themselves. This is because the Ugbo invaders are seen as spirits by the people of Ife. Yoruba masquerades are always dressed in cotton robes but the Ugbo raiders—who appeared as masquerades—were completely covered in raffia leaves.^[10] Out of all the atrocities of the raiders, Moremi could not stand two in particular: the disruption of the Ife market and the enslavement of captured Ife citizens. The market in Ife was the mother of all markets in Yorubaland due to its location within the sacred Kingdom of Ife and its commercial vibrancy. Furthermore, citizens of Ife were direct descendants of Oduduwa and the Orishas. Having them in enemy captivity could have led to divine retribution on Ife. Moremi believed that despite the mystique surrounding the identity of the Ugbo raiders, there must be a way to stop them. To find answers, she consulted an Orisha at the Esimirin river. The consultation of an Orisha while contemplating major decisions is cardinal to the Ifa religion. In early Yorubaland, the Orishas were the conductor of the forces of nature and an individual will hardly take a definitive course of action in life without consulting an orisha either personally or through a Babalawo (Ifa priest).

Esimirin offered to help Moremi deliver her people from oppression but demanded an offering as a payment after Moremi’s request was met. Moremi agreed and went home to work on a classic spy plan. She would pose as a trader on the next market day^[11] and allow herself to be captured by the raiders. Once in captivity, she planned to infiltrate the Ugbo leadership with her beauty and magic in the hope of finding a weakness that the people of Ife could exploit.

As planned, during the next raid Moremi allowed herself to be captured and she was taken to Ugbo along with other captives. When the captives were put on parade before the leader of Ugbo, Moremi’s beauty captured his attention and he ordered she be brought to his court as a wife. Moremi spent some time in Ugbo studying the people’s way of life with a specific interest in the raffia-dressed masquerades. Eventually, she lured the leader of Ugbo into revealing the nature of the masquerades and their weakness. The leader told Moremi that the raffia masqueraders were not spirits but that they were humans disguised as such to intimidate the people of Ile-Ife into submission during raids. He also revealed that since the masquerades were dressed in dried raffia leaves, they would not survive the slightest touch of fire. Moremi kept this revelation to herself and soon made her way back to Ile-Ife.

When in Ile-Ife, she tipped the Ooni about her discovery and advised that on the next market raid, some people should be on the standby with Igita (short hard tree branch) and Oguso (a ball of the middle layer of a palm kennel font). She explained that the Oguso should be lit when the marauders were in the market and that the burning Igita be used to torch the masquerades. They did exactly as she advised. On the next market day, the torch-bearing people of Ife—many of who were market women—cast their burning torches at the Ugbo raiders. The prospect of being burned alive by the torches terrified the raffia-dressed Ugbo masquerades. The raids ended and Ife was victorious. The Yoruba people were successfully liberated by both the torch and the Moremi’s heroic plan.

But the spiritualism that guided Moremi’s plot will have a final role to play in her story. After the Ugbo raids had stopped, Moremi visited the Esimirin River to pay her offering. The river god demanded she sacrifices her only son, Oluorogbo to fulfill her end of the bargain. The demand was inconceivable for Moremi and she pleaded with the god for a less terrible offering. But in the end, she kept her promise and paid the price.^[12] The offering of Oluorogbo to the river god grieved not only Moremi but the whole kingdom of Ife.^[13] The Yoruba people consoled Moremi by offering to be her eternal children—-a promise kept until today.

Africa’s Lady-Liberty Lives On

Although spiritualism and African voodooism are key to this liberation of the Yoruba people, they do not in any way deprive Moremi’s heroics of intellectual significance, especially as there are a few correlations between her exploits and the classical liberal idea of self-determinism. We see this first in how central the marketplace is to the Moremi story. Ile-Ife was a prosperous trading city and the Ife market was a critical part of the cultural structure of the Yoruba people. It was a melting pot for innovators, medicine men, hunters, farmers, traders, beauticians, soldiers, artists, and every other social stratum that makes up Yoruba culture. Any attack on this structure would affect all expect of everyday life. Thus Moremi’s liberation of the Ife market can be considered a struggle for the preservation of the Yoruba way of life itself, the struggle for self-determinism. Additionally, although a form of servantry was in existence among the early Yorubas, Moremi still risked her life to free her people. Her non-tolerance for the enslavement of the people of Ife underscores her contribution to Africa’s foundation of individual freedom. More significantly, Moremi’s remarkable exploits also put to bed the general preconceived notion that women are inherently silent in African history. Women played critical roles in the construction and richness of the history of ancient and medieval Africa.

There are not many individuals in African history with the freedom and fearlessness of Queen Moremi. Centuries before the Statue of Liberty was built in New York City Harbor, Queen Moremi lifted a blazing torch of liberty and courage. As such, Moremi is almost always portrayed today as a beautiful black woman dressed in the finest Aso Oke (Yoruba robes) and adorned in Ileke (beads) with a mighty torch of Oguso held high in her right hand. The city of modern Ile-Ife in Osun State, southwest Nigeria honors her sacrifice and heroics with the Edi festival where people dress in raffias and are chased around by those bearing the torch of Oguso.

Skepticism of big tech companies is surging on both sides of the political spectrum, from Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren calling for breaking up Amazon to Republican Senator Josh Hawley advocating rules that would prohibit online viewpoint discrimination. This wave of techno-progressivism finds its latest expression in Slate journalist April Glaser’s article, “Bring Back the Golden Age of Broadcast Regulation.”

Glaser argues that the problems of internet discourse—eg hate speech, haphazard content moderation, and conspiracy peddling—are so trenchant that government intervention is warranted. She calls for applying the rules that once governed mid-twentieth century radio and television broadcasting to the internet, the most important of which was the mandate that broadcasting be done in the “public interest, convenience, and necessity” as laid out in the 1934 Communications Act. Inspired by that mandate, reform-minded progressives at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) enacted the Fairness Doctrine in 1949, which required broadcasters to provide multiple points of view when discussing political disagreements.

Glaser’s proposal is light on details about how exactly broadcast rules would be adapted for the internet, but it is heavy on assurances that any such regulations would be “light-touch.” Those who worry that inviting the feds to just “do something” could lead to violations of free speech need not be concerned. As Glaser argues, “For decades, radio and television followed regulations—hardly heavy-handed ones—meant to ensure they served the information needs of their audiences and did not actively harm political discourse.”

That would be lovely, if it were true, but not a single part of that statement is correct. The belief that government regulation of internet content providers will be effective and minimally-invasive is rooted in a poor understanding of the history of broadcast regulation. That history actually suggests the opposite, that these regulations will be ineffective, highly-intrusive, and will create significant unintended consequences.

In part, that is because the very idea of a singular “public interest” has always been a convenient fiction, albeit one that wears poorly in a pluralistic society. For example, under the banner of advancing the public interest, the FCC once required radio stations to give away free airtime to religious groups (most of which went to mainline Protestants, Roman Catholics, and the larger Jewish denominations) since it seemed obvious to the commissioners that there was a singular public interest in promoting a vague baseline religiosity. Agnostics, atheists, and members of smaller religious groups need not apply.

In practice, the public interest standard became a tool for advancing the private interests of a narrow, politically well-connected elite by appealing to majoritarian values and at the expense of minority interests. In one of her early newsletters, Ayn Rand excoriated the public interest standard as an excuse covering “the right of some men (those who, by some undefined criterion, are the public) to sacrifice the interests of other men (of those who, for unspecified reasons are not the public).” (“Check Your Premises: Have Gun, Will Nudge,” The Objectivist Newsletter, vol 1, no 3, March 1962.)

Rand’s words were meant particularly for FCC Chairman Newton Minow, who, in what may be the only famous speech by an FCC commissioner, had described television as a “vast wasteland” and called for limits on the number of game shows, Westerns, and cartoons aired. Sorry, kids, Chairman Minow thinks a “steady diet for the whole country” of the Flintstones or Bonanza is “obviously not in the public interest,” so no Saturday morning cartoon marathon for you! Minow might not have been wrong about the merits of Hanna-Barbera cartoons, but the idea that he and a handful of telecommunications lawyers sitting on the FCC should have a say in deciding that question “for the whole country” was fundamentally undemocratic.

But what was most dangerous about the public interest standard was not the aesthetic preferences of a FCC commissioner or even the religious airtime requirement. The more serious danger was the routine weaponization of the public interest standard to advance private or partisan interests. For example, during the early 1940s, the Roosevelt administration pushed for a ban on newspaper ownership of radio stations, ostensibly because of the public’s interest in preventing cross-media consolidation, but also to prevent anti-New Deal newspaper owners from having a radio platform from which to criticize the President’s policies. The FCC during Richard Nixon’s administration would use a similar rule to try and pressure the Washington Post into abandoning its investigation of the Watergate scandal.

But the ultimate example of the disconnect between the well-meaning intent of the public interest standard and its abuse for partisan advantage was the John F. Kennedy administration’s use of the Fairness Doctrine to silence conservative political dissent on the airwaves in the 1960s. Conservative radio broadcasting surged in the early 1960s as a result of the rise of non-network, independent radio stations that were cash-strapped and willing to air people whose politics were too radical for network radio. Conservative broadcasters—the most prominent of which had as many weekly listeners as Rush Limbaugh would a generation later—constantly attacked the Kennedy administration’s policies, like his failure to provide air support at the Bay of Pigs, opening trade with Eastern Bloc nations, and ratifying the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

The administration’s plan for dealing with these conservative irritants involved, among other measures, using the regulatory power granted to the executive branch to intimidate their donors and hosts. First, a special campaign of targeted Internal Revenue Service audits challenging their tax-exempt status stemmed the flow of donations to the offending broadcasters. Then, the selective application of the Federal Communication Commission’s Fairness Doctrine pressured station owners into dropping conservative programming altogether. All of this was coordinated from the Oval Office and the Attorney General’s office, part of it even caught on tape.

Subsequently, in July 1963, FCC Chairman E. William Henry announced a “clarification” of the Fairness Doctrine that mentioned only conservative positions and rhetoric when clarifying which kinds of speech would be targeted. The White House promptly organized a front organization, the Citizens Committee for a Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, that could lodge Fairness Doctrine-based requests for response time whenever a conservative broadcaster criticized the proposed treaty. The FCC also passed an enhancement of the Fairness Doctrine rules called the Cullman Doctrine, which required stations to not only offer response time slots contingent on the responding group paying for the airtime, but to give that airtime for free if interest groups said they could not afford to pay. (Unsurprisingly, no one ever said they could afford to pay.)

With the help of the Fairness Doctrine, the administration blunted criticism of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, which passed the Senate that fall. Kennedy was assassinated not long after, but the partisan use of the Fairness Doctrine continued apace. During the presidential campaign of 1964, the Democratic National Committee commissioned a team of operatives—including a former FCC lawyer who had been in charge of Fairness Doctrine enforcement—to garner free pro-Lyndon Johnson airtime any time a station aired broadcasters who spoke of their support for Barry Goldwater. As the lead operative later reported, the Fairness Doctrine campaign had secured more than 1,700 free broadcasts boosting Johnson and been highly effective at “inhibiting the political activity of these Right Wing broadcasts.”

From 1949 to 1963, the Fairness Doctrine had existed only on paper. It is notable that the first two actual applications of the Fairness Doctrine each expressly advanced partisan interests. Later in the decade, other liberal interest groups would also use the Fairness Doctrine to force stations to offer balanced programming or even, in the case of segregationist television station WLBT in Jackson, Mississippi, to convince the FCC to revoke their broadcasting license. But the Fairness Doctrine was never used to balance liberal programming with conservative voices. It had become entirely a tool for advancing liberal speech and political candidates at the expense of conservative speech and candidates.

Later, President Richard Nixon considered using Fairness Doctrine complaints to force the major television networks to give his administration’s policies more favorable coverage by, for example, being less critical of the slow pace of withdrawal from the Vietnam War. In the end, however, Nixon used other means to get what he wanted, but the fact that he had those tools at his disposal gave him leverage in back-room negotiations with network executives.

The realization that the tools used to suppress conservative speech by the Kennedy administration and the DNC in the early 1960s could be used by the Nixon administration to suppress liberal speech in the early 1970s led several operatives from the earlier censorship campaign to rue their involvement. This is a crucial test for any proposed government regulation. Do not imagine only the utility that your side or your interests might gain from its application; think also about the damage that could be done by the other side through that rule when they inevitably take their turn in power. If that prospect scares you, then reconsider the regulation.

To apply that test to today, imagine if the Trump administration had the same regulatory powers over the internet at its disposal as Kennedy had over broadcasting. What would a Trump-appointed FCC Chairman, told to keep internet discourse fair and balanced, currently be doing? Imagine that Chairman, after a Trump tweetstorm complaining about the Washington Post’s unfair coverage, launching an investigation into the ratio of conservative to liberal reporting on the Post’s website. Or consider the kind of pressure that pro-Trump conservative activists could place on Facebook or Twitter with the implicit threat of a federal investigation into algorithmic bias against conservative accounts.

It is naive to think, as Glaser writes, that regulation of the internet “wouldn’t mean that the feds would decide what is and is not acceptable speech on the platforms.” That statement directly contradicts the following sentence, that it “could mean rules against broadcasting hateful views or disinformation to large audiences.” You can either have the government play censor and ban hate speech or not; you can’t have both.

If intent were all that mattered, Glaser’s call for banning hate speech and disinformation would at least sound plausible. The government says no hate speech, the platforms comply, bada bing, bada boom, problem solved! Yet again, realize that regulations are only as good as the regulators responsible for enforcing them. How might an investigation into the “fake news” problem during the 2016 election look different depending on whether Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump was sitting in the White House today? If there is one key lesson from the history of the Fairness Doctrine to bear in mind, it is that good intentions paved the road to regulatory hell. It is entirely possible that rules meant to promote good information and discourage hate speech could be twisted to promote disinformation and protect hate speech.

There is also a cautionary tale from the history of broadcast regulation about the chilling effect that content regulation has on radical political speech. During the height of the anti-Radio Right censorship campaign in the 1960s, many radio station owners confronted with Fairness Doctrine complaints didn’t respond by adding liberal points of view; instead, they dropped the conservative programs altogether and simply avoided any content that touched on hot button issues. And if they did still air programs touching on “controversial issues of public importance,” as the Fairness Doctrine ostensibly encouraged, they frequently framed any disagreement over that issue as a binary option between mainstream, respectable points of view. Radicals from both Left and Right were drastically underrepresented.

A great deal of political speech that is broadcast today could not have existed under that regulatory framework. You could not have the Daily Show or the Late Show if every time Trevor Noah or Stephen Colbert criticized the President the network had to give the administration free response time. Single point-of-view editorial shows—from Rachel Maddow to Tucker Carlson—would be less common given the resulting obligation to provide contrasting opinions.

That this kind of programming exists at all is a product of the decision in the late 1970s to exempt satellite and cable broadcasting from the kind of close regulatory scrutiny applied to network broadcasts. Otherwise, cable television would look more like network television, with a tendency to appeal to the lowest common public denominator rather than to diverse constituencies. Given the outcomes from the history of broadcast regulation, if similar rules were applied to the internet there is every reason to expect a similar chilling effect on the major platforms.

The final problem that I will mention with regulating the internet like broadcasting is that the basic legal arguments for broadcasting regulation do not apply to the internet. Even back in the 1930s, the courts recognized that the public interest standard represented an infringement on perfectly free speech. First, the government decided which applicants received station licenses, choosing who got the opportunity to transmit their speech in the first place. Second, they made license renewal contingent on whether their speech was acceptable or not. These rules privileged the speech of certain groups at the expense of others.

For example, early socialist-run radio stations were labeled as propaganda not in the public interest and ultimately pressured into selling their stations to the major, milquetoast networks. The public interest standard was used to undermine both the Popular Front movement and anti-New Deal conservatives during the 1930s. Then in the 1960s, it would hinder the rise of both the New Left and the New Right.

These infringements on the First Amendment were justified ex post facto on the basis of the scarcity principle, the idea that since broadcast spectrum was naturally finite, the government was forced to ration it out in an orderly manner to prevent signal overlap and to promote a diversity of opinion. That principle rested on several assumptions questionable even in the early twentieth century, but it was at least a plausible-sounding argument.

However, the scarcity principle could not apply less to the internet. There are no natural limits on the amount of internet speech that is possible, no digital spectrum that must be divvied up and managed by government regulators lest it all run out. And so there is no reason to treat internet media as fundamentally different than any other category of media. The best corollary to the internet is not radio or television but print media.

Glaser’s justification for why social media ought to be regulated by the government is that “like radio or television, social media plays a central role in providing people with the information they need to participate meaningfully in political life.” But that standard is equally true of newspapers. Think of the importance of whichever your preferred paper of record to your civic knowledge and participation.

Glaser also argues that the internet is different because of the prevalence of conspiratorial and hateful nutters. But there too, you can find plenty of corollaries from the history of the newspaper industry. You cannot, for example, tell the story of the Spanish-American War without speaking of “yellow journalism.” Across the grand scope of American history, newspapers have been as prone to conspiracy theorizing and disinformation as internet-based media is today.

Yet despite the manifest failings of newspapers, we generally recognize the necessity of protecting press freedom. I cannot imagine that even Glaser would welcome applying old broadcast regulations to newspapers, whether print or digital. I certainly would look amiss at calls for the government to require Slate or any other magazine to publish a certain quota of religious or Right-of-center content in the service of promoting fairness and balance.

That is because when James Madison wrote the Bill of Rights codifying the freedom of the press, he was not using the term in the sense we do today to refer to journalism. ‘Press’ quite literally meant the printing press. In contrast to much of Europe, where protections for speech did not always extend to the printing press, in America anybody with a press could print whatever they wished, regardless of how the British crown or established clergy or the general public felt about what they said. Among the ideals that American was founded upon was the immodest proposition that the best response to bad speech is more speech, not censorship. It is a fundamentally democratic proposition, one that is as appropriate for the digital age as it was for the 1780s.

This piece was originally publised for the Cato at Liberty blog. 

At the outset, Beveridge situated his proposal as the next, logical step for British welfare reform. He connected his plan to a long string of reforms reaching back to Queen Elizabeth’s Poor Laws in the late sixteenth century. More recently, Parliament had enacted legislation mandating workmen’s compensation, compulsory health insurance for high-risk professions, and unemployment insurance. By appealing to the history of welfare reform, Beveridge normalized his own proposals. Parliament had enacted welfare reforms in the past and should do so again. Beveridge argued that the current decentralized system, while admirable in its desire to help the unemployed, was unable to guarantee coverage to all in an efficient manner. It was a “complex of disconnected administrative organs, proceeding on different principles, doing invaluable service but at a cost in money and trouble…for which there is no justification.” Throughout his report, Beveridge appealed to the potential cost savings of centralized control and dedicated an appendix to showing how state control would lead to significant savings in administrative costs, primarily because of the reduced expense in collecting premiums through employers. It was a way of responding to critics who worried about the cost of instituting the welfare state. Beveridge admitted that the initial outlay would be expensive, but he argued that the administrative efficiency of the Ministry of Social Security ensured that a greater proportion of contributions would actually go to beneficiaries.^[i]

Beveridge was also concerned about the competitive nature of insurance provision. Under the “Approved Society System”—the old network of government-sanctioned, for-profit insurance companies that sold compulsory life and disability insurance—providers had a “conflict of interests” caused by the dual obligation of distributing benefits and returning a profit. A state agency would not face the same competitive market pressures and could focus solely on providing the guaranteed benefits and collecting stipulated contributions, leaving any shortfall to Parliament. Beveridge labeled his program “social insurance” because it operated on the contributory principle—“insurance”—and because it mandated a common pool for contributions—“social.” It was compulsory, but it had a moral basis because it required “that men stand together with their fellows.” Beveridge argued that social provision was superior to private provision because the state would not have to adjust insurance premiums to cover actuarial risks. Instead, it could establish a single rate for all English citizens. Furthermore, the state, unlike private insurers, possessed the power of taxation. It did not need to hold a large fiscal reserve in case future predictions proved inaccurate.^[ii]

Beveridge outlined three guiding principles for social insurance. First, it was to be revolutionary. He acknowledged the value of lessons learned through experience, but he wanted to avoid the sectional interests created through prior piecemeal efforts. Local government agencies, trade associations, and aid societies all had a stake in preventing welfare provision from becoming a national system; they wanted to protect their own existence.

Second, Beveridge noted that his plan targeted just one of the “five giants on the road.” Those five giants—Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor, and Idleness—each needed a solution from the welfare state. Beveridge’s report sought to minimize the threat of want by mitigating unemployment, the primary contributor to poverty, but he stipulated that the government would also provide national healthcare, employment guarantees, and allowances for children. Beveridge calculated levels of benefits and contributions on the assumption that citizens would not have to pay for their healthcare, that they would have steady income from which to contribute, and that allowances would defray the additional expenses of children.

Third, social security required cooperation between the state and the individual. The state offered its citizens security from want, but it still needed individuals to act with initiative. Beveridge did not want the welfare state to sap individuals’ incentives to work hard and innovate. Thus, Beveridge’s plan established a national minimum income but left room for private gain above that minimum. He believed that the welfare state, if “properly designed, controlled, and financed,” would not have a “depressing effect on incentive.”^[iii]

Beveridge had declared a “British revolution” and he intended that revolution to benefit women as well as men. The Beveridge report recognized the “vital though unpaid” work performed by housewives. The prior system had classified married women as dependents of their husbands and did not allow them to claim unemployment benefits. Beveridge’s plan treated wives and husbands as a team performing “equally essential” labor. A married man paid a higher contribution than a single man did but also received greater unemployment benefits. As a whole, Beveridge believed that his plan put a “premium on marriage.” He was concerned about the low British birthrate and hoped to encourage childbearing through provisions for housewives and children. “In the next thirty years housewives as mothers have vital work to do in ensuring the adequate continuance of the British race and of British ideals in the world.” Nevertheless, Beveridge’s promise of a revolution fell short because his plan operated on the assumption that women should be married and should raise as many children as possible. During World War II, record numbers of women took jobs outside the home, often in munitions factories and on other defense projects. Beveridge wanted to return these women to their “proper” place, the home. Married women who worked outside the home received a reduced unemployment benefit because they could depend on the provision of their husbands; there was no such reduction for unemployed, married men.^[iv]

At the end of the report, Beveridge included a list of potential objections to his plan and his responses. He anticipated critics faulting the plan for being overly ambitious for a time of war or, conversely, complaining that it was not ambitious enough. However, the first objection that he responded to was the question of whether security undermined “initiative, adventure, [and] personal responsibility.” Beveridge countered by noting that the plan guaranteed a national minimum, not a maximum. The people would be free to “win for themselves something above the national minimum,” “satisfying new and higher needs than bare physical needs.” Beveridge was not proposing a fully socialist system in which a central syndicate or board would set wages and redistribute all wealth, but he did put forward a socialist vision of the elimination of poverty. In a restatement of Marx’s famous credo, Beveridge wrote, “The aim of the Plan for Social Security is to abolish want by ensuring that every citizen willing to serve according to his powers has at all times an income sufficient to meet his responsibilities.” The Beveridge report offered a hybridized system combining socialist cooperation and capitalist acquisitiveness.^[v]

Last month, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) wrapped up its 24GHz spectrum auction, receiving $2 billion in bids from companies looking to capitalize on increased penetration of the faster, lower-latency wireless technology known as 5G. Preparation for the auction has been in place since 2015, yet just weeks before its finalization, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), an arm of the Department of Commerce (DOC), and NASA called on the FCC to delay the auction to investigate the potential that 5G could interfere with weather forecasting. This late call was misguided and overblown; the FCC took proper precautions to ensure that Americans can enjoy fast internet and accurate weather forecasts at the same time.    

NOAA and NASA worry that the sale of this frequency could interfere with the 23.8GHz signal used to measure water vapor, a vital aspect of storm and hurricane forecasting. Should interference occur, NOAA and NASA warn, forecasting abilities would be reduced by 30%, degrading their prediction accuracy to the worst it has been since 1980.

However, the range at which the Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) picks up microwaves from water vapor is between 23.6-24 GHz. The lowest bound for the commercial spectrum auction is 24.25GHz, providing a significant buffer range by which to prevent interference. The likelihood of signals interfering is not only very low, but even if it happens on rare occasions , the interference reach nowhere near the dramatic levels claimed by the DOC.

Problems like the 5G weather forecasting debacle stem from the divergence of incentives for different agencies and the communication failures that occur between experts of different fields. Agencies like NOAA have a low tolerance for failure and are prone to seeing expanding their own mission and capabilities as interchangeable with advancing the public interest, without necessarily considering the opportunity costs. Each agency’s priorities become its sole focus leading to interdepartmental and cross-disciplinary conflicts that undermine sound and efficient policy making, and could make it difficult to maintain a competitive edge against rapidly rising national competitors like China.

While it claims to be committed to the effective rollout of 5G, the DOC has nonetheless hampered the technology’s advancement at various stages. Most notably, it has weakened the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), which have approval authority over the FCC’s plans to implement 5G. The DOC’s actions have left the NTIA without leadership and a lack of coordination on 5G policy. As a result, a myriad of distractions have blossomed. The reason 5G is a national priority is not just because of commercial gain, but also due to its powerful potential as infrastructure for a wide range of next generation technologies that range from improving medicine to transportation to defense.

Is it any wonder that hostile agents, such as Russia, are so keen to spread misinformation about such a vital technology? The plans to advance 5G have been a high priority for nearly 5 years, with the FCC beginning its inquiry into the 24GHz spectrum back in October 2014. By confusing the public and delaying the rollout, an interjection about weather forecasting concerns so late into the 5G auction process aids our geopolitical rivals.

Getting various agencies to understand shared national priorities, to work together to advance them in a way that respects the technical insights of each, and to do so while never putting their own departmental goals above those of the nation is a difficult task. This task, however, is of the utmost important as the intensity of global competition for next generation technologies increases and America’s leadership in those fields is less secure. In order to achieve this, interdisciplinary expertise is required that stretches across departments, that can provide well-informed, unbiased technical expertise that does not fall under the biases of any given department.


The DOC’s experts understand their own weather forecasting technologies in great detail, but that does not mean that they understand 5G well, nor appreciate its importance to the national interest. Congress should ignore these late calls from an agency that does not appreciate the protective measures the FCC has put in place during the rollout of 5G. The sky is not falling, and weather forecasting will not go away.  

Over the last forty years, there is a distressing history of foreign insurgent groups being able to manipulate U.S. policymakers and opinion leaders into supporting their cause. Frequently, that support goes far beyond rhetorical endorsements to include financial and even military assistance to highly questionable individuals, organizations, and movements. Sometimes those efforts have even entangled the U.S. military in bloody, unnecessary, and morally dubious wars, as in Kosovo, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

What is a freedom fighter? Why did we consider so many different groups to be freedom fighters? Is foreign policy messy? Should we be allies with reprehensible people to fight the evils of communism? Who was Jonas Savimbi and what was his role with the U.S. in Angola?

Further Reading:

Gullible Superpower: U.S. Support for Bogus Foreign Democratic Movements, written by Ted Galen Carpenter

Is America a Gullible Superpower?, written by Hunter DeRensis

Smart Power: Toward a Prudent Foreign Policy for America, written by Ted Galen Carpenter

Related Content:

Three Arguments Against War?, written by Jason Kuznicki

What Are the Risks of Terrorism?, Free Thoughts Podcast

Understanding U.S. Foreign Policy, Free Thoughts Podcast

America’s Authoritarian Alliances, Free Thoughts Podcast

Two books written in London during World War II indelibly shaped the next eighty years of political debate over the rise of the welfare state. Sir William Beveridge’s Social Insurance and Allied Services, published in 1942, paved the way for the construction of the British welfare state by the Labour Party at the end of the war. Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, a trenchant critique of socialism published in 1944, fueled popular support for the rollback of the New Deal in America. Although historians recognize the importance of these two books for the history of the welfare state and in mid-twentieth century politics, they treat the books as separate documents read by different people to support opposing policy agendas. Historians ought to instead read these works as two voices in a debate over the future of British society. Beveridge and Hayek were colleagues corresponding about the issues they raised in their dueling works. The first part of this essay briefly explores the biographies of the two economists before providing a close reading of the Beveridge Report and The Road to Serfdom.

In 1931, a young Austrian economist named Friedrich Hayek delivered a series of lectures on monetary theory at the London School of Economics (LSE). Hayek then accepted an invitation from the LSE’s director, Sir William Beveridge, to join the faculty that fall. Soon after his appointment, Hayek heard other faculty and students suggest that fascist success in the German parliamentary elections of 1932 and Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 represented the triumph of capitalist reactionaries over true socialism. Indeed, William Beveridge was one of the main proponents of this viewpoint. Hayek believed that his recent emigration from Austria gave him a special insight into German politics, so he sent a short memorandum to Beveridge arguing that German National Socialism was socialist indeed. There is no indication that Beveridge responded to Hayek’s note or even read it, but a decade later, the two economists’ perspectives clashed again—this time on a transatlantic stage for a reading audience of millions.^[i]

In the intervening years, Beveridge left the LSE for the British civil service. In 1941, Arthur Greenwood, the Minister without Portfolio, appointed Beveridge chair of a committee commissioned to report on post-war reconstruction possibilities. The following year, Beveridge released his report, officially entitled Social Insurance and Allied Services. In that report, Beveridge called for a revolutionary overhaul of the British system for providing welfare, pensions, and unemployment insurance. Rather than relying on a mélange of for-profit companies, non-profit charities, and local government relief efforts to provide a social safety net, Beveridge proposed creating a central state agency that would distribute benefits and collect contributions. The Beveridge Report went beyond social security, stipulating the formation of a national health service and the institution of full employment policies. The report provided a template for the post-World War II British welfare state. Throughout 1942, Beveridge publicized the report through interviews and editorials. After its release later that year, the 300-page policy report was an immediate hit, quickly selling over 600,000 copies in Great Britain and 50,000 in the United States.^[ii]

In the summer of 1942, Friedrich Hayek finished the first draft of The Road to Serfdom, a sharp critique of the idea of the welfare state and socialist central planning. Hayek’s 1933 memorandum to Beveridge had expanded into a series of magazine articles that provided the basic arguments for The Road to Serfdom. The book quickly sold out two small runs in England (4,500 copies in total) when wartime paper shortages prevented further printing, but Hayek struggled to find a publisher in the United States. Macmillan, who had issued the American edition of the Beveridge report, turned down The Road to Serfdom because they felt Hayek was “a little outside the stream of much present-day thought, both here and in England.” Finally, after two other trade publishers rejected the manuscript, the University of Chicago press accepted it for publication with the expectation of selling no more than 900 copies. Within months of its release in the fall of 1944, The Road to Serfdom had sold 17,000 copies, an impressive performance, albeit one dwarfed by the sales figures for the Beveridge report. However, in April 1945 the popular magazine Reader’s Digest included a condensed, 20-page version of The Road to Serfdom as its lead article and then sold 1,000,000 copies of a longer abridged edition through its Book-of-the-Month Club. The University of Chicago Press turned Hayek’s United States book tour of small, university talks into a series of lectures and debates before audiences of thousands.^[iii]

The Beveridge report and The Road to Serfdom each became bestsellers but on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Social Insurance and Allied Services greatly outperformed The Road to Serfdom in Great Britain while the inverse was true in the United States. It is astounding that two LSE economists, taking opposite positions regarding the welfare state, so perfectly captured the zeitgeist of British and American political culture in the 1940s. Beveridge, the optimist, appealed to a British population weary of war and ready for a unified social order. Hayek, the pessimist, warned an American middle class—already skeptical of the New Deal’s cost and scope—of the totalitarian threat latent in the welfare state. As a result, Britain forged a welfare state in the mid-1940s that lasted until the repeals of Margaret Thatcher four decades later. In the United States, Congress rolled back the New Deal; the welfare state was delayed for another twenty years until Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.” Beveridge and Hayek had clearly struck a nerve.

Historians recognize the significance of the Beveridge report and The Road to Serfdom, but they typically consider the two books in isolation. Several standard British histories of the welfare state—for example John Stevenson’s British Society, 1914-45, Derek Fraser’s The Evolution of the British Welfare State, and Bernard Harris’s The Origins of the British Welfare State—highlight the importance of the Beveridge Report in stoking popular expectations for post-war social reforms but do not mention Friedrich Hayek or The Road to Serfdom. Even those histories that do include Hayek, like Rodney Lowe’s The Welfare State in Britain since 1945, do so because of Margaret Thatcher’s wielding of Hayek in the 1980s rather than because of the economist’s significance in the debate over the welfare state in the 1940s. The American historiography on the retreat from the New Deal in the 1940s is comparatively impoverished, except for Alan Brinkley’s excellent The End of Reform, which discusses the American reception of both Beveridge and Hayek.

[i] Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom: Text and Documents, ed. Bruce Caldwell (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2007): 5, 245-8. A copy of Hayek’s memorandum survives only in Hayek’s papers, not Beveridge’s.

[ii] Ibid., 14.

[iii] Ibid., 1, 15-16, 19. The University of Chicago Press estimated that it had sold 350,000 copies of the unabridged edition through 2005. A longer discussion of sales figures can be found in footnote 65 on page 19 where Bruce Caldwell cites journalist Croswell Bowen, “How Big Business Raised the Battle Cry of ‘Serfdom,’” PM (14 October 1945): 13.

If you believe that Elvis is alive, you will find sightings of him everywhere. John Gray (in Seven Types of Atheism) believes that Friedrich Nietzsche’s ideas pervade Ayn Rand’s writings, early and late, and he finds sightings of them everywhere.

There is nothing new about this, of course. For decades writers and scholars have speculated on the relationship between Rand and Nietzsche, and Objectivist scholars have written a fair amount on the topic. (For example, see the written seminar, sponsored by the Atlas Society, 2011, here.) Conclusions differ somewhat, but no investigator denies Nietzsche’s influence on the young Ayn Rand, before she developed her own philosophy in detail. In personal notes taken during the 1920s (while Rand was in her twenties), she mentions Nietzsche numerous times, she quotes him occasionally, and she even uses the Nietzschean notion of Übermensch, which is usually translated into English as “Superman.”

Most scholars who have investigated this matter have agreed with the view expressed by Barbara Branden in “A Biographical Essay” (in Who is Ayn Rand? [1962]). This was an authorized biography—Branden based it on taped interviews with Rand—so there can be no doubt that Rand read and approved of Branden’s treatment. According to Branden, Rand was attracted to Thus Spake Zarathustra because “Nietzsche revered the heroic in man, because he defended individualism and despised altruism, [so] she thought she had found a spiritual ally.” But Rand “was made uneasy by the implication that a great man would seek power, not over nature, but over other men; to rule, she thought, was an unworthy occupation for a hero; a hero would not degrade himself by spending his life enslaving others.”

Rand’s hope for Nietzsche turned to disappointment upon reading The Birth of Tragedy, which contains “an open denunciation of reason.” Thereafter Rand realized that she differed fundamentally from Nietzsche. They were “philosophical opposites,” and the only value she could hope to gain by reading Nietzsche further would be “partial and selective.”

Rand discussed her opinion of Nietzsche in the Introduction to the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition of The Fountainhead (1968). She explained that she originally included a quotation from Nietzsche in the manuscript of The Fountainhead, but decided not to include it in the final, published version. She feared she would be misunderstood, because some readers would take the epigraph as indicating that she agreed with Nietzsche more than she actually did. Her disagreements, however, were “profound.”

I removed it, because of my profound disagreement with the philosophy of its author, Friedrich Nietzsche. Philosophically, Nietzsche is a mystic and an irrationalist. His metaphysics consists of a somewhat “Byronic” and mystically “malevolent” universe; his epistemology subordinates reason to “will,” or feeling or instinct or blood or innate virtues of character. But, as a poet, he projects at times (not consistently) a magnificent feeling for man’s greatness, expressed in emotional, not intellectual terms. 

After Rand explained and clarified her position, she had no problem quoting the passage from Nietzsche that she had previously deleted. This passage is from Beyond Good and Evil:

It is not the works, but the belief which is here decisive and determines the order of rank—to employ once more an old religious formula with a new and deeper meaning,— it is some fundamental certainty which a noble soul has about itself, something which is not to be sought, is not to be found, and perhaps, also, is not to be lost.—The noble soul has reverence for itself.—

Rand did not endorse the literal meaning of this passage, mainly because it implied a psychological determinism that she did not accept. But if one understands that basic premises are acquired rather than innate, then “that quotation communicates the inner state of an exalted self-esteem—and sums up the emotional consequences for which The Fountainhead provides the rational, philosophical base.”

Nothing in what I have said so far should come as a surprise to John Gray. He understands that Rand repudiated Nietzsche: “Condemning his philosophy as a betrayal of reason, Rand disavowed Nietzsche entirely.” But Gray sees through her shallow tactics, asserting that “there can be no doubt that a version of [Nietzsche’s] ideas shaped her way thinking.”

Now, with due respect for Gray’s superior insight, I must question his claim that there can be “no doubt” about his allegation that Nietzsche influenced Rand more than she was willing to concede. What, exactly, was this influence? For one thing, according to Gray, “In Rand’s work Nietzsche defence of aristocratic individualism became an apology for laissez-faire capitalism. The Übermensch reappeared as an indignant businessman grumbling about high taxes.”

It’s a good thing that we have John Gray’s testimony for this astonishing claim, because that is all we have. Never mind that Rand admired heroic fiction long before she ever read Nietzsche. Never mind that she regarded a portrayal of the ideal man to be a basic goal of her fiction writing. Never mind the substantial differences between John Galt and Nietzsche’s Superman. Never mind that Aristotle’s magnanimous man could just as easily qualify as a prototype for John Galt.

I doubt if Gray has ever read Rand very carefully. Those who think I am being unkind to Gray without cause should ponder the following passage.

Here—and in a less overt form, throughout Rand’s writings—a violent rejection of the sacrificial ethics of Christianity is combined with a willingness to sacrifice human lives for the sake of a few self-styled superior individuals.

Granted, Rand repudiated Christian ethics, but where on God’s Green Earth did Gray get the idea that Rand supported the “sacrifice [of] human lives” for the sake of supposedly superior individuals? The only passage quoted by Gray to support this claim is from the first edition of We the Living (1936), where Kira tells Victor, a dedicated communist:

I loathe your ideals. I admire your methods. If one believes one is right, one shouldn’t wait to convince millions of fools, one just might as well….What are your masses but mud to be ground under foot, fuel to be burned for those who deserve it? What is the people but millions of puny, shriveled, helpless souls, that have no thoughts of their own, no dreams of their own, no will of their own, who eat and sleep and chew helplessly the words put into their mildewed brains.

Rand changed this passage when We the Living was reissued in 1959. The revised passage still exhibits contempt for the masses, but Rand took out the references to the use of force. The revised passage ends: “I loathe your ideals because I know no worse injustice than the giving of the undeserved. Because men are not equal in ability and one can’t treat them as if they were.”

In her introduction to the 1959 edition, Rand wrote:

I have changed only the most awkward or confusing lapses of this kind. I have reworded the sentences and clarified their meaning without changing their content. I have not added or eliminated anything to or from the content of the novel. I have cut out some sentences and a few paragraphs that were repetitious or so confusing in their implications that to clarify them would have necessitated lengthy additions. In brief, all the changes are merely editorial line-changes.

Gray does not accept Rand’s explanation; he calls it “disingenuous.” I first learned of the awkward passage in 1973, when Roy Childs obtained a copy of the first edition. Like Gray, I was skeptical of Rand’s explanation. I suspected that the original expressed Nietzsche’s early influence on Rand. It didn’t occur to me that Nietzsche never advocated or approved of mass murder, so that explanation is implausible. Although Rand may have understated the reason for the later change, I would not call it “disingenuous.” Rand said some problems were caused by her unfamiliarity with the English language, and it would have required “lengthy additions” to explain the especially “confusing” parts. The disputed passage probably belongs in that category. After all, in no other place in We the Living do we find remarks that would support Kira’s odd remarks. Here I agree with the following observations by Eyal Mozes:

There is nothing in these two paragraphs, in the rest of the book, or anywhere else in Rand’s early writings, to even hint at a concern for the pursuit of power; for the improvement of the species; for any of the goals essential to Nietzsche. As much as we torture the evidence, the most it might confess to is that the early Rand did not understand the harmony of men’s interests, and so saw sacrifice of others to oneself as a legitimate means to pursuing one’s happiness; even if this were true, it would still make her early philosophy different in all essentials from Nietzsche.

According to Gray, throughout Rand’s writing she defended the sacrifice of the inferior to the superior. This is the most outrageous and demonstrably false claim in his entire discussion of Rand. Throughout her writings, both fiction and nonfiction, Rand said precisely the opposite. For example:

The Objectivist ethics holds that human good does not require human sacrifices and cannot be achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone.

And again:

Since all values have to be gained and/or kept by men’s actions, any breach between actor and beneficiary necessitates an injustice: the sacrifice of some men to others, of the actors to the nonactors, of the moral to the immoral. Nothing could ever justify such a breach, and no one ever has.

Moreover, in Rand’s theory, a true egoist would never want to sacrifice others for his own benefit. As she put it:

I could not understand how any man could be so brutalized as to claim the right to dispose of the lives of others, nor how any man could be so lacking in self-esteem as to grant to others the right to dispose of his life.

It would be unreasonable to demand that someone be an expert in Objectivism before he criticizes Ayn Rand. But a critic should at least be familiar with the fundamentals of her philosophy. John Gray fails miserably in this regard.

How will people respond to artificial intelligence taking their jobs? The rise of political radicalism on both Left and Right in the early twenty-first century is in part a reaction to rising income inequality and slower wage growth despite the increasing automation of jobs and gains in productive efficiency. We are in an ‘Engels pause,’ the lag between new technology that benefits whole economies and the moment those gains filter down to the families of displaced workers. Something similar happened during the industrial revolution during the 19th century, the moment that birthed Marxism. Paul interviews economic historian Carl Frey to discuss what we can learn about our present moment of technological innovation and the social reaction to it from the history of industrialization.

What is the technology trap? Why didn’t the industrial revolution happen earlier? Who are the beneficiaries of technological progress? Can algorithms be creative? What is the difference between originality and creativity?

Further Reading:

The Technology Trap: Capital, Labor, and the Power in the Age of Automation, written by Carl Benefikt Frey

Engel’s Pause: A Pessimist’s Guide to the British Industrial Revolution, written by Robert Allen and Robert C. Allen

Capital in the Twenty-First Century, written by Thomas Piketty

Related Content:

Industrial Revolution, written by Deirdre McCloskey

Will Artificial Intelligence Take Your Job?, Building Tomorrow Podcast

Will Algorithms Replace the Price System?, written by Adam Gurri

Many of libertarianism’s recurrent divisions also show up among proponents of school choice theory. In his book, Education in the Marketplace: An Intellectual History of Pro-Market Libertarian Visions for Education in Twentieth Century America, Kevin Currie-Knight shows the full spectrum of consequentialist vs. deontological reasons for supporting greater freedom in educational arrangements. Some libertarian deontologists believe that it’s the natural right of parents to make unencumbered education choices for their own children; the government violates that right with compulsory school attendance laws, full stop. By contrast, consequentialist-inclined libertarians think that the wrongness of publicly managed or funded schools stems primarily from their ineffectiveness and inefficiencies.

Beyond the recurring utilitarianism vs. deontology debate there are many other distinctions at play in school choice theory and Currie-Knight does a great job of spotlighting them. At an abstract level, is the purpose of school choice to allow schools to diversify in terms of their cultures and aims or do we hope that schools will more straightforwardly compete head-to-head on fundamental goals like literacy and numeracy? Who’s the most important beneficiary of educational services anyways: child, parent, State, or society? Is there any objective criteria for an education’s “goodness” apart from the fact that consumers choose it?

And even if the abstract concerns were to be resolved, questions still abound at the nuts and bolts level of school choice implementation. Under a robust choice plan, will schools mostly be public or private? Must they be non-profit, or is profit (even corporatization) of private schools acceptable?

As an intellectual history, Education In The Marketplace doesn’t attempt to settle these issues. Rather, Currie-Knight weaves together these themes in an exploration of market-oriented school choice thought as it has evolved over time across a diverse group of thinkers.

To name a few, social critic Albert Jay Nock thought that government schools intruded on liberty in principle and in substance, yet he worried that individuals might not make sound educational choices themselves. Journalist Frank Chodorov, under the influence of the Austrian school of economics, had no such worries about the quality of subjective educational preferences. He dreamed of a school on every corner to cater to the diversity of consumers’ demands.

Ayn Rand, the creator of a rationalist philosophy known as “Objectivism” and the writer of best-selling books Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead, was no fan of public education. She insisted that government-run schooling jeopardizes the foundation of a free society by teaching children that they are helpless members of a collective rather than free individuals with the crucial power of reason. Although not one to compromise with what she perceived as evil, Rand allowed that the government should offer tax credits for private spending on education as a way to mitigate the overall harms of public schooling while using taxation to support it.

Anarcho-capitalist Murray Rothbard’s total commitment to liberty — albeit only negative liberties — led him not only to an infamous position on dependent minors but to the conclusion that government has no place in education at all. On the other hand, free-market economist Milton and Rose Friedman approached school choice in a more pragmatic way as a tool for achieving better outcomes. The Friedmans argued (including in their famous PBS series Free to Choose) for a voucher-based system in which the government still funded much education but withdrew from running so many of its own schools.

Instead of arriving at the school choice debate from an academic or economic background, Myron Liberman learned the hard way that schools (and teachers) are massively resistant to change. Working as a teachers’ union negotiator illuminated for him that schools would never become properly effective until their resources were strictly limited via the profit motive. In the absence of head-to-head competition from other schools over student-consumers, school systems inevitably bloated, stagnated, and soaked up public resources wastefully.

In addition to these discussions of thinkers familiar to most libertarians, Currie-Knight offers a fascinating bonus in chapter 8, several examples of school choice advocates coming from the political Left instead of from the Right. John “Jack” Coons and Stephen Sugarman, for instance, were primarily concerned with rectifying funding inequities between school districts and even between individual families rather than with smashing the State per se. Their wonkish, algorithmic plan to secure educational funding equity via “family choice” actually gained some traction in California in the 1980s.

Educational theorist John Holt is probably better known to most libertarians than Coons or Sugarman; he popularized ideas about the pernicious compulsory nature of institutionalized schooling as inflicted upon us by the government. However, as Currie-Knight makes clear, it would be a mistake to understand John Holt as a full-blown political libertarian; Holt limited his observations to the field of education while remaining ambivalent about government’s proper role more generally.

The concluding chapter of Education In The Marketplace takes readers right up to the present. Currie-Knight carefully juxtaposes Ron Paul’s thought on educational choice with that of Diane Ravitch, a long-time American education commentator and former Assistant Secretary of Education who ultimately switched sides in this debate (from pro-educational-choice into one of its fiercest, loudest opponents). This high-profile duo both released books about education on the same day in 2013, though their positions diverged starkly.

Paul displays the kind of mixed deontological and consequentialist reasoning that you’d expect from an actual politician trying to appeal to real-world voters. Paul believes that parents do have the right to choose the educations their children receive and that government funding of education inevitably taints the content of that education. Conveniently, he also believes that robust private markets in education promote the best possible educational outcomes for children too.

Ravitch’s previous support for school choice was contingent upon the idea that a voucher-based system could introduce the competition necessary for more schools to fulfill basic standards of quality. A bleak assessment of the now-available evidence on the effectiveness of charter schools caused Ravitch to change her mind. She finds strong reason to believe that schools of choice, including many trendy online programs, have apparently stronger incentives to aggressively enroll students than to actually deliver quality services.

It’s tempting for libertarians to jump to charter schools’ defense, claiming that existing school choice programs have been too small or short-lived to reveal the real potential effects of competition on education. This is possibly true! But it’s also a big ask for a minority group like libertarians to ask the culturally-dominant, public school-approving majority to take a leap of faith on massive education reforms (one that pilot school choice programs don’t even necessarily support).

Education In The Marketplace could have benefitted from more explicit discussion of the moral dimensions of education. After subsuming the previously diverse and probably adequate landscape of small private schools, public schools moved past providing basic reading, writing, and arithmetic instruction into an explicit, ambitious agenda of offering “character education” that went far beyond the inevitable “hidden curriculum” of any schooling system. Like every other area of education, character education is rife with controversy, conflicts, and fads.

When Ayn Rand complains that public schools jeopardize individualism in students, she wasn’t just worried about the decay of her preferred political system — she’s worried literally about good vs. evil within individual minds. Homeschoolers, the ultimate defectors from government-monopolized education, are often motivated by perceived obligations to protect their children’s moral development from teachers with different agendas (even when those teachers work in schools with good standardized test scores). My own hometown was once embroiled in scandal (and subsequent lawsuit) when Christian creationists managed to get evolution disclaimer stickers placed in ordinary biology textbooks containing accounts of the origins of human life.

In other words, specifically moral and character-based concerns clearly underpin many ordinary people’s beliefs about how children should be educated. Taking these concerns seriously isn’t quite the same as understanding political rights or utilitarian consequences. Whether markets end up promoting good moral character, directly or indirectly, is very much a live question. Still, Education In The Marketplace offers a readable, satisfying account of the diversity in market-based education positions. It would be a great starting point for anyone, libertarian or not, to learn how libertarians think about markets for educational services.

This week we welcome Alexandra Natapoff to discuss the various problems with how misdemeanors are handled. Eighty percent of criminal cases filed in our countries are misdemeanors. There are so many places in the misdemeanor system where wrongful convictions are definitely taking place. The system lacks rigor and continues to be sloppy because of it. 

How powerful is the misdemeanor phenomenon? In the state system, do people think they get a fair trial for a misdemeanor? Is it a big deal to get a misdemeanor? Are misdemeanor fines a source of revenue? Who is profiting off of the state misdemeanor systems? What are the main ways to get a misdemeanor? What is probable cause?

Further Reading:

Punishment Without Crime: How Our Massive Misdemeanor System Traps the Innocent and Makes America More Unequal, written by Alexandra Natapoff

Busted, by Ryan Gabrielson and Topher Sanders at ProPublica

Misdemeanors Matter #2: Alexandra Natapoff on a Legacy of Injustice, Center For Court Innovation

Related Content:

Thin Blue Lies: How Pretextual Stops Undermine Police Legitimacy, Free Thoughts Podcast

The Problem of Police Misconduct, Free Thoughts Podcast

Cruel Alternatives: Respect for Law or Respect for Justice, written by Aeon Skoble

If you’re majoring in economics today, chances are you’ll start by taking introductory courses in microeconomics and macroeconomics. This approach is so common that we hardly question it. Moreover, students usually assume, as I did back when I was an undergraduate, that microeconomics deals somehow with “small things” while macroeconomics deals with the “big things.”  The content of these courses tends to give that impression: microeconomics discusses the choices of individual consumers, households, and firms, while macroeconomics things like national income, inflation, and unemployment.

In this essay I’d like to clarify two things: 1) that the fundamental difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics is in their respective methods not their content and 2) how the macro-micro distinction came to be.

The Macro-Micro Gap

In the undergraduate curriculum, macroeconomics deals with conceptual aggregates and statistical averages at the level of the nation-state and then how these aggregates and averages interact.

For example, there’s a concept central to traditional, Keynesian macroeconomics called the “marginal propensity to consume” or MPC.  The MPC is a relation between national income and national consumption; more specifically, it indicates what percentage of aggregate national income on average consumers as a whole will spend on consumer goods (e.g. 90%).  In traditional macroeconomics, consumption depends not on how consumers choose among differently priced goods, but on a (psychological) propensity to spend a stable percentage of income on consumption.  In short, consumption as a whole depends mainly on current income.

Microeconomics, on the other hand, typically explains consumption by looking at how an individual, not an aggregate of all consumers in a nation, responds to a change in the price of apples relative to the price of oranges. So, if the relative price of apples falls, other things equal a consumer will buy more apples and fewer oranges.  Similarly, to understand the decision of a consumer to save, microeconomics looks at whether a person’s gains from saving (e.g. the interest rate) is greater than her preference to have something now rather than later (i.e. time preference).

In general, traditional macroeconomics explains economic phenomena such as consumption in terms of aggregates and averages at the national level, while microeconomics explains those same phenomena – and not just consumption but investment, inflation, unemployment, as well – in terms of the incentives a person faces and the choices she makes. So, while the subject-matter may be the same, macroeconomics and microeconomics approach them entirely differently. So, in truth, “macro” and “micro” refer to the basic elements that would constitute a satisfactory explanation: aggregates and averages in macro or the choices of individuals in micro. In other words, the fundamental difference between microeconomics and macroeconomics is methodological:  What is the proper approach to studying economic phenomena and what constitutes a satisfactory explanation? At the undergraduate level it’s easy to get the impression that microeconomics and macroeconomics are two entirely different, almost contradictory disciplines, each with its own subject-matter and method of analysis.

But at the graduate level it has been the case for a long time that the microeconomic method has taken over the macroeconomic subject-matter.  That’s an interesting story in itself that would entail too much of a digression, except to say that it has mostly to do with economists trying to give rigorous and choice-based underpinnings to traditional Keynesian concepts such as “involuntary unemployment” or “sticky prices” or “money illusion.”  Beginning in the 1970s, however, economic theorists began to abandon the “Keynesian economics” still taught in most principles and intermediate economics courses.

At the undergraduate level, however, these traditional differences largely remain.

Macroeconomics before Keynes: Macroeconomics and Monetary Theory

Before John Maynard Keynes published The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money in 1936 there was no distinction, theoretically or pedagogically, between macroeconomics and microeconomics.  In English-speaking countries the main theoretical framework derived from Alfred Marshall’s Principles of Economics (the presentation of which still influences microeconomics textbooks to this day) and on the European continent the economics of the “Austrian” (e.g. Carl Menger, Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk) and “Swedish” (e.g. Knut Wicksell) schools of thought dominated economic theory.  Particularly in Europe, the “macro” dimension of economics was largely covered by that branch of economics that dealt with money, since unlike in other markets the decisions of suppliers of and demanders for money have a direct influence on the entire economy.  In other words, all economics was what we today would call microeconomics.

But Keynes’s General Theory radically changed everything. Unlike orthodox economic theory, the nation-state, not the individual, became the basic unit of analysis, and as we have seen individual incentives and choices took a back seat to average propensities and the interaction of aggregate quantities. Keynesian economics placed emphasis on aggregate employment and the creation of jobs, to the point where what those jobs were for didn’t really matter. Most economists lost interest in understanding the complexities of the capital structure of an economy and instead focused on jobs, jobs, jobs.

As mentioned, however, in the past 50 years, because it is more logically consistent and intellectually coherent, microeconomics has become the dominant approach in macroeconomics. Which raises a question:  If in modern economic theory microeconomic foundations have replaced macroeconomic methods, why does the traditional separation between macroeconomics and microeconomics persist at the undergraduate level?  Why isn’t it all just “economics” again?

The Persistence of Macroeconomics

That’s a hard question to answer. One reason may simply be that it’s been taught this way for over half a century and it’s hard for university departments and the textbook industry to change.  Even where undergraduate programs have adopted the microeconomic approach to macroeconomics retaining the two courses might be a convenient way to divide subject-matter. (But then why not just call them Economics 1 and Economics 2?)  There’s the related reason that, inherently, Keynesian macroeconomics is easy to grasp and therefore easy to teach.

By design, the central elements of the Keynesian approach consist of relatively simple relations (e.g. aggregate consumption as a function of aggregate income) that are relatively easy to measure; unlike, for example, the Austrian concepts of the “capital-structure of production” or the “natural rate of interest.”  Thus, the Keynesian revolution ushered in an unprecedented era of measurement of aggregates and averages, which contemporary policy-makers readily embraced, as Keynesian macroeconomics rapidly became the foundation of interventionist fiscal and monetary policies, first Keynesian and later Monetarist.  These measures are engrained in economic thinking to this day.

Politicians, policy-makers, and the mainstream media speak with ease about “consumer spending and saving,” “aggregate demand and supply,” and “the inflation and unemployment tradeoff,” all of which are central to traditional macroeconomics. Meanwhile a small army of bureaus and academic departments are today devoted to generating numbers for those concepts. And these folks probably learned their economics in college, where traditional macro is still taught, rather than in graduate programs where it is no longer taken seriously.

But even though it’s intellectually suspect, learning traditional macroeconomics may still be useful today, although not because it gives us a good understanding of how the economic world actually works.  Ironically, its main use may be to give us a good understanding of how economic-policy wonks think the economic world works. As a tool for interventionist policy, those folks do seem to take it seriously, indeed.

Additional Reading

Microfoundations of Macroeconomics by Steve Horwitz

Capital and Its Structure by Ludwig Lachmann

The gig economy is transforming cities. Companies like Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, and TaskRabbit are hiring thousands of workers on a contract basis rather than as formal employees, a legal distinction with broad implications for both workers and the future of the American economy. Matthew and Paul discuss the reasoning behind the contractor classification and whether it will be a net benefit to gig economy workers. They also talk about smart policy fixes—including expanded access to portable health insurance and various benefits-focused startups—that can address the downsides of contingent labor.

What is the gig economy and how is it different than the regular economy? What is rent-seeking behavior and how is it threatening the gig economy? What is the best interests of consumers? What is the precautionary principle?

Further Reading:

New Employment Regulations Could Destroy California’s Gig Economy, written by Christian Britschgi

Gig workers are fighting to be classified as employees. Trump’s Labor Department just came out against this., written by Chavie Lieber

The Truth About the Gig Economy, written by Annie Lowrey

Related Content:

On Innovation: Don’t Ask for Permission, Building Tomorrow Podcast

Welcome to the Sharing Economy, Free Thoughts Podcast

Ride-Sharing Services Aren’t a Problem, They’re a Solution, written by Aeon Skoble

                                                                                                                                                  “The Iron Throne” Photo Courtesy of HBO.com

Now that we all have had time to digest the ending of Game of Thrones, we invited Ilya Somin on to the show to do an in depth analysis of not only the ending, but the show in its’ entirety. We cover the political economy of Westeros, possible reasons for the years of economic stagnation, the role of a revolutionary, and the dangers of absolute power.

Does Game of Thrones accurately depict how an absolute monarchy worked during medieval times? Does political ignorance occur throughout Game of Thrones? How can we explain economic stagnation in Westeros? Should dragons stimulate economic development? Is Dany a Castro-style Lenin revolutionary? How is ruling different than conquering? Why didn’t the Game of Thrones characters decide to create a democracy at the end?

Further Reading:

Reflections on “Game of Thrones”, written by Ilya Somin

‘This was abysmal’: Nearly 1 million disgruntled ‘Game of Thrones’ fans demand a final season remake, written by Timothy Bella

The Best Takes On Daenerys’ Controversial Decision On ‘Game Of Thrones’, written by Pang-Chieh Ho

Related Content:

Power and Ideology, written by Douglas Hay

The Lust for Power, written by George H. Smith

Jedi Libertarianism: Lessons on the Nature of Evil from Star Wars, written by Michael F. Cannon

                                                                                                                                          Image Courtesy of the Ayn Rand Institute. 

John Gray’s latest book, Seven Types of Atheism (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018), is a survey of different types of atheistic philosophers and philosophies. The division of atheism into seven categories (secular humanism, the God-Haters, etc.) may have served Gray’s purpose in writing this book, but beyond this they have no substantial value. Gray identifies himself as an atheist (which he correctly identifies as a person without belief in God), and the prospect of a prominent atheist analyzing and criticizing other atheists promises to be interesting. But some of Gray’s major points—such as his repeated claim that atheists are stuck in an essentially Christian view of progress—are so vague as to be of little or no value.

It is not my intention in this article to criticize Gray’s general points; I will comment on them in my next essay. Here I will focus on Gray’s egregious discussion of Ayn Rand. This discussion is not only bad, it is inexcusably bad. Before proceeding, I should note that I knew John decades ago, when we both lectured at summer seminars for the Institute for Human Studies. We spent quite a bit of time together, and I later served as John’s informal guide when he visited Hollywood.

John was a friendly and thoughtful companion. His efforts to earn a PhD from Oxford were partly financed by IHS scholarships, and he was viewed as a bright light with the potential to bring intellectual respectability to libertarian theory in Britain. This did not pan out, however. Shortly after earning an advanced degree, he began publishing critiques of libertarianism. I had lost contact with John by then, so I never had a chance to discuss the reasons for his changes of position. (It is possible that John held the same hostile views previously but had disguised them during his years with IHS.) Nor did I track his subsequent intellectual developments, other than reading his books on J.S. Mill and Voltaire. Gray has become known as a defender of environmentalism and for his critique of global free trade.

John is a retired academic, having taught at the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics. Now, I have been around long enough not to expect a sympathetic treatment of Rand from academics, and I am familiar enough with Internet gossip not to be surprised by what I read about Rand. Recently, for example, one poster said that Ayn Rand was so poverty stricken in later life that she had little choice but to depend on Social Security to live. No one bothered to question this statement, even though it seems implausible on its face, given the substantial royalties Rand earned from Atlas Shrugged and other books. 

John Gray’s main purpose is to portray Rand as the leader of a “cult.” It is true that Objectivism had certain cultish features, but it is also true that unlike most cults, there was a solid core of philosophy at its center. I discussed this problem with Nathaniel Branden during the early 1970s. He insisted that the cultish features were largely his responsibility, not Rand’s. He said that he was overly protective of Rand, and that he went overboard in attempting to shield her from public hostility.

But what about Rand’s philosophy? Gray has no desire to discuss this. He asserts that to examine or explain her philosophic views “would be tedious, since they are thoroughly silly.” He prefers instead to present various tidbits that support his thesis that Objectivism was a cult. A major problem here is that some of his examples are pure fiction. Consider this claim:

Rand’s cult aimed to govern every aspect of life. She was a dedicated smoker, and her followers were instructed that they had to smoke as well. Not only did Rand smoke, she used a cigarette-holder—so that when she addressed large audiences of the faithful, a thousand cigarette-holders would move in unison.

I began reading Rand during the 1960s, and I thought I had heard every urban legend about her. But not this one. Gray credits a “former Randian believer” as his only source. Before dismissing Gray’s account as pure garbage, I thought I would consult David Kelley, who knew Rand and attended many of her lectures. He called the story “fake history.” He never saw the cigarette-holder tribute described by Gray, and he flatly denied the claim that Rand insisted that her followers smoke.

Another one of Gray’s claims is similarly absurd. He asserts that “officers of the cult were empowered to pair Rand’s disciples only with others who also subscribed to the faith. The marriage ceremony included pledging devotion to Rand, then opening Atlas Shrugged at random to read aloud a passage from the sacred text.”

The only backup Gray gives for this dubious claim is Murray Rothbard’s acerbic 1972 article, “The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult.” But Gray bungles and misrepresents even this unreliable source. Rothbard does not support Gray’s allegation about “officers of the cult” and Objectivist marriages. Instead, he notes only one instance of a marriage ceremony that resembled Gray’s generalization. Rothbard wrote:

The Biblical nature of Atlas for many Randians is illustrated by the wedding of a Randian couple that took place in New York. At the ceremony, the couple pledged their joint devotion and fealty to Ayn Rand, and then supplemented it by opening Atlas – perhaps at random – to read aloud a passage from the sacred text.

Rothbard’s single example may have actually happened, but Gray unjustifiably transforms it into a general practice. Either Gray deliberately distorted Rothbard’s account or his obvious hatred of Rand made it impossible to read accurately. Gray apparently doesn’t know that Rothbard, prior to this split from the Ayn Rand circle, praised Rand effusively. In a long letter to Rand (Oct. 3, 1957), Rothbard wrote:

When, in the past, I heard your disciples refer to you in grandiloquent terms—as one of the greatest geniuses who ever lived, as giving them a “round universe”—I confess I was repelled: surely this was the outpouring of a mystic cult. But now, upon reading Atlas Shrugged, I find I was wrong. This was not wild exaggeration but the perception of truth. You are one of the great geniuses of the ages, and I am proud that we are friends. And Atlas Shrugged is not merely the greatest novel ever written, it is one of the very greatest books ever written, fiction or nonfiction. Indeed, it is one of the greatest achievements the human mind has ever produced.

Rothbard later turned against Rand, and when Rothbard turned on someone, he turned with a vengeance. By 1972, Rothbard had demoted Atlas Shrugged from “the greatest novel ever written” to a novel in which “wooden, posturing, and one-dimensional heroes and heroines were explicitly supposed to serve as role models for every Randian.” But Gray shows not the least bit of skepticism about accepting Rothbard’s hostile account as gospel. He might as well have skimmed the Internet for false stories about Rand, where they are legion. I discuss some of Rothbard’s allegations against Nathaniel Branden and the “Rand cult” here. One of Rothbard’s claims that I didn’t mention—it was so ugly that I let it pass—was that Branden may have murdered his wife, who suffered an epileptic seizure and drowned in their swimming pool.

I frankly expected better—much better—from John Gray, who poses as a serious scholar and historian. His distortion and curt dismissal of Rand demolish the credibility of the entire book, which is actually decent in some other respects (even though I disagree with some of his analyses of classical liberalism). But his false stories about Rand pale in comparison to some of his other remarks, when he lowers himself to discuss her ideas. It is as if he had never read Rand but only her critics and their outrageous criticisms.

Given Gray’s opinion that Rand’s philosophical arguments are “thoroughly silly,” we might wonder why he bothers to discuss Rand at all in Seven Types of Atheism. He gives the following reason: “For all its absurdities or because of them, Rand’s version of atheism was one of the most widely disseminated in the second half of the twentieth century.”

It is not clear what Gray means by Rand’s version of atheism. By “atheism,” what Rand meant and many atheists have meant, namely, the absence of belief in a god or gods. This is essentially how Gray uses the term as well. But Rand placed little emphasis on atheism per se. She rarely mentioned it, and she expressly denied that atheism is an adequate description of her metaphysical position. In a letter to the humanist Martin Larson, Rand wrote:

You call yourself an Atheist; I do not prefer that appellation, for I consider it negativist, and I prefer something which is positive. I do not call myself an “Atheist” as an identification of my metaphysical position; I call myself an “Objectivist.” But I do use the term “Atheist” in the appropriate context, such as, for instance, in answer to the queries of religionists or of those who spread verbal confusion by claiming that “a belief in natural laws is a belief in God,” etc.

Of course. Rand was an atheistic philosopher, but she did not emphasize atheism, as did some other philosophers covered in Gray’s book. I assume that in speaking of Rand’s version of atheism, Gray means that Objectivism is a philosophy without God. This is true but not very significant.

Jason Brennan and Phil Magness’s book Cracks in the Ivory Tower is a must-read for all academics. I don’t say that as hyperbole – everyone who participates in higher ed (administrators as well as faculty) really needs to read this impressive (and depressing) analysis of the problems besetting our profession in order to better understand the things we frequently complain about.

All but 5 pages of this book have persuaded me of the authors’ point of view. Let me get this disagreement out of the way, since I intend to endorse the other 317 pages. On pp. 142-147, Brennan and Magness argue against the institution of tenure. As I argued in a Freeman essay  (co-authored with Steve Horwitz), and in a forthcoming piece in the Journal of Markets and Morality, the institution of academic tenure is a vital component of professors’ ability to do their jobs. I recognize several flaws in the way that the tenure system is often structured, and have made suggestions as to how those ought to be remedied – and indeed, the source of those flaws is well accounted for by the arguments Brennan and Magness make. Still, I remain unconvinced that tenure should be abolished.

The rest of the book is all thoroughly persuasive, and depressingly so. A lot of the things academics complain about are empirical matters, and Brennan and Magness are good with data.  The book is fully sourced, so when they claim that some charge or other is belied by the facts, they can back that up. One thing I realized reading this is that even though most of us are aware that anecdotes aren’t data, we tend to think of our own anecdotes as data, or at least “data-ish.” But the thing about cognitive biases is that we can all fall victim to them. When a student from 20 years ago writes a nice note saying how meaningful the class was, it’s heartwarming and genuinely appreciated, but what we don’t notice is the thousands of other students who didn’t write. Did we have a similar impact on them?  Hard to say. Of course we would all like to think we did, and we probably impacted more students than took the time to write. But whether, in general, we are successfully imparting the skills and knowledge we think we are, that’s an empirical matter, and if the data suggest we overestimate it, all the worse for our self-image. Many sacred cows of higher ed turn out to be based on a romanticism that is undercut by the data.

In general, Brennan and Magness think that we can understand the causes of most of what we complain about if we understand the way incentives matter to people’s decision-making.  Bureaucracies have their own internal logic to them, and the higher-ed administrators that faculty love to complain about are easier to understand when the incentives are explained.  But: we (the faculty) also face perverse incentives which cause us, too, to act poorly. Public choice analysis lets academics see why politicians do what they do, but we fall into the same patterns ourselves. We would all do well to engage in some self-discovery here, though the depressing part is that it’s hard to see how those incentives could be changed.

Brennan is a philosopher and Magness a historian, but it is basic insights from economics that drive much of their analysis. The role of incentives is one example; another is the reality of trade-offs. Since every dollar of the university’s budget that is spent on Thing One is therefore not available to be spent on Thing Two, the justification for Thing One has to involve more than just “it would be good,” but furthermore that it’s a better use of funds than Thing Two. And the same is true with respect to government funding for higher ed – every dollar spent on higher ed is a dollar not spent on, e.g., health care. Are the trade-offs worth it? How would one know? 

Questions like that permeate the book. Why do we use student evaluations? Because we want to measure instructional effectiveness. But what if they don’t do that? Why require general ed courses? Because we think students should know those things. But what if those courses don’t result in them knowing those things? These are legitimate questions, and there are empirical components to their answers—answers which many people won’t like. But why should anyone dislike them? If I thought I could cure the pain in my elbow by taking a particular medication, and then I were shown empirical evidence that the medication doesn’t help my elbow but does cost me a lot of money, shouldn’t I be happy to be shown this? That my illusion was shattered ought to matter less to me than fixing the pain in my elbow.

I’m not sure whether it’s more depressing or less depressing that a lot of the bad behavior they analyze is explained by cognitive bias and rational response to perverse incentives.  But surely the first step to fixing a problem is understanding the problem.  Brennan and Magness do a thorough job showing why the problem isn’t “increased corporatization,” “neoliberal ideology,” “massive funding cuts,” or several other bugbears. It also isn’t pure venality (at least not wholesale; surely there are some venal actors); people may be truly committed to some cause or other and have good intentions.  But meaning well, as the authors note, is not a substitute for doing good.

The authors are careful not to make their argument about “left-vs-right,” although it will surely be characterized that way by the sort of person who assumes that any discussion of trade-offs or perverse incentives in higher ed must be some kind of conservative plot to undermine support for higher ed.  They specifically shy away from conservative talking points about “left wing faculty indoctrinating their students” and other arguments that could easily be pigeonholed as politically biased. But the problems discussed tend not to be easily analyzable as left-vs-right, and are instead a matter of cognitive biases, romantic thinking, and perverse incentives that afflict people of all political stripes. 

Cracks in the Ivory Tower: The Moral Mess of Higher Education, Jason Brennan and Phillip Magness (Oxford University Press, 2019)

Over the past several years, conservative complaints about social media bias have grown. Some conservatives allege that platforms like Facebook, Google, and Twitter have tweaked their algorithms in ways that effectively downgrade conservative content or that they have “shadow-banned” conservative voices. In this episode, Paul and Will are joined by Zach Graves and Ryan Radia, both from the Lincoln Network, to discuss to what extent these allegations are legitimate and to weigh subsequent calls for government regulation.

Is news structurally biased? How do conservatives and liberals respond differently to their content being censored online? Is Facebook a legitimate moderator of its’ own platform? What are the bounds of debate in our country? What is a “quality” experience on a social media platform? What is Section 230? What is the Fairness Doctrine?

Further Reading:

Why I’m Suing Twitter, written by Meghan Murphy

The Impossible Job: Inside Facebook’s Struggle to Moderate Two Billion People, written by Jason Koebler and Joseph Kox

Google News results favor left-leaning media, report finds, written by Cat Hofacker

Related Content:

Free Speech Online, Free Thoughts Podcast

Toward an Uncensored Internet, written by Sonya Mann

For Bad Speech, Is Sunlight Really the Best Disinfectant?, written by Christian Barnard

In a recent piece for 60 Minutes, Anderson Cooper visited one of the largest cloud mining companies in the world today - Genesis Mining. What Cooper saw there can only be described as looking like something out of a modern sci-fi film. Rows and rows of computer parts buzzing in metronomic harmony, all dialed into a litany of different blockchains.

In the modern age of cryptocurrency mining, the deck is overwhelmingly stacked against the individual from the start. However, that isnʼt keeping applications like HoneyMiner from attempting to level the playing field. While you might not get rich (today) from using HoneyMiner, the process of participating in the most organic financial reorganization of our time is one not worth missing out on.

And who knows? Maybe in 20 years when 1 satoshi = 1 dollar, you will be thanking a Honey Bear for all the cheap coins!

In 1807, James Buchanan entered Dickson College. When he graduated in 1809, he began studying law. In 1812, he entered the bar. Between 1812–1821, Buchanan created a successful and prosperous legal practice. During this time, he launched his political career. In 1814, he was elected as the youngest member of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives for Lancaster County as a Federalist and critic of President James Madison. After elected to the U. S House of Representatives in 1821, he never strayed from the national Democratic Party. Buchanan represented Lancaster County in the House of Representatives until 1830. 

Buchanan never (publicly) romanced or married. In lieu of marital companionship, Buchanan cultivated dependent friendships with many of his male political colleagues. Over time, most of these close friends were southern Democrats. This reliance on these personal ties affected Buchanan’s judgment. As president, these individuals satisfied his need for companionship. James Buchanan rarely reached beyond his tight circle of friends for guidance, and the nation suffered. 

Between 1821 and 1846, Buchanan served eighteen months as the Minister to Russia, nine years in the House of Representatives and 13 years in the Senate. These dates are significant. Despite his long career in Congress, Buchanan missed the three most acrimonious legislative debates of the antebellum period:  the Missouri Compromise was finalized before he arrived in Washington; the Compromise of 1850 and Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) after he left. Each attempted to resolve how, or whether, slavery could be extended to the territories that came under U.S. jurisdiction. The national goal of extending the U.S. borders from coast-to-coast (“Manifest Destiny”) raised the question of the extension of slavery to the new territories and states; resolving this question increasingly divided the nation.

Buchanan advocated “states’ rights,” the strict constructionist position that “Congress has no power…to interfere with or control the domestic institutions of the several states.”^[1] By 1856, Buchanan believed that according to the Constitution, the individual states, and by extension the territories, had the right to determine the status of their ‘domestic institutions,’ without federal interference. Buchanan sympathized with his southern friends who warned that uncontrolled slaves represented a violent threat to southern society and economic prosperity. For this reason, Buchanan believed that those who advocated abolition and Free Soil constituted a threat to domestic peace.

From 1846-1856, Buchanan’s political career focused primarily on international affairs; first as secretary of state under President Polk (1846-1849), then as the U.S. Minister to the United Kingdom (1853-1856). In these positions, Buchanan was a strong advocate of Manifest Destiny, and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hildalgo after the Mexican-American War. Then during his tenure as Minister to Great Britain, Buchanan and two other envoys penned the Ostend Manifesto, a document calling for the U.S. acquisition of Cuba for “any price” below $120 million; further, the Manifesto stated that if Spain would not sell Cuba to the Americans, the United States “shall be justified in wresting it from Spain.”^[2]

Throughout the latter half of his career, Buchanan quietly sought the Democratic nomination for the presidency. In 1856, this ambition became a reality. The Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854) negated the Missouri Compromise’s prohibition on slavery in the new territories or states above 36° 30’ latitude and rived the Democratic Party. Many prominent ‘free soil’ Democrats, led by Salmon P. Chase, bolted from the party over this “betrayal;” they joined former Whigs and anti-slavery members of the American (‘No-Nothing’) Party and established the Republican Party.^[3]

The Kansas-Nebraska Act also led to a conflagration in “Bleeding Kansas” as pro- and anti-slavery “settlers” fought to establish prominence. Over 50 people were killed in these confrontations before Kansas was admitted to the Union as a free state in 1861. As the U.S. Minister in London, Buchanan was shielded from the political maelstrom that occurred over the Kansas situation. Untainted by this controversy, his northern heritage, southern sympathies, and his strong advocacy of Manifest Destiny, secured him the party’s nomination for the presidency in 1856. The new Republican Party launched their first national campaign, with John C. Frémont as their candidate. The American Party chose former Whig president Millard Fillmore as their nominee, and “the chief difference between the candidates was on the question of slavery in the territories.” Many Democrats declared that a “Black Republican” victory would result in “immediate, absolute, eternal separation” of northern and southern states.^[4] Buchanan and his vice presidential running mate, John C. Breckinridge, secured fewer popular votes than their two rivals combined, but won the 1856 election with 174 electoral votes. Buchanan secured every slave state except Maryland. Frémont won eleven free states to Buchanan’s five. James Buchanan became president in March 1857, but that which carried him to the White House also spelled his doom. 

All The Mistakes 

Because Buchanan was overseas and did not participate directly in the political debates of the 1850’s, he did not fully appreciate how divided the country had become prior to the election, particularly with regard to the settlement of Kansas and the volatile question of slavery in the territories. He believed a solution to these conflicts was within reach through the Supreme Court. Because of his loyalty to his southern friends, he misunderstood and grossly underestimated the animosity felt by the growing population in the free states.

Second, Buchanan exacerbated the conflict within the Democratic Party. He did not understand the economic divisions within the Democracy: between the “slaveocracy” and their wealth in land and human property and the Democrats promoting the transcontinental railroad and western development. In an effort to realign the Democracy away from Illinois Senator Stephen A. Douglas, Buchanan personally spent an excessive amount of time and energy making patronage appointments, even for low ranking positions. He elevated those he considered friendly to his goals and fired or phased out individuals friendly to Douglas. He and his fellow southern sympathizing Democrats from “free” states became known as “Doughfaces.”

The composition of his Cabinet included four members who would later join the Confederate States of America and three northerners who were fellow “Doughfaces.” “For a lonely man, [the Cabinet] had to be friends who would fill his days with conversation, share his dinners, and as later transpired, when their wives were out of town, sleep in the White House.”^[5] He let his friendly Cabinet members run their departments with little oversight; several proved to be extremely incompetent and corrupt. Buchanan gave them control because he hoped to focus his attention on his foreign policy goals:  extending U.S. power and influence to Latin America, Alaska, and, again, Cuba.

Buchanan’s problems began immediately; and they started with a whisper. 

The Dred Scott Decision

Over the course of U.S. history, there have been a number of Supreme Court decisions that redirected national policy; the Dred Scott decision certainly is one. In addition to the significance of the decision, it is also considered one of the worst opinions written by the court. The case, formally called Dred Scott v. Sandford, was argued before the Supreme Court first before the election, then again in December, 1856. Dred Scott was a slave whose master, an army surgeon, brought Scott with him when he was stationed in the free state of Illinois and the territory that became Minnesota. After his original owner died, Dred Scott’s new owner moved him to Missouri, where he sued his new owner for his freedom. Scott argued that his residency in both a free state and territory meant that he should be free. The Supreme Court did not announce their ruling in the case until two days after Buchanan’s inauguration.

As Buchanan climbed the podium to take the oath of office from friend, and former colleague from the Andrew Jackson administration, Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney, the two exchanged whispered words. Buchanan then declared in his inaugural address that he would “cheerfully submit” to the decision of the Court with regard to the Dred Scott case. Initially, the exchange between two old friends, and Buchanan’s reference to the ruling during his Inaugural Address, did not seem extraordinary. Then the Court issued its ruling.^[6]

The Court’s decision shocked residents of the free states. Rather than a narrow ruling on Scott’s fate, the opinion written by Chief Justice Taney had far reaching implications. Two key points emerged: the court determined that Dred Scott had no right to sue in federal court because those with African heritage could not be citizens of the United States. Second, the Court determined that Congress had no power to limit the ability of slave owners to carry their property into the federal territories since property rights were protected by the Constitution.

As news of the opinion swept the country, many interpreted the ‘whispering’ of Buchanan and Taney as a conspiracy. Taney had tipped Buchanan to the Court’s decision in the words they exchanged, then Buchanan endorsed this opinion in his inaugural address. “As they digested Taney’s opinion, Republicans began to articulate that it was part of a conspiracy to force slavery on the territories and maybe even into the [northern free states.]”^[7] The truth has been shown to be more damaging than the contemporaneous speculations. Historians have demonstrated that in the months before his inauguration, President-elect Buchanan pressured Associate Justice Robert Cooper Grier to join the majority opinion. As Paul Finkelman has noted, “It is extremely odd that an incoming president would have begun his administration by saying that Congress and the executive branch should cede power and authority to the judiciary to solve a major political issue.”^[8] That Buchanan used his role as president-elect to sway the Court was both unprincipled and unparalleled.

Buchanan believed that the Dred Scott decision would resolve the troublesome issue of slavery in the territories, and did not understand the fury that ensued. Once the Court ruled that slave owners had the right to bring their “property” into the territories, the question of whether the territory entered the United States as a slave or free state was in the hands of the residents of the territory, not the federal government. In Buchanan’s mind, this negated the agitation of the Republican Party, and would settle the differences between the factions within the Democracy. The opposite proved true. That Buchanan did not appreciate the implications of the decision, and the inappropriateness of his meddling in the Supreme Court’s deliberations, signaled his ignorance of the deep division in the country over the future of slavery in the territories. Many feared this also opened the possibility of slave owners bringing their property into states that did not permit the “peculiar institution.”

The Lecompton Constitution

During his inaugural address, Buchanan referred to the divisive and “Bloody” situation in Kansas. The Kansas-Nebraska Act, passed in May, 1854 gave the residents of the territory of Kansas the right to choose through “popular sovereignty” whether to deny or permit the “peculiar institution” once the territory became a state. Kansas emerged as the testing ground for this concept, and the trial did not go well. 

Soon after the passage of this measure, Emigrant Societies in Massachusetts and Missouri recruited volunteers to migrate, temporarily or permanently, to the Kansas territory to establish residency in time to vote for the representatives who would write the constitution for the state. Thence, the state constitution would be delivered to the U.S. Congress for ratification and Kansas would then be admitted as either a slave or free state. The stakes were significant because the House of Representatives, where representation was based on population, had become increasingly anti-slavery. The Senate, composed of two senators from each state, with no regard to population, became the refuge for blocking anti-slavery legislation that poured out of the House. For this reason, the “slave power,” as many at the time characterized these political manifestations, needed senators who would vote for the interests of continuance and expansion of slavery. In 1855, thousands of Missouri residents, “Border Ruffians,” crossed the state line into Kansas, and helped elect a pro-slavery legislature. In response, free soil advocates convened their own legislature. By the end of 1855, “the polarization of forces in Kansas was complete.”^[9]

Violence erupted between the pro- and anti-slavery factions. In May 1856, three events occurred that highlighted the tensions in Kansas, and impacted national politics. During the “Sack of Lawrence,” pro-slavery advocates marched into Lawrence and destroyed buildings and pro-free soil newspaper presses. Three days later, John Brown and a group of abolitionists attacked pro-slavery settlers, killing five. Between these events, in the Senate chamber in Washington, DC, Congressman Preston Brooks caned Senator Charles Sumner as a protest against Sumner’s fiery anti-slavery speech, based in part on the Kansas situation, and the general sense amongst many that the “Slave Power” had an inordinate influence in the national government.

Different constitutions were drafted by opposing state legislatures. The Lecompton Constitution was the primary pro-slavery document; the Topeka Constitution was the opposing anti-slavery document. James Buchanan appointed Robert J. Walker, former Treasury secretary and senator from Mississippi, as the territorial governor. Upon his arrival in Kansas, Walker realized that the anti-slavery settlers outnumbered those for slavery, and declared the pro-slavery legislature, and the draft Lecompton Constitution, invalid. This reaction angered southerners in Congress, and Buchanan’s cabinet. Buchanan’s vigorous support for the Lecompton Constitution “failed” Walker in his efforts to bring a peaceful resolution to the turbulence in the state.^[10] Walker became increasingly outspoken in his repudiation of the Lecompton Constitution, while Buchanan openly supported it and urged Congress to admit Kansas as a slave state. Walker resigned as the territorial governor.

In February 1858, Buchanan sent the Lecompton Constitution to Congress for approval, the first step to becoming a state. A bitter and acrimonious debate ensued, and Congress deadlocked. Stephen A. Douglas, Buchanan’s political rival in the Democratic Party, and the originator of the “popular sovereignty” doctrine, opposed its approval. In August 1858, the voters of Kansas again had the opportunity to go to the polls and vote on the proposed Lecompton Constitution; they turned it down by a vote of 11,300 to 1,788. This constituted a tremendous defeat for Buchanan, who lobbied hard for its passage. “Anti-Lecompton” Democrats became Buchanan’s adversaries in the House; in 1858, Buchanan lost political influence in Congress because of his missteps. Kansas remained a territory until 1861, when an anti-slavery constitution was submitted and approved by the now predominantly Republican Congress. 

The Lecompton Constitution fray demonstrated Buchanan’s inclination to accept the pro-slavery arguments endorsed by the Supreme Court. He picked the wrong side in this dispute, then stubbornly adhered to his selection despite the advice from his hand-picked governor. His defense of extending slavery aggravated tensions within his political party, and threw more fuel on the fire of partisan acrimony. The nation watched in dismay as the situation in Kansas dragged on. His passive-aggressive approach to the violence and political stalemate in Kansas turned the electorate against his administration. The Democrats suffered in the congressional election of 1858; Republicans gained 23 seats in the House and five in the Senate, a clear sign of the perceived weakness of Buchanan’s leadership and the waning southern political power.

The Utah Expedition

Like most antebellum Protestants, President Buchanan distrusted Mormons. Soon after taking office, he launched the “Utah War,” a military offensive against the territorial government led by Brigham Young.

Joseph Smith founded the Mormon Church in 1830. Smith claimed an angel appeared to him and directed him to tablets inscribed with a lost scripture. He translated the tablets into the Book of Mormon. The Mormon faith expanded many of the tenets of Christianity. Their belief that an ancient, chosen people inhabited the Americas led Mormons to convert Native Americans to their faith, which threatened the communities where they tried to settle. The Mormons also practiced polygamy. These beliefs made the Mormon faith anathema to the American Protestant majority that surrounded them. Joseph Smith founded the church in western New York, an area known as the “Burned-over district” for the intensity of Protestant conversions that occurred during the 1820s and 30s. Smith and his Latter Day Saints experienced violent opposition to their faith. Forced out of New York, they migrated westward, experiencing hostility continuously. In 1844, Smith was murdered, and his eventual successor, Brigham Young, unified the desperate groups scattered across the Midwest and led a migration to the Utah territory. Once in Utah, they hoped to preserve the integrity of their faith in a remote landscape far from their enemies.

In 1850, President Franklin Pierce appointed Brigham Young to a four-year term as Utah’s territorial governor. The continued hostilities between the Mormon settlers and non-Mormon officials and travelers passing through the territory concerned Washington administrators. “Two radically different philosophies of governance [existed]; Brigham Young’s vision of Utah as a millennially focused theocracy … and the U.S. government’s view of Utah as just another territory.”^[11] When Young’s term as governor expired in 1854, President Pierce neither reappointed him nor selected a replacement. So Young continued governing the territory without official approval.

Soon after the election, non-Mormon federal administrators in Utah wrote to officials in Washington complaining of continued violence and harassment between the Latter Day Saints and non-Mormons. These appeals led the government to declare Utah in a state of “rebellion.” Buchanan decided to act forcefully. Although Buchanan took a non-interventionist role in Kansas, he did not hesitate in acting against his aversion to polygamy. He named a new territorial governor, Alfred Cumming, and requested a 2,500-man military force that would accompany the newly appointed governor to Utah. At that time, this force constituted roughly one-third of the U.S. standing army. That such an extraordinary force was launched toward the territory of Utah is remarkable. To make matters worse, Buchanan did not communicate directly with Brigham Young. In fact, it wasn’t until his annual address to Congress in December 1857 that Buchanan even acknowledged the situation in Utah. Buchanan referred to it as the “first rebellion which has existed in our territories,” conveniently ignoring the conflagration occurring in Kansas.^[12]

Although there was no direct communication from Washington, Brigham Young heard of the impending “invasion;” he declared martial law, sealed the territory’s boundary, and burned federal supplies stored in Utah. In September 1857, 120 migrants passing through Utah to California were massacred, further evidence of the tensions that had built in the territory. The anti-Mormon expedition marched west, towards an uncertain reception. “Among the miseries [encountered] by the Mormon expedition … were the destruction of the wagon trains, the ambushes, the theft of the oxen, the snow, and the grueling two weeks that it took to struggle the last thirty miles…”^[13] President Buchanan’s friend, Thomas L. Kane, who corresponded regularly with Brigham Young, intervened, and convinced the president that the Mormons would accept peace if offered, so the president granted amnesty to all Utah residents who would accept federal authority. The force that marched into Utah remained in the territory through the remainder of Buchanan’s presidency, which created complications for the Union as the Civil War commenced.

Fiscal Imprudence and the “Buchaneers”

When James Buchanan took office in 1857, the U.S. Treasury recorded a $1.3 million surplus, and a moderate $28.7 million debt. By the start of Abraham Lincoln’s administration, the Treasury carried a $25.2 million deficit and a $76.4 million debt. This represented the largest fiscal imbalance amassed by a pre-Civil War administration not engaging in a foreign war.

Soon after Buchanan’s inauguration, the Panic of 1857 swept the country. Customs receipts, the primary source of revenue for the federal government, declined, never matching the income collected during any year of Buchanan’s predecessor, President Pierce. Despite this drop in revenue, expenditures during the Buchanan presidency topped those of any peacetime administration.^[14] 

Rather than adjusting to the loss in revenue, the Buchanan administration initiated a “flood of innovations.” The Mormon expedition added millions in expenses to the army’s budget; the naval department activated more services that many later claimed supported the illegal slave trade; Buchanan spent generously to expand the postal service and award patronage positions to Democrats faithful to him.^[15]

Corruption also sapped the federal budget. Historian Mark W. Summers described the Buchanan administration’s malfeasance as the “most devastating proof of government abuse of power since the founding of the Republic.” The Republicans controlled the 36^th Congress, and launched an investigation into the Buchanan administration’s corruption. The committee, chaired by Pennsylvanian John Covode, uncovered scandals in the War Department over sweetheart land deals to friends of Secretary John Floyd. Floyd also overpaid for supplies for the Utah march, which greatly inflated the cost of the expedition. Government printing contracts were used to finance Buchanan’s political machine. “Considerable evidence” exists, according to Jean H. Baker, “that [Buchanan’s] effort to bulldoze the Lecompton Constitution” through Congress “involved several forms of bribery.”^[16] The level of corruption engaged in by the “Buchaneers” surprised even their supporters. The report of the Covode Committee circulated widely during the 1860 election.

Howell Cobb, Buchanan’s close friend and Treasury secretary, had responsibility for “finding a way out of the financial morass,”^[17] and found the task above his ability. Before the launch of the internal revenue measures during the Civil War, the federal government had only two options for raising revenue quickly: increasing tariff rates, or borrowing. Cobb remained dedicated to the Democratic Party’s advocacy of a low tariff. The Tariff of 1857 had been passed just before the start of Buchanan’s term, and this measure lowered tariff rates, and therefore, revenue. “Free trade” tariffs had been a cornerstone of the Democratic Party since the 1840s. Cobb, as one of the leading members of the party, did not consider raising import duties, even in the face of fiscal imperative. Rather than propose higher tariff rates, Cobb and the Buchanan administration turned to deficit financing. During their four years in office, the Buchanan administration enacted six different “emergency” loan measures to pay ordinary government expenses. This represented the first time a president used deficit financing to meet regular administrative costs.

As the deficits mounted, and the political situation in the country became more tenuous, the terms of the loans grew more disadvantageous to the government. By 1861, the Treasury could not borrow money for less than 12 percent interest, a historic high during a period of peace. The dependence on Treasury notes to meet ordinary government expenses began a policy of short-term borrowing that the incoming Lincoln Administration could not reverse at the onset of the Civil War. The compounding effect of the Buchanan administration’s failure to either cut expenses or raise revenue subsequently impaired the Republican’s effort to secure funding in the early months of the Civil War, and added considerable costs once the war commenced.

The Seccessionist Winter

James Buchanan has incurred his greatest criticism for his lack of leadership during the “Secession Winter,” the five-month period between the November, 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as the first Republican president, and his inauguration in March, 1861. During this time, seven states seceded from the Union: South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas. By the end of June, 1861, four more states joined the Confederate States of America: Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee. “The whole nation was clamoring that something must be done; but … in the city of Washington, it seemed fairly agreed that nothing could be done,” observed Henry Adams.^[18]

The Democrats did not nominate Buchanan as their 1860 candidate. In a contentious convention, the party split and two nominees ran: Senator Stephen Douglas and Vice President John Breckinridge. Buchanan threw his support behind Breckinridge; Abraham Lincoln won both the popular and electoral vote in a four-way election (John Bell ran as a Constitutional Unionist).  Buchanan was the last Democratic president until 1884.

Politicians representing slave states had threatened to secede for decades, beginning with the Nullification Crisis of 1832. The difference between 1860 and 1832 was that slavery had become the sole issue, and there was little room for compromise. After the formation of the Republican Party in 1854, Democrats stated they would advocate secession if a “Black Republican” nominee won the presidency. And so they did.

During the secession winter, Buchanan became an actor in a play he didn’t write. Through his misdirected advocacy of the Lecompton Constitution, his blind faith in his cabinet members, and his deaf ear to the electorate after 1858, he crippled his administration. The president collapsed under the weight of the problems. “Like Wilson during his campaign for the League of Nations … and Nixon … before his resignation, Buchanan gave every indication of severe mental strain affecting both his health and judgment.”^[19] Despite all these setbacks, Buchanan continued to push for his international goals: securing Cuba, establishing a military presence in Mexico, and even another military expedition – this time a naval invasion of Paraguay to protect U.S. interests that had been harassed.

To put this true constitutional crisis in perspective, one must remember that the three branches of government were conflicted regarding the extension of slavery into the territories. In the Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court ruled that slave owners had the right to carry their property into any territory under U.S. control. This was the law during the election of 1860. However, the Republican Party won the popular mandate with a platform that called for limiting the extension of slavery into the very same territories. Congress had passed legislation allowing residents of the territories to choose whether or not they would allow the institution of slavery to exist once the territory became a state. For a strict constructionist like Buchanan, this created a dilemma. “His conclusion that secession could neither be legitimately carried out by a state nor be legitimately prevented by the federal government,” was considered “lame.” On December 3, 1860, Buchanan stated that, “the long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern states” had caused the southern states to secede. Then he called for a constitutional convention to address the differences. Buchanan, like many in Washington, believed a conflict could be avoided, and looked to Congress to reach a compromise, as it had done repeatedly through the antebellum period.^[20] Members of Congress, like the president, were operating in a “lame duck” session, with a new majority entering in 1861. Many in the incoming administration and Congress suggested that the southern states be allowed to secede peacefully, which would end the stain of slavery in the U.S. There was no consensus to act forcefully.

As politicians deliberated, the U.S. garrison in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina had to make a decision. Originally stationed at Fort Moultrie, which was difficult to defend, the commander, Major Robert Anderson, moved to Fort Sumter on December 26, 1860. By this time, four members of Buchanan’s cabinet had resigned, and he replaced them with northern, non-Doughface politicians. This transition confronted the president with the reality that he had to act. Buchanan authorized a non-military supply ship to bring provisions to Fort Sumter. In another example of Buchanan’s failure to communicate well, Anderson was not notified that supplies were en-route. When the unarmed ship entered the harbor, South Carolina defenses fired; Anderson watched “with some dismay” as the ship turned and headed back to New York. Buchanan issued a statement on January 8, 1861 asserting his right as president to “use military force defensively” to protect the forces in South Carolina. He requisitioned a new supply ship, stating they would sail when Anderson requested provisions. This request did not come until March soon after Lincoln’s inauguration.

From February 4-9, a secessionist convention met in Alabama and adopted a new constitution. By February 18, the Confederate States of America had a new president and governmental structure. During this time, the different proposals drafted by the Congress through the Crittenden Commission in Washington did not receive approval. A national referendum was proposed, but was never approved by Congress. As the head of the new majority party, President-elect Lincoln did not issue any formal statements or direction to guide the Republicans towards a reconciliation with southern representatives in Washington. The failure to address the crisis was not Buchanan’s alone.

Conclusion

“Buchanan’s failing during the crisis over the Union was not inactivity, but rather his partiality for the South,” concluded Jean Baker.^[21] Although broadly correct, the crisis of secession represented an inevitable reckoning for the accommodations of the past. Slavery had always been a bane upon the nation; the original compromises made could no longer be sustained. Many historians have suggested that if Buchanan had been more like Andrew Jackson, who resisted the Nullification movement in South Carolina by threatening to hang the perpetrators and invade the state, the crisis may have been averted or at least ameliorated. They forget that Jackson and Calhoun’s Nullification Crisis was resolved by congressional legislation – specifically the “Compromise Tariff” of 1833.

No doubt, Buchanan was a poor president and administrator. If the secession crisis had not occurred during his tenure, he still would rank as one of the worst presidents. He relied too much on friends, rather than non-fraternal advisors; repeatedly, he picked then stubbornly clung to the pro-slavery side of different political issues that surfaced; he believed too much in the separation of powers, and willingly delegated the serious political differences facing the country to the judicial and legislative branches; finally, he saw his legacy as furthering American expansion beyond the continental empire and focused on perceived opportunities abroad rather than problems at home.

Blaming Buchanan for secession and the Civil War is convenient for our historical memory. Did he fail – yes. Did he acquiesce to pro-slavery interests – yes. When our country hit the precipice of 1860, did the nation fail as well? Yes. Coming to terms with all these failures will help us avoid future calamity.

Aksum, which existed between the 1st century CE and the 8th century CE, was one of the most important kingdoms of the ancient world because of its role in early Christianity and its commercial achievements. Aksum’s capital city, also called Aksum, was among the most prosperous in early African history. The power and importance of Aksum were paralleled by no other African civilization during the period of its existence besides Egypt. At its height, though, the Aksumite Empire pioneered remarkable innovations in commerce and its influence was so far-reaching that historians believe its territory extended beyond the boundaries of contemporary Ethiopia, Sudan, and Eritrea. Later around the 6th century CE, the Aksumite territory spread into Southern Arabia and Yemen, although Aksum’s presence in Arabia would be cut short by a Persian invasion of southern Arabia. Its’ strong navy protected the coastal trade routes and the trade networks along the Nile River and the Southern Red Sea, which were the source of its tremendous wealth. The strength of Aksum was well captured in the account of the influential Persian prophet of the 3rd century CE, Mani, where he wrote:

“There are four great kingdoms on earth: the first is the Kingdom of Babylon and Persia; the second is the Kingdom of Rome; the third is the Kingdom of the Aksumites: the fourth is the kingdom of the Chinese.”^[1]

Aksum was also well known to the Greeks and the Romans, and later to the Byzantines, the Arabs, and the Persians.^[2] For most of the 3rd and 4th centuries CE, it was Rome’s biggest trading partner to the West. As it is the case with many ancient, pre-Latin civilizations, most of what we know about Aksum comes from archaeological excavations, especially those conducted in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. Other sources are from written accounts from neighboring civilizations like the Romans, Byzantine Egypt, and from the Nubian tribes.

But before the Aksumite Empire became the most powerful economic force in the Horn of Africa, the city of Meroë in Kush was the economic center of the region, at least until the Aksumite invaded Kush in 330 CE (this is sometimes put around 350 CE).^[3] The invasion was one of many factors that led to the decline of the Kingdom of Kush, of which Meroë was its’ last metropolis after the decline of Kerma and Napata as explained in Part 2. Although Aksum was already flourishing before the conquest of Kush, it did not reach its peak until the decline of Meroë.

Commerce in Aksum

In the words of German historian Eduard Meyer, trade and money were as fundamentally important to the economic life of the ancients^[4] as war was.^[5] Although we do not know too much about the Aksumite military—apart from their expansionist conquests of neighboring territories—it was their facility at trade and commerce that set them apart in ancient history. Those that were not farmers, laborers, or soldiers were merchants. Evidence from Tigray strongly supports the theory that the Aksumite civilization was defined by its complex market economy; commodities like labor, slaves, ivory, and incense, among many other goods, were either bartered or exchanged using legal tender. Commercial activities in Aksum have been linked to kingdoms and empires as far away as China, Persia, and Rome (and, later, Byzantium). British archaeologist Sheila Boardman noted, in the introduction of her chapter in The Exploitation of Plant Resources in Ancient Africa, that the commercial activities in Aksum might have been responsible for the increase in crop variety and the growth of the market economy across the entire East Africa region. She argued that before the mid- to late Aksumite period, the range of crops planted was limited to flax, barley, and tef. But under the Aksumite rule, the production extended to some twelve other species, most of which were cash crops like oil and fiber plants, all of which points to both a robust interest in both agriculture and market exchange.^[6] But domestic agriculture was only one of the economic strengths of Aksum.

Like in both ancient Egypt and in the Kushite metropolises, the close proximity of these kingdoms to the Nile River was an enormous commercial advantage. The river gave them an avenue to engage in trade with people from farflung territories. African merchants were key to this trading system. They used the Nile to easily transport commodities into Arabia, Himyar (modern-day Yemen), and through the Gulf of Aden, especially from the 6th to 9th century CE. Aksumite merchants also traveled across India and Arabia trading in luxury commodities that were the most sought after in the ancient world including emeralds, ivory, incense, exotic animals, gold, silk, salt, obsidian, and spices. They then sold these commodities to kingdoms in inner Africa and to their immediate neighbors in Nubia and Egypt.

The elaborate nature of trading activities in Aksum is perhaps best expressed in Periplus Maris Erythraei (“Navigation of the Erythraean Sea”). Although we do not know the author of this work, which chronicled navigation between major trade ports in the ancient world, most historians do agree that the author was most likely a Greek merchant living in Egypt sometime around the mid or late 1st century CE. What makes this manuscript significant is the author’s description of a remarkable port city in Aksum called Adulis. According to the author, Adulis was an open harbor that accommodated communities of African and Greco-Roman traders. Some even believe that Adulis used to serve as a commercial location for the Egyptians of the Middle Kingdom^[7] and the Phoenicians. In the manuscript, the author recounted:

“Below Ptolemais of the Hunt, at a distance of about three thousand stadia, there is Adulis, a port established by law, lying at the inner end of a bay that runs in toward the south… Ships bound for this port now anchor here (the Mountain Island) because of attacks from the land. They used to anchor at the very head of the bay, by an island called Diodorus, close to the shore, which could be reached on foot from the land; by which means the barbarous natives attacked the island. Opposite Mountain Island, on the mainland twenty stadia from shore, lies Adulis, a fair-sized village, from which there is a three-days’ journey to Coloe,^[8] an inland town and the first market for ivory. From that place to the city of the people called Auxumites there is a five days’ journey more; to that place all the ivory is brought from the country beyond the Nile through the district called Cyeneum, and thence to Adulis.”^[9]

The author’s recognition of “a port established by law” is one of the many interesting features of Adulis. This phrase points to two possibilities: that trade in Adulis was either protected by some sort of governmental decree or that the author was merely iterating the presence of legal orderliness in Adulis. (It could possibly be both.) But what is obvious is that this phrase negates many narratives of a lack of orderliness or respect for contracts in early African markets. Also, the author’s claim that “ships bound for this port,” along with what we know of the presence of Greco-Roman and Arabs traders, suggests that trade between Aksum and these other civilizations was direct and robust. Consider also that the fact that ships built strong enough to frequently crisscross the Mediterranean Sea and the Southern Red Sea must have been owned by wealthy monarchs, nobles, or merchants. This is because any ship of this size would have cost a fortune to build and only individuals with deep trust in the trading system and with enough capital could have been involved. These ships traveled ot the far reaches of the known world. According to Ethnohistorian Wolbert G.C Smidt, a Greek merchant of the 6th century and traveler, Cosmas Indicopleustes, in his work Universal Christian Topography, describes the trade network that connected Adulis through the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, to China.^[10] In Smidt’s description:

“Ceylon being as it is in a central position is much frequented by ships from all parts of India and from Persia and Ethiopia (…) And from the remotest countries, I mean Tzinista [China] and other trading places, it receives silk, aloe, cloves, sandalwood and other products, and these in turn are passed on to markets this side, such as Malê, Kalliana (…) Persia and the Homerite [Himyarite] country (…) and Adulis. ‘The sinologist Philip Snow notes that Ceylon was a place, where Chinese and Adulite merchants should have met occasionally. There are Chinese travel accounts on Ceylon especially of the 5th century, mentioning the presence of a number of foreign merchants there. Cosmas himself notes that traders from Adulis were in fact in Ceylon.”^[11]

But a civilization with such a complex commercial system with far-reaching influence must have found it difficult to determine the appropriate exchange value of traded commodities. Perhaps the need to solve this problem was what prompted the Aksumites to create a coinage system during the reign of King Endubis (circa 270 CE) that would become even more elaborate under King Ezana (315-356 CE). The invention of the coin also points to the level of scientific sophistication of the Aksumites and, more significantly, to their interactions with the Greeks and the people of Asia Minor, who were already using coins in this period and who are credited for minting the first coins.^[12] Aksum did, however, stop minting coins in the early 7th century. But this progress in ancient Africa from the barter and deben system of the Egyptians (explained in part 1) to the coins of Aksum, reveals the relevance of commodity exchange in ancient Africa.

We can also see reference to trade through the spread of Christianity in Africa during Aksumite history. According to legend, Christianity first came to Africa through Egypt by Mark the Evangelist in 60 CE. But Christianity did not become particularly influential in Africa until two boys (Frumentius and Aedesius) traveling with their merchant father, a Syrian Christian, were captured by Aksumites along the Red Sea.^[13] The family has been traveling from India—most likely on a trade mission—when their ship was attacked by pirates. The father was killed and the boys were taken to the King. Later, Frumentius became a Saint and mentored the Prince, Ezana, who would later declare Christianity to be the official religion of his kingdom in the 4th Century CE when he became King. Some historians, however, believe that Ezana might have actually converted his kingdom to Christianity to please the Roman Emperor Constantine the Great and not because of the influence of Frumentius. Creating a stronger military relationship with such a formidable empire was a wise way for Ezana to resist encroachment by Muslim tribes. Whatever the reasoning behind his foreign policy, King Ezana brought Aksum to the summit of its’ economic prosperity. Even today, remnants of his achievements are preserved in the modern-day city of Aksum and his praises are sung by millions of Ethiopians.

Economic Decline

There is a possibility that commercial activities in Aksum started to decline around the late 6th century CE due to a combination of factors, including a series of invasions by neighboring nomadic tribes like the Bedjas from eastern Sudan and the gradual degradation of farmlands which gravely affected yields.^[14] But later in the 7th century, Aksum did face a potent threat from increasingly powerful Arab expansionists from the North. The Arabs wanted to gain control of the trade networks across the Nile and the Red Sea, the central nervous system of Aksum’s economy. And having established firm control of the Nile and the Red Sea, Arab expansionists soon destroyed Aksum’s dominance of trade in the region as many of its territories were already lost to the Arabs or to nomadic herders from the south. Within a few decades, Aksum was economically isolated and the rump kingdom was later captured by the Rashidun Caliphate in the 8th century, although the city of Aksum itself survived until the 13th century.

The Parallel

In this series, we see two fundamental parallels. First, the early African kingdoms and empires relied heavily on trade with other people. Besides the trade in ivory, gold, and other commodities identified earlier, produce from agriculture was also exchanged in the form of cash crops. These trade relations put them at the center of the economy of the ancient world. Second, we know that although Pharaohs and kings were instrumental to the initiation of many of their kingdom’s trade expeditions to places like Arabia and outer Asian territories, it was actually merchants who controlled most imports and exports. In the Egyptian and Nubian territories, market activities were conducted freely without the Pharaoh or any royal authority dictating what to sell or setting the price of commodities. There are, however, instances where government officials provided oversight, keeping order in markets and in port cities like Adulis, Berenike, and Myos Hormos. Still, most of these ports—according to referenced accounts—were open mini-cities that accommodated traders and merchants from various tribes and the larger cities of the ancient world. These two qualities—the absence of price or choice controls as well as open marketplaces—are building blocks for any concrete definition of a free market economy, both of which are consistent with the stories of the three early African civilizations highlighted in this series.

Russell Muirhead joins us to discuss the difference between conspiracism and conspiracy theory and how it has influence modern political discussions. Classic conspiracy theory insists that things are not what they seem and gathers evidence—especially facts ominously withheld by official sources—to tease out secret machinations. The new conspiracism is different. There is no demand for evidence, no dots revealed to form a pattern, no close examination of shadowy plotters. Dispensing with the burden of explanation, the new conspiracism imposes its own reality through repetition (exemplified by the Trump catchphrase “a lot of people are saying”) and bare assertion (“rigged!”).

What makes a theory a conspiracy theory? What is ‘conspiracism’? What is the difference between gossip and news? What are the foundations of society and how are they fragile? Do people care about facts?

Further Reading:

A Lot of People Are Saying, written by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum

The Promise of Party in a Polarized Age, written by Russell Muirhead

Conspiracy Without the Theory, written by Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum

Why conspiracy theories are getting more absurd and harder to refute, written by Sean Illing

Related Content:

The Problem with “Fake News”, written by Ryan Khurana

In the Pursuit of Self Government, Does Quality News Matter?, Anthony Comegna and Caleb O. Brown

The Coddling of the American Mind, Free Thoughts Podcast

Building Tomorrow isn’t in the business of encouraging government bloat, but in this episode we consider whether, sometimes, eliminating a government agency might be a penny wise, pound foolish decision. In particular, Paul and Will are joined by Zach Graves and Daniel Schuman as they discuss proposals to resurrect the Office for Technology Assessment, which had advised Congress on tech policy until getting the axe in the mid-1990s. Just as the Congressional Budget Office provides ostensibly non-partisan estimates of the cost of proposed legislation, the OTA would provide non-partisan reports weighing the costs and benefits of tech related legislation.

Do we lobby more than we use to? Why do employees leave their work at Capitol Hill? What is the purpose of executive orders? Which Congressional agencies focus on technology policy? What is the economic cost of not having privacy legislation now? How much power does the Congressional Budget Office have?

Further Reading:

How Congress Got Dumb on Tech—and How It Can Get Smart, written by Grace Gedye

Inside GAO’s Plan to Make Congress More Tech-Savvy, written by Jack Corrigan

Momentum builds for Congress restoring Office of Technology Assessment, written by Jory Heckman

House members call for Office of Technology Assessment revival, written by Katherine Tully-McManus

Related Content:

Decentralization and Privacy Are Inevitable — in Tech and in Government, written by Aaron Ross Powell

Emerging Tech (with Matthew Feeney), Free Thoughts Podcast

On Innovation: Don’t Ask for Permission, Building Tomorrow Podcast

Tyler Cowen joins us to discuss his new book; Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero. Throughout the conversation, Trevor and Aaron ask Tyler about crony capitalism, how Trump engages with big businesses, and the role of CEO’s. Cowen believes that big businesses are actually given a pretty unfair reputation as they create much more value than they are given credit for.

Why is big business coming under heavier fire recently? How big is “big business”? Do CEO’s cheat more or less than others? Do you people like going to work and should they? How should big businesses interact with the federal government? How big is the finance world and is it too big? Why is a healthy financial sector important? If big business is good, why is it widely unliked?

Further Reading:

Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero, written by Tyler Cowen

Conscious Capitalism

Big Business Isn’t Big Politics, written by Tyler Cowen

Marginal Revolution

Related Content:

Why We’re Too Complacent, Free Thoughts Podcast

How Taxation Affects Income Inequality, Free Thoughts Podcast

Is Capitalism Pro-Business?, Learn Liberty video with Steven Horwitz

Technology changes the way we communicate, functionally shrinking the world through interconnection. Social media apps allow users to communicate immediately and privately with people from around the globe. But the ongoing communication revolution is not merely a matter of new platforms. It is also a function of what languages people are choosing to learn. While English remains the dominant language for business and exchange around the world, there is a growing demand for language learning apps that teach a wide variety of foreign languages.

While language learning books and programs promise to make you fluent in your target language, apps such as Duolingo and Memrise help users learn new languages more quickly and with a greater degree of fluency. Furthermore, they lower the barrier to entry for language instruction; instead of paying over $100 for Rosetta Stone or even more for language learning classes, you can now learn languages from your phone for free. 

Language learning apps are certainly disrupting traditional models of foreign language instruction, but that does not necessarily mean that they are as effective. Are humans capable of learning fluency in a foreign language from an app on their smartphone? As a polyglot and a frequent user of language learning apps, I will discuss the positive and negative aspects of those apps and address how effective they are in helping you learn your target language. 

I stumbled upon language learning apps as a college student. I downloaded the language learning app Duolingo on my iPhone after hearing about it from a friend as I was frantically trying to brush up on my high school French before starting my first college French class.

Like many students taking foreign language classes at school, it felt like a chore; I was used to doing workbook homework assignments and memorizing vocabulary words for exams (and then promptly forgetting them following the test). I found language learning tedious and a waste of time. I was not a gifted language learner and I begrudgingly took beginner French in college since I did not test out of the requirement.

Despite my frustrations with having to take an extra college elective, I began my first French lesson on Duolingo. As I went through the lesson, I was intrigued by the way the language was taught as a game, which made language learning entertaining. It was highly motivational; I could see my studying streak and identify how fluent I had become through the exams. I enjoyed saw how the lessons gradually progressed in difficulty, showing just how much my language skills had improved. 

Feeling more motivated, I then went onto the next lesson, feeling much more confident in my French language skills than ever before. I especially enjoyed that the app was so accessible and easily transportable. Instead of having to lug around heavy French textbooks, I could pull up the app whenever I fancied on my iPhone and within minutes build a more solid understanding of French. The app was motivating, to say the least. For once, learning foreign languages did not feel like a chore and within a few months I completed the entire program feeling prepared for my university course.

Little did I know, Duolingo was even more effective then I first fathomed. Following my use of Duolingo, I earned high grades in my beginner-level French class, far surpassing my expectations. I was amazed that an app had been much more effective in teaching me a foreign language than any language class I had previously taken. I tested out of all the other beginner levels and went straight into an intermediate/advanced level French class. I then spent the rest of college working as a French instructor for beginner-level French students. I’m not sharing this story to brag but to demonstrate that the app made it possible for someone who had never seemed particularly skilled at learning foreign languages to develop that skill.

This is a personal anecdote, of course, but research backs up my proposition that Duolingo is effective at aiding language acquisition. In a 2012 study, researchers found that 34 hours on Duolingo are equivalent to one university class. While the number of hours might still seem high, it demonstrates that language-learning apps are more effective than traditional methods when taking in other considerations. Many college courses require additional hours studying and doing homework. The U.S. Department of Education states that there should be a minimum of two hours of independent study per week for each university class credit. That would mean that for a three-credit course, there should be six hours of independent study each week.

And many universities, including my alma mater The College of New Jersey, require even more of a time commitment. For example, French classes at my school were four credits and then we had an extra hour of language labs per week usually led by a college student only a few levels ahead of you in their language class. Duolingo helped me to learn more in less time than my college classes could. It combined all the facets of a foreign language class in a single app that I could carry with me wherever I went.

Of course, there are other factors to take into consideration when studying a foreign language. Language acquisition depends on the match between your native language and the foreign language you are trying to learn. For instance, The Foreign Service Institute ranks how many hours—ranked from category 1 to 4—it predicts that it would take a native English speaker to reach a professional working proficiency. French is in Category I, defined as languages more similar to English. Languages in this category take between 24 to 30 weeks or 600 to 750 class hours to reach a proficient level. French is still on the higher end of the first category, with an estimate of 30 weeks to reach proficiency. In comparison, Japanese is classified in Category V as a language which is “exceptionally difficult” for native English speakers. Learners studying languages in this category take approximately 88 weeks or 2200 class hours to reach a proficient level.

You might be skeptical that French and English are similar, considering that English is a Germanic language and French is a Romance language. However, the Norman Conquest in 1066 which gave English many French loan words. There are a few interesting tricks to determine if an English word has French origins. One trick to help decipher if an English word is a French loan word is through the use of the circumflex on the letters â,ê,ô, and û which tend to replace the letter “s” in English. For example, forêt is forest in English and hôtel is hostel or hotel in English. Another example is the declension ép in French is an s in English. Such as éponge which translates to sponge in English or épinards translates to spinach in English.

Linguist Joseph M. Williams’ research also highlights the linguistic similarities between French and English. In a 1975 book, Williams’ research found that English has more vocabulary overlap with French than with German. His research showed that out of 10,000 common corporate words in English, 29% of English vocabulary comes from French. Another 29% comes from Latin, the linguistic root of all Romance languages including both English and French. In comparison, approximately 26% of English’s words are Germanic.

This means it is easier for most English speakers to learn French rather than German even though English and German do share some words. Even without any formal language training, a native English speaker who reads a text in French would probably be able to comprehend it better than the same text in German.

While Duolingo was a great stepping stone for me while learning French, it is possible part of my success hinged on the inherent overlap between French and English. Would Duolingo work as well if I used it to learn a language with relatively little in common with English? I decided to test out the efficiency of the app with Polish, a language I do not have any training or background. (Unless one counts knowing what pierogi means.)

Polish, from the Slavic language family, is one of the more challenging languages for a native English speaker to learn. Polish is a Group III language (along with Russian, Armenian, Hebrew, and Farsi) with significant linguistic and/or cultural differences from English.

Two years ago, I began studying Polish solely on Duolingo. After one year I tested into advanced beginner status; a year later I had tested into advanced intermediate. Today, as I pass the two-year mark, I can easily communicate with native Polish speakers about a variety of topics and can readily comprehend Polish texts.

The language was purely self-taught. Without a language app, I would likely have never been exposed to Polish nor any other high dissimilarity languages. The app gave me a strong interest in Slavic languages and I now have some basic comprehension skills with languages similar to Polish like Czech and Russian.

Duolingo constantly expands the variety of languages it offers, languages that people like me would never have been exposed to otherwise. For English speakers, Duolingo currently has 32 language programs available. The languages extend from favorites such as Spanish, French, and Italian to the more obscure such as Hebrew, Navajo, Hawaiian, and Hungarian. They even have two fictional languages, Klingon and High Valeriyan.

Duolingo is not the only language learning app. A similar app, Memrise, which was released in 2010, offers 16 official language courses available for free on their app. However, users can also make their own online language courses, with an archive that now totals over a thousand language courses.

One interesting feature of Memrise is that it uses videos of native speakers speaking certain words to improve your listening comprehension. The courses also include a wide variety of colloquial words to learn that can help you sound more like a native speaker in your target language.

Like Duolingo, Memrise is trying to expand into a wider variety of languages, including Mongolian and Icelandic, for which demand among native English speakers is likely small. (After all, how often would someone living in Tulsa, Oklahoma need to speak Icelandic?) However, it does show that there is a wide market for language learning apps. These language learning apps are a great way to increase your curiosity about other countries, cultures, and places, even if it is not strictly necessary to know the language of the country you are interested in.

While it is possible that you can become proficient in a language from a language-learning app, I do not think you can become fluent. To become truly fluent, one needs to be immersed among native speakers of that language. Naturally, becoming exposed to a language while living in a country with predominantly English speakers can be tricky. Also, when going abroad, many people in other countries jump at the chance to speak English with native English speakers, decreasing the number of opportunities to hone one’s own foreign language skills.

However, there are language learning apps trying to replicate that immersion as nearly as possible. One great app for language immersion is Tandem. Users can choose their native language and the language that you are seeking to learn. The app then matches you with speakers in your target language. You can use translations, chat, use voice messages, call, and even video chat through the app.

Tandem monumentally increased my foreign language proficiency. Instantly speaking with native speakers in their own language forces you to do more than just remember the words, like with Duolingo, but makes you use those words in everyday speech. In addition, having the chance to speak with native speakers will also expose you to how the language is spoken in day to day and colloquial settings, so you sound more like a native speaker than someone who learned the language through a textbook.

While learning grammar and vocabulary from Duolingo and Memrise were beneficial, the added language immersion from Tandem helped me achieve a much higher level of proficiency. Thanks to the apps, I can now speak four languages proficiently and another two at an upper beginner level. They truly opened my eyes to how fun and achievable language learning can be.

After all, I still find it baffling how I can open my Memrise app and my Latvian lessons are accessible at the tip of my fingers. Without the app I would never have the thought of studying such a language!

What I find most remarkable is that I can speak the languages that I learned solely through language learning apps better than those languages I learned at my university. While there are many factors to consider—such as time spent, native language compatibility, personal interest, and starting level—my own experience suggests that language learning apps have the potential for profoundly shaping foreign language instruction and acquisition.

I hope that language learning apps will encourage universities to revamp their foreign language learning programs. It would be great if cash-strapped students could avoid shelling out thousands of dollars for their beginner level university French classes when they can simply learn the languages from an app on their phone. That money could instead be applied toward advanced study abroad with native speakers.

Understanding different foreign languages, through language learning apps, can enhance your experiences in other countries both in good and bad ways. That knowledge can help you better appreciate the beauty of a foreign culture, but it can also give you a more heightened awareness of problems in other countries. Speaking the language weaves you into a society to a greater extent than is possible for a non-speaker.

My own recent trip to Poland showed me how understanding Polish made a big difference to my experience. I was traveling with a Jewish tour group, but I did not just learn about the history of Polish anti-Semitism (eg, the Holocaust) in the abstract; we also experienced visceral modern-day anti-Semitism, such as when I had fights with Polish merchants in Krakow over selling swastikas and anti-Semitic good luck charms, or when I was shooed away when I explained that I was Jewish. Knowing Polish made it impossible to miss the lingering ethnic hatred around me.

Despite my anger and frustration from that trip, I am thankful that my self-study of the language enhanced my experience. Understanding foreign languages is truly a vital tool to help us communicate and acquire cultural awareness. I am thankful for language learning apps because they have given me unique eye-opening experiences of other countries. I hope that more Americans in the future will have the agency to study foreign languages to gain a greater understanding of the world.

The theme that connects both of the interviews in today’s episode is the value of planning for the future. That can be as simple as thinking about the ways that driverless cars will affect the car insurance industry, as Ian Adams from TechFreedom discusses. Or it can be as big as Dr. Mark Lutter, Founder of the Center for Innovative Governance Research, advocating for charter cities, a place where the best urban ideas can be implemented from the outset rather than waiting for something to go wrong and having to struggle against regulatory inertia. 

What is the latest regulatory news for driverless cars? What challenges do autonomous vehicles present to the insurance industry? Why is California such an innovative space? Will there be a migration pattern away from California? What is a charter city? What leads to economic growth?

Further Reading:

Creating the Charter Cities Ecosystem, written by Mark Lutter

Techquake: The Biggest Threat to California’s Tech-Sector May Lie Directly Beneath its Feet, written by Ian Adams

California Needs to Hit the Brakes on Minimum Staffing Requirements for Automated Vehicles, written by Ian Adams

Related Content:

When Will We Get Fully Autonomous Cars?, Building Tomorrow Podcast

Flying Taxis: Cleared for Takeoff?, Building Tomorrow Podcast

Is China Beating the U.S. at Innovation?, Building Tomorrow Podcast