Landsharks

Nobody asked but …

It may take an hour-and-a-half of your time, but if you want to know about rent-seeking, I cannot recommend a better resource.

Today, I have been listening to the this lecture by Dr. Robert Higgs.  And it has struck me that the principal occupation of humankind is piracy.

For instance, the European colonialists who landed on shores around the world, did so to wrest property from others who were there first.  Sometimes the misappropriations extended to the enslaving of the people themselves.  Read Mark Twain’s account of the European land grab in Tasmania for a compact model of the phenomenon.  Keep a hankie handy.

Now we have the ultimate in the USA, a POTUS who is preeminent among all the landsharks whom have ever lived.   I am sure he will brag about it in some fashion when it dawns in his tight cranium.

As Dr. Higgs tells the story of one-upmanship about our lands, our colonial sorties of military exploitation of our own kind, of the canals into the west, of our purging of the natives, of the railroad and steel barons, it becomes clear that there has always been collusion between government and pirates to buy the whole earth with phony money, and blood.

— Kilgore Forelle