Cereal crops vs root crops in the development of civilization

Did the potato and other root crops hinder the development of complex societies among those who cultivated it? A group of economists present a case that they did in a recent article, "The sinister, secret history of a food that everybody loves," in the Washington Post. Their thesis in short is that when cereal grains are harvested at the end of a growing season their storage attracts thieves. Those who grow the crop want it protected. Because the stored crop is easily taxed, it encourages the rise of a protector class. Thus cereal crops provide both the demand for protection and the supply of protection. Root crops, on the other hand, are not harvested and stored but are dug and used as needed. Without storage bins full of wealth, there is less temptation for thieves because they would have work digging a crop and they cannot store it. Hence, the demand for protection is less and the way to finance that protection is also more difficult. The result is that societies that grew cereal crops developed complexity and hierarchy that the societies that grew root crops did not.

This is a logical way for economists to view the issue. Not all anthropologists are convinced.

People respond to incentives

Life on the dole in Britain.

Two in one

Two of my favorite ideas, feedback and the importance of rent-seeking, made it into a book review at The Wall Street Journal. The book in question was asking why Great Britain was the first to industrialize.

Mr. Mokyr's answer—articulated in densely packed but gratifyingly lucid prose—is that in Britain ideas interacted vigorously with business interests in "a positive feedback loop that created the greatest sea change in economic history since the advent of culture."
....
The reason for Britain's exceptionalism, Mr. Mokyr says, lies in the increasing hostility to rent-seeking—the use of political power to redistribute rather than create wealth—among the country's most important intellectuals in the second half of the 18th century. Indeed, a host of liberal ideas, in the classic sense, took hold: the rejection of mercantilism's closed markets, the weakening of guilds and the expansion of internal free trade, and robust physical and intellectual property rights all put Britain far ahead of France, where violent revolution was needed to disrupt the privileges of the old regime.

Implicit in this argument is that countries that cannot develop are locked in a rent-seeking trap, and my limited knowledge of economic develop suggests that is a plausible argument. Unfortunately, rent seeking seems to be increasing in the U.S. If there a feedback loop in which rent-seeking in some way creates more rent seeking, then deep pessimism is in order.

(found via Newmarks Door.

Rent seeking and lawyers

From California:

Every lawsuit filed or even threatened under a California law aimed at electing more minorities to local offices - and all of the roughly $4.3 million from settlements so far - can be traced to just two people: a pair of attorneys who worked together writing the statute, The Associated Press has found.

The law makes it easier for lawyers to sue and win financial judgments in cases arising from claims that minorities effectively were shut out of local elections, while shielding attorneys from liability if the claims are tossed out.

Health Care Reform

After President Obamas' rambling and awkward press conference, the momentum for nationalization of health care insurance seems to have halted. Charles Krauthammer argues that Obama's push is all about politics, and that if he were serious in reducing medical costs, tort reform would be at the top of the list. He argues that the cost of malpractice insurance is passed on to consumers, and also that it inflates costs:

But the greatest waste is the hidden cost of defensive medicine: tests and procedures that doctors order for no good reason other than to protect themselves from lawsuits. Every doctor knows, as I did when I practiced years ago, how much unnecessary medical cost is incurred with an eye not on medicine but on the law.

PS This is part of what economists call "rent seeking."

Rent seeking

An example of rent-seeking behavior from The Wall Street Journal:

At times, Mr. Ulizio finds it all a bit surreal. "We mine and sell sand. Sand. That's all we do. We aren't the evil empire. We aren't manufacturing some exotic chemical that we're unleashing on the world. We're taking sand out of the ground. We don't even process it, except to clean it up a little and size it. And we are selling something that has been around forever, the dangers from which have been known since well before anybody involved in this litigation was even born," he says.

He looks at me as if to say, "Can you believe it?" I wish I could tell the tort warrior I couldn't.