History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.
I think the question of boundaries might be clearer than it seems. Take your specific example of antibiotic use in agriculture (ignoring other contributors of antibiotic resistance). The use of antibiotics in agriculture does not somehow generally make antibiotics less effective. There are specific effects of such antibiotic use. If an animal production operation uses antibiotics, there are a couple of scenarios that could take place:
1. Antibiotic resistant bacteria could end up in the meat, and be transmitted to the consumer, who ends up with a resistant infection. In this case, the negative effect falls on the consumer of the particular food item. They could, as you said, buy antibiotic free meat. It's possible (though I'm not sure abotu this) that there could be some kind of remedy in tort law if you can prove food made you sick because of a certain practice, such as antibiotic use.
2. The sick consumer passes the infection to others. This would seem to be a negative externality, but it seems to me that it falls under the question of how we control the spread of infectious diseases in general. For example, I could transmit an antibiotic resistant infection to you because I got it from food. But what if I give you SARS because I traveled in an area where there was an outbreak? Both of these are externalities of my actions, and how we deal with them is a whole different question.
3. Use of antibiotics in animal raising causes bacteria to become resistant, and these resistant bacteria escape the animal feeding operation and are released into the environment where others can be exposed. Alternatively, antibiotic residues can escape into the environment. This seems like a another type of pollution externality, and I don't see why it cannot be handled in a similar manner to other kinds of pollution.
This subject is of great interest to me (it was part of my master's thesis), and I would like to hear your thoughts.
As if slavery has anything to do with this, but then after your statement that civil liberties in the U.S. are under the worst seige ever, history clearly isn't your strong suit.
Your the ideologue here.
And I still don't see the problem, as more people are killed in swimming pool drowning accidents than by the agricultural use of antibiotics.
Indeed, more people have bit into fingers dining at Wendy's than have been killed by farmers' use of antibotics.
Your answer is about what I expected - deal with the problem by denying there is one.
The doctors issue was already brought up - I explicitly brought up the agricultural one to ADD to the issue. And because it is even more difficult to address in traditional libertarian terms except as you have: problem? What problem? I don't see no problem. So it must not exist.
If it does, I'll wave the magic wand of common law at it and it will go away. Like slavery did. Or, ... Damn! Slavery didn't, did it? Well, that is because it wasn't the RIGHT common law system. Hayek offered a way to deal with that problem - it was called legislation, and came from outside the system. Just as common law itself did historically, being imposed on England by conquest.
No reason to continue the discussion.
'bye.
Property rights are enforceable--unlike responsibility, which is a woolly, contextless concept, unlike property, which at least implies ownership and possession.
As for farmers, antibiotics, and government, the former have a right to use whatever antibiotics they deem necessary and useful. As with anything else, a farmer might err on either side; but error does not in this case imply legal culpability, certainly as long as he meets whatever common law standard would apply, such as a "prudent man" rule. There is no reason to assume a profit seeking farmer would do otherwise.
It's not clear to me that farmers systematically overuse (or generally misuse) antibiotics; I am unaware of any formal complaints (or legal actions) against them for doing so. If anyone misuses them, it would be doctors, so I am puzzled why you are not using doctors in your example instead of farmers. As for the criminal gang known as the State, I'll have to think more about this one, but I'm sure there's some FDA-like intervention that is at the root of this problem (to the extent that it is a problem, but as I mentioned in an earlier post, I don't think it is).
Regarding the Second Bush Reich's ("Rethuglican Taliban") assault on liberty, etc., as bad as it is, in my opinion it's no where near as bad as what Lincoln, Wilson, FDR, and Truman did. Jim Powell makes a strong case for Wilson as the worst prexy in his new book, having done FDR in his last one. For example, Woodrow's Sedition Act of 1918 saw the jailing of over 50 anti-war dissidents, including presidential candidate Eugene Debs, who was later pardoned by Harding and invited to the White House. FDR put 110,000 Japanese into internment camps, something Dumbya hasn't even dreamed of. Truman tried to flat out nationalize three industries a total of five times. He also started the Cold War and did lots of other bad stuff. Lincoln's depredations were legion and are detailed in Tom Di Lorenzo's book.
FWIW, W isn't in my top ten list of all-time worst prexys (which I posted on the libertarian discussion board at fool.com last year)--yet.
You argue like an ideologue - or a Republican - bringing up new and different points when challenged, always changing the subject, always bringing up irrelevant examples when challenged,
And always always always avoiding the hard questions.
Let's get down to the issue that started this discussion - the hard question of bacteria and enforceable responsibility.
Since you've read and apparently approve of Rothbard, please explain how the negative externalities arising from factory farming's speeding up the deleopment of antibiotic resistent bacteria is a result of the failure of goverrnment to enforce property rights in a way that an anarcho-capitalist society could.
Or if you don't like Rothbard's apprach, let's take a more "statist" one (from his perspective). Try using PERC's approach (the work of Anderson and Leal) to answer the question as to how a property rights approach based on identifying and maintaining clear and enforceable boundaries will solve the problem. Either is fine with me if you can do it - which I doubt. Or give it a shot with common law. Or use your own approach. But address the question, not side issues.
The question is very interesting because it challenges a basic assumption of economistic liberalism - that the market is able to handle all major problems once we get property rights right.
Rothbard couldn't even come up with a reasonable method of dealing with smog, as I remember. It was either ban it all as forms of tresspass - which would eliminate the internal combustion engine for the most part - or ban it only when the individual polluter could be apprehended - good luck Los Angeles.
BOTH his attempts to deal with smog reflected the kind of blind extremism that finally turned me off to his work. In my opinion he did more to destroy intellectual curiosity in libertarian thought than any other person. He turned it for many into a church.
You might think I am harsh. I am harsh. But I am harsh because we are in the midst of the most protracted and dangerous assault on America's most basic liberties in her entire history - and still many (thank God not all) libertarians and classical liberals are whining that the Democrats are too weak on laissez faire to support over the Rethuglican Taliban, and all the rest of the twaddle that substitutes for clear headed analysis by most if not all of the "right" of what is happening in this country. When I read silly crap like "enviro-socialist" I want to throw up. There is no logical relation between the two, as you seem now to grant.
But thinking they do sure helps people oppose or go neutral with respect to those of us fighting against vicious moral monsters like Frist, DeLay, Santorum, Sennsenbrenner, and yes, Bush.
I have read Rothbard et al., in fact just about all the major and minor libertarian writers on these issues.
Negative externalities arise because of government's failure to define and enforce property rights, as Rothbard makes abundantly clear. The people at PERC would endorse this view.
I didn't say all profits are justified, but if a capitalist makes an ill-gotten profit, it is the action leading to the profit that you should inveigh against, not the "inflated" profit that results.
And you think I'm ignoring "boundaries" (a term I don't find in Rothbard, at least as you are evidently using it)?
The most massive depredations of the environment have occurred in socialist countries. Rothbard points to the example of Lake Baikal in the former USSR. There are many other examples.
Capitalism will provide the means to clean up these messes--provided the State lets capitalists make the necessary investments.
If you paid much attention to the reasoning of libertarian thinkers such as Murray Rothbard, or the Free Market Environmentalist position of PERC, or to most other classical liberals who are economically oriented, you would be well aware of the importance of enforceable boundaries in libertarian theory - and market theory in general. It makes it possible to define property rights. I recommend doing some reading before calling it gobbleygook. Where boundaries can be reasonably enforced, private voluntary exchanges are a very good way to get a great many things done. It is when they cannot be so easily defined and enforced that one thorny set of problems arises. Bacteria are a good example, but hardly the only one.
"Inflate corporate profits" is actually a simple term - when profits are greater than they would be if costs were not imposed on others who are outside the voluntary transaction yielding the profit. The economic term is "negative externality". In general, markets work best when significant externalities can be internalized. Internalizing significant negative externalities raises costs and diminishes profits - by definition, I think.
Speeding up the obsolescence of antibiotics that save lives is in the view of most sane people, a significant externality.
Perhaps you believe that corporations cannot inflate profits because every profit is justified. In that case you are not a libertarian - I really do not know what you are. Maybe a would-be oligarch? Maybe a practicing one taking time off from serving or financing the Republican Party?
I recommend you read Ronald Bailey on Rachel Carson. I was pleasantly surprised, because he often does like to paint with a very broad brush. Subtlty is not one of his strong suits. But he said what I say he said.
There are those - both anti-environmentalist and environmentalist, who like to think in dichotomies because that relieves them from having to deal with, or even acknowledge, the complexity of the world. Then there are those who actually contribute to human well being on these issues. The two groups are largely separate.
I happen to be both an environmentalist and a supporter of capitalism. According to your view of the world that view apparently doesn't exist since you equate environmentalism with socialism.
Another interesting historical point - historically most socialists have not been environmentalists - and the great dams and other ecologically catastrophic disasters in much of the American West were government projects.
Therefore I suggest broadening and deepening your view of these issues.
"theoretical assumption for firm enforceable boundaries" sounds like gobbleygook. Ditto for "inflate corporate profits."
No one denies that resistance develops to antibiotics and that can be a problem. The solution lies in science, technology, investment in R&D and more "inflated" profits.
As for Ronald Bailey, I wonder if we have read the same contributor to Reason. He's anti-enviro-socialist, pro-capitalism and pro-pesticides.
I am sorry my critics didn't read me more carefully. I was describing a problem that orthodox libertarian analysis based on the theoretical assumption of firm and enforceable boundaries cannot handle very well. I was not suggesting any particular solution. Nor did I say that the problem of bacteria developing resistance was due to agriculture alone - that would be silly given the content of the post I responded to. And I try not to be silly on the site. I made the pretty unexceptionable point that it contributed to the problem described - a position far more rational than its denial.
The science is simple and firm: the more antibiotics are used, the more quickly they become obsolete. It doesn't much matter where the bacteria are - chickens, cows, or people. Bacteria also trade genes back and forth. Sort of their version of sex. So resistances developed in one kind of bacteria can be and are passed on to other kinds. This is also not controversial.
Antibiotics used to save human lives make lots of sense - why else have them?
The same antibiotics used to inflate corporate profits from factory farms make a great deal less sense because they speed up the time at which those particular antibiotics will become less effective, and do so without saving human lives in the process. When they become less effective, new ones have to be discovered. That costs money, takes time, and only is necessary because the existing antibiotics are not working well. That is - people are sicker or dying who otherwise wouldn't.
There is no “Silent Spring” fallacy here. My argument is quite different from Rachel Carson's important work that some ideologiues still have trouble accepting. Check out Ronald bailey at Reason to see that science based libertarians do not accept the silly twaddle purveyed by some wingnuts that Carson was wrong - or worse, as I was informed at a Mt. Pelertin meeting this fall, guilty of genocide.
My post had more to do with issues of libertarian theory than any particular policy position, though I make it a point of only buying antibiotic free meat when there is a choice. I do so for many reasons, and helping to remove the incentive to use antibiotics relatively indiscriminately in factory farming is one of them.
This sounds like the "Silent Spring" fallacy applied to meat producers. Contrary to Carson, pesticides have been a great boon to the human race, particularly in the developing world. The same is true for antibiotics, without which millions of people would have died a premature death.
I have never heard of anyone getting sick or dying because of the agricultural use of antibiotics. Where are the sick people lining up to sue Big Agriculture over this? Where's the plaintiff's bar and its class action suits?
And in case you haven't heard, there's a growing market for organic, antibiotic meat, such as that produced by Applegate Farms, which I buy at a local organic food store. It tastes a lot better than the other stuff.
Once again, the market is providing an alternative to something critics of the market dislike.
Mr. diZenega,
Agriculture is only one component of the antibiotic resistance issue. It's simplistic to act as if we're killing people by buying cheaper hamburger (which, by the way, no one has to do. You can avoid the problem of illness from meat by not consuming it). Or, you can solve that problem easily with massive government intervention. Just ban agricultural antibiotic use- it's been tried in the UK. Of course, antibiotic resistance has not disappeared, since it's a complex, multifaceted problem. Better yet, ban the consumption of meat altogether and eliminate the problem. After all, in "reality", there's no problem heavy-handed government force can't solve. And by the way, one of the reasons that antibiotic development is slow is because of the Byzantine FDA approval process. Or do the folks who are sick or dead because of that just not count?
A great deal of modern industrial agriculture makes extensive use of antibiotics in order to offset the unnaturally crowded and monocultural conditions in which they keep pigs, chickens, cattle, salmon on farms, and so on. This practice speeds up bacterial adaptation to antibiotics. Of course, we pay a little less for hamburgers and the like. We also pay more for medical research on new antibiotics.
For the orthodox libertarian I ask: How many dead or sicker people is a cheaper hamburger worth? Why should the consumer and the corporation reap the profit and the sick or dead folks pay the price?
This is an excellent example of where a pure property right focus that treats every interaction as encounters between absolutley separate entities definable by at least potentially enforceable boundaries that touch either voluntraily or involuntarily simply breaks down. It is not in accord with reality.
There are also people who take them for legitimate medical reasons, but fail to finish the prescribed course because they "feel better." Let me know when you post your solution!
My impression is that there are plenty of people who would take antibiotics "just to be safe." There are also hypochondriacs, who would take them for more or less the reason you cite.
I'm not satisfied that you have solved the problem here; on my blog, Jonathan Dresner has suggested that it cannot be solved at all in strictly libertarian terms. I think he is mistaken, and I think I have a solution to the problem, but I also want to consider it a bit further before I post.
The website you linked to seems like a great example of the market policing quack medicine and bad science. Now if someone would just police the FDA's political quackery.
Re: the perils of the indiscriminate use of antibiotics, they are overprescribed anyway and frequently ineffective, according to a friend who has studied this matter. It weems to me that in a libertarian society there would be no legal proscription of their indiscriminate use, and it wouldn't make a dime's worth of difference as to the medical effects on society.
And who are these people pining to take antibiotics without a prescription? Do they get the same kind of high from them that they get from illegal drugs?