Magic Variable Kills Elephants
Apparently the writer Daniel Hannan has not read any of Dan’s response to my condemnations of communism.
Ponder the stories of two African states. Kenya banned the killing of elephants in 1979, effectively nationalising its herd. At around the same time, Rhodesia (as it still was) made elephants the property of those whose land they were on. The result? Thirty years on, Kenyan elephants have been all but wiped out, while Zimbabwe’s are as numerous as ever.
Had Hannan read those comments, he would know that the elephants death had nothing to do with economic policy but some magical variable that unluckily occurred in Kenya. It was luck in Rhodeisa, and not ownership of property, that kept the elephants alive. When will these people realize that socialistic economic policy does not kill, its unlucky events that occur while that policy is instantiated that kills. You always have to consider magical variable when comparing the death rates of differing economic systems. Everybody knows that.
Whats interesting though is that in Kenya, its was decided that elephants were much to important to be left up to free markets. Since elephants were such a valuable resource it was decided that it would be wiser to let the government control that resource. Just like we see, in countless examples before, giving the one entity that has monopoly on coercion total control over some resource squanders the resource. If you seriously think that a resource is to valuable to be squandered, the last thing you should do is give government sole control over that resource. This reminds me of public education. Since education is to important, we let the government control it and as a consequence when we compare kitchen appliance to education we find that only microwaves improve.
Elephants and education are to important to let the markets do their work. Better to have the government squander and ruin those resources then let the powerful innovative force of competition do its work on these ‘valuable’ things. When will people see that government is not the solution to the problem?
Or as a fellow coworker likes to say: “I’m from the government, I’m here to help”.
March 20th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
Haha. Yeah, that has nothing to do with corruption in Kenya? And I’m sure you’ll want to say: “yeah, but the corruption is just because Kenya is communistic in general”. The problem is, you just get done trying to use Zimbabwe-Rhodesia as an example of a communist state. The country magically morphs to having been a capitalist state for the last 29 years because that’s convenient for your argument?
Since you apparently fail at being concrete with your terminology in the absence of being pushed towards such, can you give me an operational definition of the words “capitalism” and “communism” such that there is no ambiguity as to which states fall into which categories according to your definition?
March 20th, 2008 at 9:36 pm
First you must admit you care.
March 20th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
“First you must admit you care.”
Is that what your girlfriend said?
March 20th, 2008 at 9:54 pm
Im confused.
March 21st, 2008 at 9:30 am
Lol Steve, you just put forward that it’s stupid to question anecdotal accounts as evidence of a universal fact? Nice. You should publish a paper, I’m sure those logicians in the philosophy departments will be appreciateive.
March 21st, 2008 at 10:25 am
I should think this is one example in a long line that I have given that reflect a rather compelling position. If you want to waste a resource put the state in charge of managing it.
See I like to think of my blog as an ongoing discussion and not a collection of discrete posts. One would think this is obvious. Such a trifle objection leads one to believe you find the evidence compelling but the conclusion distasteful. Thus such a silly objection.
At any rate, what account would you give to this anecdote as means to explain the differential death rates in elephants across these two countries?