In the monthly email, July edition, that Liberty Fund sent out is this statement:
Our most popular Article ever is from Jeffrey Rogers Hummel in 2018, turning the Revolution into an externality story. He writes, “In fact, the American Revolution, despite all its obvious costs and excesses, brought about enormous net benefits not just for citizens of the newly independent United States but also, over the long run, for people across the globe.”
Because the article is so popular and, on this date, so timely, I’m highlighting it again.
Here are the opening two paragraphs:
It has become de rigueur, even among libertarians and classical liberals, to denigrate the benefits of the American Revolution. Thus, libertarian Bryan Caplan writes: “Can anyone tell me why American independence was worth fighting for?… [W]hen you ask about specific libertarian policy changes that came about because of the Revolution, it’s hard to get a decent answer. In fact, with 20/20 hindsight, independence had two massive anti-libertarian consequences: It removed the last real check on American aggression against the Indians, and allowed American slavery to avoid earlier—and peaceful—abolition.”1 One can also find such challenges reflected in recent mainstream writing, both popular and scholarly.
In fact, the American Revolution, despite all its obvious costs and excesses, brought about enormous net benefits not just for citizens of the newly independent United States but also, over the long run, for people across the globe. Speculations that, without the American Revolution, the treatment of the indigenous population would have been more just or that slavery would have been abolished earlier display extreme historical naivety. Indeed, a far stronger case can be made that without the American Revolution, the condition of Native Americans would have been no better, the emancipation of slaves in the British West Indies would have been significantly delayed, and the condition of European colonists throughout the British empire, not just those in what became the United States, would have been worse than otherwise.
Read, enjoy, and celebrate.
READER COMMENTS
Fazal Majid
Jul 4 2023 at 7:25pm
The much-touted abolition of slavery by the British was more of a buy-back, bailing out the feudal power elite at taxpayers’ expense (the final loan repayment was in 2015!).
Mark Brady
Jul 4 2023 at 10:01pm
“The much-touted abolition of slavery by the British was more of a buy-back, bailing out the feudal power elite at taxpayers’ expense (the final loan repayment was in 2015!).”
More of a buy-back? Slave-owners, who by then were not coterminous with the “feudal power elite” whatever that means, were compensated by issuing consols, the interest payments of which were financed by taxing working people’s sugar, alcohol and tobacco. I dare say this was preferable to fighting a four-year Civil War.
steve
Jul 5 2023 at 9:40am
What was the compensation for the actual slaves?
Steve
Monte
Jul 5 2023 at 5:16pm
I can think of no one more contrarian than Prof. Caplan. I truly believe his cause célèbre is disputation for the sake of it. He is Contra Deum et patriam. He is against public education, voting, politics, and religion. As a self-proclaimed pacifist, he is against war at any cost.
Hummel, here, demolishes Caplan’s denigration of the benefits of the American Revolution. I’ve been unable to find any Caplan critiques of the Civil War, but I’m certain they exist. In any case, was the Civil War fought for any less moral purpose, or produce fewer benefits, than the Revolutionary War? And Prof. Caplan’s defense of pacifism with regard to WWII is demolished by Tyler Cowen.
But (if he’ll pardon the expression) God bless Brian Caplan for challenging the status quo, for he does make us think critically about the alternate universe in which he would have us live:
Jose Pablo
Jul 9 2023 at 10:43am
He is Contra Deum et patriam
And rightly so. These are the two most costly “constructions” (in terms of human lives and human suffering), that human beings have ever developed. By far.
He is against public education, voting, politics, and religion
He has extremely good, fact-based arguments supporting his brilliant position:
Education is an incredible waste of time and money and exists only because spending public money on it, makes us “feel better”, against all factual evidence about the actual effects. Education is, mostly, about “signaling” and does very little to develop “human capital”
Voters do have the biases that Caplan identifies. And this clearly results in “actual elections” being a far cry from the “platonic” representation of elections that helps to support the non-existent legitimacy of democratic governments.
Caplan’s positive conclusions on this topic don’t, maybe, fit well with your normative position on these very same topics. I understand it should be painful, but this should lead you to questioning your normative beliefs, not Caplan’s well-based conclusions.
Monte
Jul 10 2023 at 11:13am
My positions on these issues extend far beyond the normative and align closely with the majority of extremely good, fact-based, and brilliant economists opposed to Caplan’s contrarian views on public education, open borders, voting, and numerous other topics, including hand-shaking.
With respect to my personal beliefs and preferences, I’m not pained in the least by those who choose to live and believe otherwise. Live and let live is the rule of common justice. (L’Estrange).
Jose Pablo
Jul 9 2023 at 10:55am
The American Revolution is, very likely, the greatest event in human history. Live on Earth without it, would be a nightmare for the individual
And yet, it is also, at the same time, a huge failure of unimaginable proportions. Because it was a great opportunity (we could very easily never, ever see and opportunity like this again) to build a truly Great Society. To build a paradise on Earth for the individual. With a much smaller, better contained government, with way less ability to steal from their citizens and overregulated their lives.
And it is a pity because you can think that this is, precisely, the goal in the Founding Fathers glorious minds: a government that just could not regulate except in the presence of a widespread consent of the individuals.
The Leviathan of the federal government did escape the chained designed by the FF. That is a pity and a shame because we, very likely, will never see an opportunity like this to properly and forever chain this horrible beast.
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