Thanksgiving Insight, 2018

Liberty, Ecology, Prosperity: America’s Great Blessings

Thanksgiving is the day we celebrate the great bounty enjoyed by most Americans.*   Good friends and warm relations with relatives are key ingredients to wholesome lives.  Living in a pleasing environment is a huge bonus.

The ideal Thanksgiving features conversations with loving people over a traditional dinner.  Cultural norms discourage divisive topics of discussion.  For example, classical liberals (libertarians) and democratic socialists shouldn’t discuss politics or public policy at Thanksgiving.   

Fortunately for Americans, three widely accepted and realized values offer a comfortable context for this ideal dinner.  Together they foster individual success and congenial communities.   These three are responsible liberty, sustainable ecology, and modest prosperity. 

The last value, widely spread prosperity, is a recent addition.  Until the time of American settlement, epidemics and chronic hunger and malnutrition were the world-wide norm.  Lives were short, and poverty stricken. 

America was a wealthy nation in 1900 but life expectancy for whites was only in the mid 40 years and for minorities even shorter.  People expected most children to enter the fulltime workforce by their fifteenth birthday.  During winter, few Americans were warm, clean, and well nourished.  Now the vast majority can be.

Apart from dictatorships and the few remaining socialist nations, this sorry situation is dramatically improving world-wide. **   Institutional arrangements, especially the rule of law, clear property rights, and free markets drive this success in mankind’s war against want and deprivation.

Across time and among all Western societies, people want to become materially better off.  How can one achieve this?  There are two basic ways.  The most obvious is wealth redistribution by coercion.  The other is wealth creation.  Coercion first.

This coercion may come from roaming bandits such as highway men, muggers, and pirates.  Their strategies are easy to understand: “Your wallet or your life”, is straight forward. 

In principle, relief is simple: The recipe is law and order, which requires a government of some sort.  Alas, government always has the potential to create sedentary bandits, people who use their political position and privilege to extort and transfer wealth.  This drives special interests’ investments in political campaigns.  Tariffs and direct subsidies concentrate benefits to a few and diffuse costs among a great many consumers and tax payers.

By contrast, the second, wealth creation comes from voluntary exchanges of goods and services.  Each party to the transaction believes she or he benefits from the deal.  Further, each has incentives to pay attention to and monitor the results.  This type of creation is far weaker in the governmental/political arena. 

Essentially, capitalism and the rule of law generate wealth.  Why?  The payoff for generating wealth is higher than for transferring it via coercion.   We celebrate and share the results of capitalism at Thanksgiving.

The material success Americans celebrate at Thanksgiving derives from nature’s bounty, sustainable ecology, and the wisdom of our founders.  In brief, they designed a national constitution that made it more profitable for individuals to create wealth than to transfer it.***  

Blessings are especially bountiful in Bozeman and throughout the Gallatin Valley.  Unless one enjoys frequent operas and ready access to scuba diving (or hates cold weather), it’s a near perfect place for those enjoying even modest prosperity. The Gallatin Valley is an ever-stronger magnet for those with high human capital and an appreciation for outdoor recreation in a sustainable, highly productive ecosystem. 

One huge advantage of living in a community marked by modest prosperity is a large pool of talented people with discretionary time.  Not having to scramble to pay for necessities such as snow tires and utility bills, financially comfortable individuals volunteer for a great array of good causes.  Local examples include Heart of the Valley Animal Shelter, Cancer Support Community, Eagle Mount, Gallatin Valley Land Trust, and Willing Workers Ladies Aid. 

However, even blessing can bring problems.  Bozeman’s blessings are a strong magnet for high human capital.  Those possessing it bring wealth or create it when here.  Naturally, this increases housing costs.  And good housing is a special problem for the traditional middle class, especially for those with substantial student loans.

Accentuating the problem, those from a high-priced city find Bozeman a great bargain. This quote from Financial Samurai indicates why:   “I’ve highlighted how living off $200,000 a year in an expensive city is really just an average lifestyle. … one couple is living paycheck to paycheck while making a combined $500,000 a year.…” To them, a $480,000 home, just above average here, seems quite inexpensive.

Among my blessings was finding the Gallatin Valley and our run down, over grazed, and neglected ranch while a grad student at Indiana University in 1967.  Because the ranch was so sorry a place, and my prospects looked favorable to a Bozeman banker, I could borrow enough to buy it. 

Both Ramona and I are from agriculture backgrounds.  Buying this ranch with our experience provided Ramona and me with great opportunities.  We had the liberty to create and appreciate a sustainable ecology.  We worked hard and long to enjoy modest, not extravagant, prosperity.  We celebrate these values; liberty, ecology and prosperity as we gather with friends for another Thanksgiving. 

f.n. * Serious personal misfortunes occur and preclude earning this material bounty.  These may be addictions, disease, job displacement, wild fires, and wrecks of various kinds. Even among the prudent and self-disciplined these problems may occasionally occur.  Fortunately, their frequency declines as people learn and adjust behavior. 

f.n.** For an overview see Hans Rosling, MD, FACTFULLNESSs: Ten Reasons We’re wrong About the World—and Why Things are Better that You think Flatiron Books, N Y, 2018 

f. n.***There are of course exceptional jurisdictions, Chicago is the classic city example and Illinois the state.  Four of the last seven governors of Illinois were sent to prison. 

f.n.**** From Financial Samurai  https://www.financialsamurai.com/how-do-people-to-live-a-comfortable-life-making-less-than-100000-in-expensive-cities-like-new-york