WEBVTT NOTE 46. Black Pigs and Free Enterprise 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.600 Recently, I've seen two sets of neighborhoods with ripped up lawns. 2 00:00:08.600 --> 00:00:13.260 The neighborhood in West Texas had destroyed grass caused by the remarkable proliferation 3 00:00:13.260 --> 00:00:16.060 of these monstrous black pigs. 4 00:00:16.060 --> 00:00:18.360 No one knows for sure where they came from. 5 00:00:18.360 --> 00:00:20.460 Some say they walked from Mexico. 6 00:00:20.460 --> 00:00:24.460 Some say they are indigenous, but just recently out of control. 7 00:00:24.460 --> 00:00:28.960 No one doubts that they are a serious problem. 8 00:00:28.960 --> 00:00:32.640 One pig is the size of a large desk. 9 00:00:32.640 --> 00:00:38.120 They travel in huge packs, they not only destroy lawns in minutes, they are also carnivores, 10 00:00:38.120 --> 00:00:46.060 so they trap goats, cats, dogs and chickens in a corner, and proceed to devour them alive. 11 00:00:46.060 --> 00:00:51.620 They are absolutely terrifying, worse even than the horned javelina pig that is native 12 00:00:51.620 --> 00:00:54.560 to this area of the state. 13 00:00:54.560 --> 00:00:58.200 You can't kill them with small guns like .22 pistols or rifles. 14 00:00:58.200 --> 00:01:28.080 Free enterprise is assisting in this process, 15 00:01:28.080 --> 00:01:33.240 Pig trap makers and distributors started two years ago as a cottage industry, but they've 16 00:01:33.240 --> 00:01:37.080 grown to become a serious player in Texas commerce. 17 00:01:37.080 --> 00:01:40.520 Free enterprise is saving the day! 18 00:01:40.520 --> 00:01:44.480 One marvels at the process of how the market works here, as everywhere. 19 00:01:44.480 --> 00:01:50.920 There is a need, and it is filled long before the government is even aware of the problem. 20 00:01:50.920 --> 00:01:54.440 Where these makers and dealers come from is a mystery to me. 21 00:01:54.440 --> 00:02:00.800 But one thing all of human history teaches is that profit signals work. 22 00:02:00.800 --> 00:02:03.840 Entrepreneurs won't be far behind. 23 00:02:03.840 --> 00:02:07.840 On the other hand, my own neighbourhood is also festooned with torn-up grass, and not 24 00:02:07.840 --> 00:02:09.480 because of pigs. 25 00:02:09.480 --> 00:02:13.760 A new internet service provider is in town, a company that is stringing the entire city 26 00:02:13.760 --> 00:02:20.320 with fibre-optic cables in anticipation of a massive win against the existing competition. 27 00:02:20.320 --> 00:02:25.180 The company drives up its trucks, digs holes in people's yards, lays down cable in ways 28 00:02:25.180 --> 00:02:30.220 that are seemingly up to the company itself, even when it means traipsing on and destroying 29 00:02:30.220 --> 00:02:32.020 private property. 30 00:02:32.020 --> 00:02:37.020 The company never asks permission of homeowners. 31 00:02:37.020 --> 00:02:41.020 Just as with the Black Pigs in Texas, the entire event has people out in the streets 32 00:02:41.020 --> 00:02:47.520 shaking their fists and denouncing the company for its uncompensated, destructive actions. 33 00:02:47.520 --> 00:02:51.120 It's given free enterprise a bad name as people blame the company directly and wonder how 34 00:02:51.120 --> 00:02:55.320 this kind of violation of property can even be legal. 35 00:02:55.320 --> 00:02:58.460 It is darn legal, as it turns out. 36 00:02:58.460 --> 00:03:05.680 The company negotiated a deal with the city and absorbed unto itself a much coveted utility 37 00:03:05.680 --> 00:03:11.040 easement, which grants the legal right to the company to dig into private property up 38 00:03:11.040 --> 00:03:14.520 to a certain amount and under certain conditions. 39 00:03:14.520 --> 00:03:19.140 The city itself absorbs this right from its eminent domain privileges, which is a fancy 40 00:03:19.140 --> 00:03:23.280 way of saying that the state has first ownership rights over all private property. 41 00:03:23.280 --> 00:03:26.440 What you own, you own by grant of the state. 42 00:03:26.440 --> 00:03:30.040 And the state can take it any time. 43 00:03:30.040 --> 00:03:32.360 Legal or not, it is animal-like behavior. 44 00:03:32.360 --> 00:03:37.560 It's one thing when it is done by wild pigs – we can trap them and kill them in an effort 45 00:03:37.560 --> 00:03:41.660 to defend our rights against the brutality of nature. 46 00:03:41.660 --> 00:03:46.160 But when identical forms of destruction are sponsored by the state, we are talking about 47 00:03:46.160 --> 00:03:48.740 a form of brutality that is purely man-made. 48 00:03:48.740 --> 00:03:54.940 Now, you might say that this power is necessary because, if the company tried to buy out the 49 00:03:54.940 --> 00:04:00.260 rights, there would be holdouts who would charge exorbitant fees. 50 00:04:00.260 --> 00:04:06.900 This scenario strikes me as the kind of scenario economists invent to show market failure. 51 00:04:06.900 --> 00:04:11.540 The real world has many solutions, including keeping privacy in contract, making and offering 52 00:04:11.540 --> 00:04:15.180 Giving special goodies to homeowners such as free service for a time or perhaps different 53 00:04:15.180 --> 00:04:18.580 technologies to do not invade people's land. 54 00:04:18.580 --> 00:04:23.740 Where there is a will, there is a market way. 55 00:04:23.740 --> 00:04:29.040 As it stands, the city has granted this internet company a massive corporate subsidy that intuitively 56 00:04:29.040 --> 00:04:33.580 strikes most people as unfair and corrupt. 57 00:04:33.580 --> 00:04:37.840 It is an example of the mixture of private and public sectors, very much along the same 58 00:04:37.840 --> 00:04:42.560 same lines as the bailouts of 2008 and following. 59 00:04:42.560 --> 00:04:47.120 These kinds of issues go a long way toward explaining how it is that people turn against 60 00:04:47.120 --> 00:04:51.960 free enterprise, despite the reality that the market itself is the source of every material 61 00:04:51.960 --> 00:04:54.480 blessing that is ours. 62 00:04:54.480 --> 00:04:59.400 It accounts for how people come to see private enterprise as the source of corruption and 63 00:04:59.400 --> 00:05:02.600 a despoiler of society. 64 00:05:02.600 --> 00:05:09.120 For this reason, the greatest cost of public-private collusion is ideological. 65 00:05:09.120 --> 00:05:13.800 The forces that save us from the destruction wrought by pigs can themselves, under the 66 00:05:13.800 --> 00:05:18.880 wrong legal conditions, behave very much like pigs. 67 00:05:18.880 --> 00:05:25.360 And when they do, they can't be surprised when the public wants to trap them, kill them, 68 00:05:25.360 --> 00:05:26.120 and eat them for dinner.