WEBVTT NOTE The Civil War and the Growth of Government 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:18.040 This is our last class on the economics of the Civil War, and we have just a few topics 2 00:00:18.040 --> 00:00:28.860 to cover, but there are three very important topics I think. 3 00:00:28.860 --> 00:00:32.340 The first is Black Reconstruction. 4 00:00:32.340 --> 00:00:45.020 In the book we don't go into detail about the era after the Civil War from 1865 to 1877 5 00:00:45.020 --> 00:00:57.620 known as Reconstruction primarily because we didn't know much about it and it wasn't 6 00:00:57.620 --> 00:01:09.620 is not the topic of any of our research, but the topic of black reconstruction, I think, is very important, 7 00:01:09.620 --> 00:01:16.620 is a very important topic, and it's something that social scientists have said, you know, it's not just slavery, 8 00:01:16.620 --> 00:01:24.620 but it's the impact of reconstruction on the subsequent development of the African American or black population 9 00:01:24.620 --> 00:01:26.820 in the United States. 10 00:01:26.820 --> 00:01:33.020 And what we did was we took the research of Robert Higgs, an economist and economic historian, 11 00:01:33.020 --> 00:01:44.700 who looked at the impact of the former slave population from 1865 to 1900. 12 00:01:44.700 --> 00:01:52.560 And so we just sort of detail some of the main general results on that population. 13 00:01:52.560 --> 00:02:00.160 The first one that is pretty much a no-brainer, we all would suspect that the black population 14 00:02:00.160 --> 00:02:07.160 suffered tremendously during the Civil War. The economy of the South, that's one of the 15 00:02:07.160 --> 00:02:13.760 things that we've been pressing on the entire class, is the economy of the South was collapsing 16 00:02:13.760 --> 00:02:19.140 on the weight, because of the weight of all this government intervention, and it was essentially 17 00:02:19.140 --> 00:02:38.140 The capital stock was gone, the labor supply was severely restricted, the output for the South's most valuable product was cut off, and things like the food supply were drying up and being reduced throughout the South. 18 00:02:38.140 --> 00:02:48.140 So all Southerners were suffering hardship. Black Southerners were suffering in particular. 19 00:02:48.140 --> 00:02:55.640 They didn't have any ability to adapt to changes as a result of the war because they were slaves. 20 00:02:55.640 --> 00:02:58.840 They couldn't move unless they were allowed to. 21 00:02:58.840 --> 00:03:02.740 They weren't allowed to make their own production decisions very often, 22 00:03:02.740 --> 00:03:10.940 and so their lot was severely compromised as a result of the Civil War. 23 00:03:10.940 --> 00:03:12.440 However, they did get their freedom. 24 00:03:12.440 --> 00:03:21.920 and that is the big and really only wonderful thing we can say about the Civil War is that 25 00:03:21.920 --> 00:03:28.520 as an unintended consequence of the people who started the whole thing, the black population 26 00:03:28.520 --> 00:03:36.040 got their freedom. However, at the outset, the end of the war, the beginning of the peace, 27 00:03:36.040 --> 00:03:46.360 The Start of Reconstruction. Predictions for their future were very dire. Not only were 28 00:03:46.360 --> 00:03:51.540 they in difficult circumstances, but northerners and southerners alike, and you can see this 29 00:03:51.540 --> 00:04:01.680 in newspapers, particularly in the north, was that many people believed that the black 30 00:04:01.680 --> 00:04:06.520 Black population would not survive, that it would simply die out and given their freedom 31 00:04:06.520 --> 00:04:14.160 that they wouldn't be able to manage themselves, manage production on their own, manage their 32 00:04:14.160 --> 00:04:24.240 lives and that they would quickly starve to death and essentially disappear. 33 00:04:24.240 --> 00:04:31.320 In contrast to those dire predictions however, the black population recovered very quickly 34 00:04:31.320 --> 00:04:42.760 After the end of the Civil War, they began producing as farmers and other jobs after 35 00:04:42.760 --> 00:04:55.680 the war. Many of them moved into urban areas and took up jobs in the city. The fertility 36 00:04:55.680 --> 00:05:04.360 or the number of births accounted for in the black population did decline, but that could 37 00:05:04.360 --> 00:05:05.360 be expected. 38 00:05:05.360 --> 00:05:14.000 Hayek sort of explained that as more and more of the former slave population moved into 39 00:05:14.000 --> 00:05:21.340 cities that it was typically the case that people who went from rural areas into urban 40 00:05:21.340 --> 00:05:31.900 in areas had fewer children. There was a decline in mortality in the black population and increases 41 00:05:31.900 --> 00:05:39.300 in income. Of course, slaves technically didn't have income, but there's a level of income 42 00:05:39.300 --> 00:05:43.740 that can be attributed to them in the sense of how much food, clothing and shelter did 43 00:05:43.740 --> 00:05:57.740 that they received as slaves, well, that level was set before the war, and then after the war, their level of income, monetary income, began to increase. 44 00:05:57.740 --> 00:06:07.740 So there's a decline in mortality, the number of people dying in this population, higher incomes, but of course those two things are very much related. 45 00:06:07.740 --> 00:06:11.740 There's better food, better clothing, better shelter. 46 00:06:11.740 --> 00:06:19.740 Very often we associate longevity with health care. 47 00:06:19.740 --> 00:06:29.740 But actually health care doesn't correlate very well with longevity, mortality, infant mortality and things like that. 48 00:06:29.740 --> 00:06:40.740 Income is actually the best determinant of how long a population lives, how quickly they die, infant mortality rates and that thing. 49 00:06:40.740 --> 00:06:47.300 because food, clothing and shelter are really the things that keep us healthy. 50 00:06:47.300 --> 00:06:53.540 It's only when things go awry that healthcare comes into play. 51 00:06:53.540 --> 00:06:59.860 This population, the former slave population essentially received no government assistance. 52 00:06:59.860 --> 00:07:10.420 There was no big government program of reconstruction in terms of benefiting the former black slave 53 00:07:10.420 --> 00:07:13.900 population. There was some efforts at providing health care, there was some 54 00:07:13.900 --> 00:07:17.740 efforts at providing some education in localized areas and things of that 55 00:07:17.740 --> 00:07:23.360 nature, but there was no big government program to help this huge population of 56 00:07:23.360 --> 00:07:39.220 former slaves. The population essentially went out and worked. They did more 57 00:07:39.220 --> 00:07:49.060 More homemaking and education, so women were less involved in production with freedom and 58 00:07:49.060 --> 00:07:58.460 they spent more time as homemakers and more time educating children and themselves after 59 00:07:58.460 --> 00:08:02.100 freedom was won. 60 00:08:02.100 --> 00:08:09.700 In terms of farming, where most of the former slave population was working, initially, after 61 00:08:09.700 --> 00:08:17.340 the war ended, most of the former slaves engaged in what's called share tenancy. They basically 62 00:08:17.340 --> 00:08:25.820 became renters of farmland from the large farm owners. So the initial arrangement, the 63 00:08:25.820 --> 00:08:54.820 The idea of paying the slaves to work on the farms wasn't a really efficient system because that would require the landowner to monitor the entire workforce and usually the landowner didn't have enough cash available to pay out workers throughout the growing season before the crops were harvested 64 00:08:54.820 --> 00:09:17.820 and sold. So they very often resulted in this share tenancy where the land would be given to the slaves, former slaves, and the owner and the former slave would split the crop at the end of the season. So it would be a 50-50 share at the end of the season. 65 00:09:17.820 --> 00:09:26.820 However, over time, Blacks achieved more ownership of their own land, despite long odds. 66 00:09:32.820 --> 00:09:39.820 As a matter of fact, the next development from share tenancy was a fixed share tenancy, 67 00:09:39.820 --> 00:09:46.940 where the the blacks would make arrangements with the property owners 68 00:09:46.940 --> 00:09:53.180 to rent the land for a fixed share so instead of a 50-50 cut they would agree 69 00:09:53.180 --> 00:10:00.780 to so many bales of cotton or so many bushels of wheat 70 00:10:00.780 --> 00:10:04.780 or so many years of corn things of that nature 71 00:10:04.780 --> 00:10:07.820 now what does this tell us 72 00:10:07.820 --> 00:10:14.500 Well, it tells us a little bit about the way each side of the transaction thought of the 73 00:10:14.500 --> 00:10:15.500 other side. 74 00:10:15.500 --> 00:10:18.660 Initially, it's a 50-50 split. 75 00:10:18.660 --> 00:10:21.420 Whatever comes up, we'll just split it. 76 00:10:21.420 --> 00:10:31.580 But now, the renters are agreeing that we'll pay you a given amount, and then the owner 77 00:10:31.580 --> 00:10:48.580 So that the renter has confidence in themselves that not only can they produce that amount to pay the rent, but they can also produce more, and anything above that fixed amount, they get to keep. 78 00:10:48.580 --> 00:11:04.580 So there's more profit opportunities for the renter, the former slaves, and less risk undertaken on the part of the landowner. 79 00:11:04.580 --> 00:11:10.580 So instead of them sort of splitting the risk 50-50, each of them being kind of an entrepreneur, 80 00:11:10.580 --> 00:11:20.220 Now, the landowner has essentially become a fixed income receiver, is not really involved 81 00:11:20.220 --> 00:11:28.420 in the project to any great extent, and the tenant now is taking on all of the entrepreneurship 82 00:11:28.420 --> 00:11:35.380 and can therefore say, well, if I bring in some new tools or if I improve this land, 83 00:11:35.380 --> 00:11:46.380 If I provide some irrigation, if I find new ways to use this land that will make the total crop grow, then I'll get all the benefit. 84 00:11:46.380 --> 00:11:57.380 So this change in systems is an indication that the black population was not going to disappear. 85 00:11:57.380 --> 00:12:02.380 The black population was doing very well in managing the farms themselves. 86 00:12:05.380 --> 00:12:11.380 Increasingly, they were getting non-agricultural jobs in the market with equal pay with whites. 87 00:12:15.380 --> 00:12:26.380 And ownership of land, actual outright ownership of land by blacks, former slaves, increased significantly in the 1880s, 1890s. 88 00:12:27.380 --> 00:12:32.820 in the United States. 89 00:12:32.820 --> 00:12:35.460 So the 90 00:12:35.460 --> 00:12:37.260 the era 91 00:12:37.260 --> 00:12:39.900 of reconstruction in its aftermath 92 00:12:39.900 --> 00:12:43.620 from roughly the end of the civil war to nineteen hundred 93 00:12:43.620 --> 00:12:47.020 the southern black population 94 00:12:47.020 --> 00:12:49.020 did extremely well 95 00:12:49.020 --> 00:12:52.060 and its income growth 96 00:12:52.060 --> 00:12:55.040 rose at a higher rate 97 00:12:55.040 --> 00:12:57.180 than that of the white population. 98 00:12:57.180 --> 00:13:04.540 Now that still left income in the black population below the white population as a whole, but 99 00:13:04.540 --> 00:13:12.860 it just shows you that the growth occurred at a faster rate and that the catch-up in 100 00:13:12.860 --> 00:13:15.280 income was significant. 101 00:13:15.280 --> 00:13:32.340 So if we were to look at the end of the war to 1900, we'd see the income of blacks started 102 00:13:32.340 --> 00:13:43.140 out much less than the white population. 103 00:13:43.140 --> 00:13:57.140 And both groups had some prosperity after the war, throughout this period. 104 00:13:57.140 --> 00:14:01.380 But the catch up in the difference was significant. 105 00:14:01.380 --> 00:14:06.820 So there was a huge difference in income at the end of the war, but that income difference 106 00:14:06.820 --> 00:14:12.980 shrunk considerably by 1900. 107 00:14:12.980 --> 00:14:27.980 However, as we get to the end of the century, some countervailing forces start to take place. 108 00:14:27.980 --> 00:14:45.120 You've got Jim Crow laws, all sorts of laws that put blacks at a disadvantage against 109 00:14:45.120 --> 00:14:48.880 whites in the workforce. 110 00:14:48.880 --> 00:15:01.320 These were a growing of growing power in this time and they often were in part set up to 111 00:15:01.320 --> 00:15:08.440 provide a benefit to whites and to keep blacks out of certain professions and in certain 112 00:15:08.440 --> 00:15:20.280 Professions, blacks were essentially kicked out of those jobs. So we have all 113 00:15:20.280 --> 00:15:27.880 these forces, this is unions as in labor unions, not as in the union government, 114 00:15:27.880 --> 00:15:34.960 that were really providing roadblocks. The blacks had moved into agriculture, had 115 00:15:34.960 --> 00:15:40.960 had done very well there. They had moved into certain professions and had actually gotten equal pay in certain professions. 116 00:15:40.960 --> 00:15:46.960 They'd moved into, they started moving into more advanced professions with unequal pay. 117 00:15:46.960 --> 00:15:53.960 And that's when some of these legal barriers started to develop. 118 00:15:53.960 --> 00:16:23.960 In 1896, the Supreme Court decision, Plessy vs. Ferguson, essentially allowing these types of legal restraints really put a stop to this process. 119 00:16:23.960 --> 00:16:36.960 The process of economic catch-up or economic convergence of one race's economic performance with the other. 120 00:16:36.960 --> 00:16:44.960 There's no telling as to whether or not they would actually have converged to perfect equality or anything like that. 121 00:16:44.960 --> 00:16:51.960 But the process was at least headed in that direction in the post-war experience. Yes? 122 00:16:51.960 --> 00:16:56.960 What marked it, let's say, specific to Hayek, what was Ferguson's? 123 00:16:56.960 --> 00:17:00.960 That upheld Jim Crow laws. 124 00:17:00.960 --> 00:17:04.960 Segregation, separation but equal, wasn't it? 125 00:17:04.960 --> 00:17:07.960 Before it got in. 126 00:17:07.960 --> 00:17:10.960 These first three categories there, 127 00:17:10.960 --> 00:17:13.960 did this have general application throughout the country, 128 00:17:13.960 --> 00:17:16.960 both in the north and in the north, 129 00:17:16.960 --> 00:17:36.720 That's a good question, Jack, and I can't actually answer you concretely about that. 130 00:17:36.720 --> 00:17:39.320 Like I said, I'm treading on thin ice here. 131 00:17:39.320 --> 00:17:42.960 I really don't have a tremendous background, but the... 132 00:17:42.960 --> 00:18:07.960 Right. Yes, there's definitely a migration from the cotton-growing areas of the South into the cities, both southern cities and, of course, northern cities. 133 00:18:07.960 --> 00:18:16.720 and and then during the wars and that kind of thing there was also big pushes 134 00:18:16.720 --> 00:18:19.760 at that time. Yes. 135 00:18:19.760 --> 00:18:24.760 The first thing you need to know is, did you make distinctions between the graphic unions and the industrial unions? 136 00:18:24.760 --> 00:18:32.760 Did the graphic unions tend to be, not necessarily racist, but a particular job would be all Italians? 137 00:18:32.760 --> 00:18:33.760 Yes. 138 00:18:33.760 --> 00:18:35.760 And all Irish, something like this? 139 00:18:35.760 --> 00:18:36.760 Yes. 140 00:18:36.760 --> 00:18:45.760 And did the industrial unions be much more open in terms of hiring? 141 00:18:45.760 --> 00:19:15.760 Yeah, that I'm not really sure about. There was a tendency on the part of employers to discriminate, so that if they had, you know, certain jobs would be all black, other jobs might be all white, and then you might even find that you've got one job where they're all Irish, and another job where they all happen to be Italian, so there was a natural discrimination, and sometimes it didn't really 142 00:19:15.760 --> 00:19:21.040 can really get reflected in in terms of wage rates even you know a lot of these 143 00:19:21.040 --> 00:19:25.560 a lot of these cases the the black workers were receiving the same workers 144 00:19:25.560 --> 00:19:29.760 same wages as is whites although sometimes they would be physically 145 00:19:29.760 --> 00:19:34.760 segregated at the workforce 146 00:19:45.760 --> 00:20:13.520 Well, that's very, very likely. They were trying to find work and, you know, a slave 147 00:20:13.520 --> 00:20:21.520 A slave on one plantation would very easily have relatives in neighboring and adjoining plantations. 148 00:20:21.520 --> 00:20:33.520 But there was also the case where owners would sell off some of their slaves into marketplaces. 149 00:20:33.520 --> 00:20:42.520 Now typically slave owners would try to sell their slaves either into the local market or in large groups. 150 00:20:42.520 --> 00:20:49.760 When they moved the slaves, say, from Virginia to Alabama, you know, because the opportunities 151 00:20:49.760 --> 00:20:55.000 were better for growing cotton down here, they would move a whole bunch of them at a 152 00:20:55.000 --> 00:20:56.000 time. 153 00:20:56.000 --> 00:20:57.760 So whole family units would move. 154 00:20:57.760 --> 00:21:04.880 But there was one problem where families would get broken up on a regular and large scale, 155 00:21:04.880 --> 00:21:07.680 and that was bankruptcy. 156 00:21:07.680 --> 00:21:11.440 If a plantation, and this happened, you know, even though there's a lot of prosperity, there 157 00:21:11.440 --> 00:21:41.440 were still business cycles and that kind of thing and plantation owners borrowed large sums of money to finance their operations and so when a plantation would go bankrupt because of the business cycle or because of tax burdens or maybe even just the death of the owner, the slaves would have to be sold off at auction to pay for the debts 158 00:21:41.440 --> 00:21:48.400 Because the slaves actually were the collateral for the loan, and so when that happened, and it happened quite often, 159 00:21:50.720 --> 00:21:54.000 your family members, you know, could be dispersed anywhere. 160 00:21:54.960 --> 00:22:01.280 You know, they'd be sent to a slave market, and then, you know, so they all get sent to Mobile, 161 00:22:01.280 --> 00:22:08.640 and they're auctioned off to different owners, some of whom may be planning on re-shipping them over to Louisiana. 162 00:22:08.640 --> 00:22:22.160 The slave family was broken up in that manner. Naturally, a likely thing is to go look for 163 00:22:22.160 --> 00:22:29.400 your parents or to go look for your children. You might have some idea of where they were. 164 00:22:29.400 --> 00:22:37.720 You might know where they were, but after the war, the plantations were being dispersed, 165 00:22:37.720 --> 00:23:05.720 Didn't some of the more humane slave owners and plantation owners have some kind of arrangement where they might be able to keep track of their, like a slave who's part of this family sold, to keep track of those? 166 00:23:07.720 --> 00:23:17.660 You can keep track, for example, if you've got a wealthy Virginia family and the eldest 167 00:23:17.660 --> 00:23:24.680 son gets married and decides to go to Alabama to start a plantation down here and is given 168 00:23:24.680 --> 00:23:30.920 a group of slaves in order to establish that plantation, well, they would take whole families, 169 00:23:30.920 --> 00:23:37.200 but those families would still be related to the families up in Virginia, so they would 170 00:23:37.200 --> 00:23:46.700 keep track of one another between the slave-owning families and also travel with the owners. 171 00:23:46.700 --> 00:23:53.300 The owners would always travel with slaves as assistants and that sort of thing and so 172 00:23:53.300 --> 00:23:56.680 there would be contact directly through that way. 173 00:23:56.680 --> 00:24:03.640 But yes, so there would be ways of keeping in touch and of course the slaves would run 174 00:24:33.640 --> 00:25:02.640 One other comment, it's kind of stupid to hang on a masquerade. The father, an average of ten children, was a slave, so I'm just thinking this might be one of the reasons why they went from the agricultural industry to the agricultural industry. 175 00:25:02.640 --> 00:25:08.640 I recall from into the city that the birth rate was dropped down after being given those proofs. 176 00:25:12.640 --> 00:25:17.640 Because there'd be no statistics on that, like how many, because it was approved. 177 00:25:17.640 --> 00:25:24.640 You know, it was a ongoing thing, and when you owned a slave, you were allowed to use them anywhere you want. 178 00:25:24.640 --> 00:25:28.640 So, that was the number, like the average number. 179 00:25:28.640 --> 00:25:42.640 Could be one of the reasons, yeah. I don't really know. I've never heard that number before. 180 00:25:42.640 --> 00:25:48.640 That was on that same PBS thing on slavery. 181 00:25:48.640 --> 00:25:53.640 Building of America, slavery. 182 00:25:53.640 --> 00:26:04.640 Did you hear the episode where they said most Americans were inclined to discriminate against slavery? 183 00:26:04.640 --> 00:26:17.640 That outfit is no good at a PBS. That is the most unfair documentary I ever listened to. I only heard two. I made sure I didn't hear any more. 184 00:26:17.640 --> 00:26:26.640 I just heard the last one, but this is the one where they were showing the relationship between some of these slaveholders. 185 00:26:26.640 --> 00:26:29.600 I mean, it was sort of an economic arrangement. 186 00:26:29.600 --> 00:26:32.680 Someone would let their slaves work in the city 187 00:26:32.680 --> 00:26:34.520 for a certain kickback. 188 00:26:34.520 --> 00:26:36.520 And so it wasn't my ball, negative. 189 00:26:36.520 --> 00:26:40.320 It's just for trying to explain the situation 190 00:26:40.320 --> 00:26:43.280 between the master and the slave. 191 00:26:43.280 --> 00:26:45.960 Yeah, well, and as I said, you know, 192 00:26:45.960 --> 00:26:49.520 this population was so large and so difficult to control 193 00:26:49.520 --> 00:26:52.600 that there were a lot of different ways 194 00:26:52.600 --> 00:26:55.320 that the masters tried to control the slaves. 195 00:26:55.320 --> 00:27:04.080 You know, they used the carrot and the stick. They didn't really like to beat the slaves 196 00:27:04.080 --> 00:27:12.820 because if the slave had whip marks on their back, they were of no value to sell because 197 00:27:12.820 --> 00:27:20.320 no one would want to buy a problem slave. So they were inclined to use incentives. They 198 00:27:20.320 --> 00:27:26.660 They were inclined to use self-management so that the slaves managed themselves in many 199 00:27:26.660 --> 00:27:35.660 aspects of their lives such as making their own food and growing their own food and incentives 200 00:27:35.660 --> 00:27:42.220 for good production, things of that nature. 201 00:27:42.220 --> 00:27:57.520 To Ozzie's point about that in terms of the north and south, there was a lot of black, 202 00:27:57.520 --> 00:28:07.520 anti-black view in the north as well and many of the states in the north actually prohibited 203 00:28:07.520 --> 00:28:16.600 People from bringing their slaves to the North or freeing their slaves to the North, they 204 00:28:16.600 --> 00:28:26.800 pass laws to prevent that kind of thing, which is the primary reason in addition to the laws 205 00:28:26.800 --> 00:28:35.320 that required the returning of runaway slaves, that the Underground Railroad ended in Canada 206 00:28:35.320 --> 00:28:40.660 was because it really wasn't possible for slaves to seek freedom in many of the 207 00:28:40.660 --> 00:28:46.440 northern states. They just weren't allowed to. Now, there's a little section in here 208 00:28:46.440 --> 00:28:51.840 which I think was kind of a neat little discovery called Lincoln and the first 209 00:28:51.840 --> 00:28:57.440 New Deal. That was one of the things that we, I mentioned at the beginning of the 210 00:28:57.440 --> 00:29:02.440 class that we were going to come across where the term the New Deal came from. 211 00:29:02.440 --> 00:29:10.460 and the first time that we know the term new deal was used was that a 212 00:29:10.460 --> 00:29:20.360 newspaper man from North Carolina used the term to describe Lincoln's policies 213 00:29:20.360 --> 00:29:28.440 and how they were beneficial and that Lincoln was going to be providing you 214 00:29:28.440 --> 00:29:33.800 New North Carolinians with a New Deal. 215 00:29:33.800 --> 00:29:37.460 And that's why we need to get back into the Union essentially. 216 00:29:37.460 --> 00:29:43.680 The newspaper ran was arguing that we need to, the war was over but we need to lay down 217 00:29:43.680 --> 00:29:52.960 our weapons mentally as well, get back to our lives, accept defeat, accept the Union 218 00:29:52.960 --> 00:30:00.000 And here's Lincoln, he's a good guy, and this is all the stuff that he's going to give for us. 219 00:30:00.000 --> 00:30:03.060 And he described it as Lincoln's New Deal. 220 00:30:03.060 --> 00:30:17.960 And then in the book, we list all of the things that Lincoln provided and which were passed on his watch during the Civil War. 221 00:30:17.960 --> 00:30:25.400 The Morale Tariff, the First Income Tax, an Expanded Postal Service, the Homestead Act, 222 00:30:25.400 --> 00:30:30.860 the Morale Land College Act, the Department of Agriculture, the Bureau of Printing and 223 00:30:30.860 --> 00:30:36.980 Engraving, the Transcontinental Railroad Land Grants, the National Banking Act, the Comptroller 224 00:30:36.980 --> 00:30:43.420 of the Currency, the National Academy of Sciences, Free Urban Mail Delivery, Yosemite Natural 225 00:30:43.420 --> 00:30:48.960 Federal Reserve, Land Grant, Contract Labor Act, the Office of Immigration, the Railway 226 00:30:48.960 --> 00:30:51.660 Mail Service and the Money Order System. 227 00:30:51.660 --> 00:30:56.300 And there's a lot more, of course, that was passed during this, but we just sort of list 228 00:30:56.300 --> 00:31:06.380 some of the main ones to sort of give you a flavor of how Lincoln's burgeoning of new 229 00:31:06.380 --> 00:31:12.480 government, new governmental services, new governmental agencies, new regulatory bodies 230 00:31:12.480 --> 00:31:22.160 is very similar to what FDR and Roosevelt put into place during his time in office 231 00:31:22.160 --> 00:31:28.440 with all sorts of new offices and new legislation and new regulations providing all sorts of 232 00:31:28.440 --> 00:31:36.480 tangible governmental benefits to everyone. 233 00:31:36.480 --> 00:31:43.920 So I thought that was kind of a good indicator of where we go with the sort of the last main 234 00:31:43.920 --> 00:31:52.560 point, the last point of the book, which is the overall impact of the Civil War on American 235 00:31:52.560 --> 00:31:59.760 Society, in particular in terms of the growth of governments. 236 00:32:22.560 --> 00:32:52.560 The Department of Agriculture was pretty small and not really involved to any extent but there is a good point in the sense that the one thing that people note is that there was no 237 00:32:52.560 --> 00:33:09.560 There was no redistribution of land at the end of the, the reconstruction did not say okay, reconstruction we're going to take this plantation, which was owned by one person and worked by 200, we're going to divide it up amongst 50 different families. 238 00:33:09.560 --> 00:33:14.560 There was no land distribution. 239 00:33:14.560 --> 00:33:38.560 As a matter of fact, the only cases where I've heard of big land giveaways on the part of the federal government in the south after the war was a few cases where white people from the north were given a big huge track of land some place in Florida or Georgia or some place like that. 240 00:33:38.560 --> 00:33:43.560 And I only heard of a few instances of that. I've never seen any systematic study. 241 00:33:43.560 --> 00:33:51.560 But we know that the former slave population didn't, in almost all cases, they didn't get land grants from the government. 242 00:33:51.560 --> 00:33:55.560 They honored the land known by the southern... 243 00:33:55.560 --> 00:33:57.560 That's right. In most cases... 244 00:33:57.560 --> 00:33:58.560 ...after the war as well. 245 00:33:58.560 --> 00:34:08.280 in most cases there were a few cases I think in the where this the slaves were 246 00:34:08.280 --> 00:34:13.320 essentially given control of the former plantations but again that's just a few 247 00:34:13.320 --> 00:34:16.880 isolated instances that I know about 248 00:34:28.560 --> 00:34:40.560 The Land of the Vigilantes, Plantations of the Plants, and with the market push-up, nobody could lift the land except for the plant. 249 00:34:40.560 --> 00:34:43.560 We kind of freed up our right-wing market for the real estate. 250 00:34:43.560 --> 00:34:55.560 And then the crisis, it seems to me, was within the lack of problems for the city operations, or for restart operations that were out and upset for several years. 251 00:34:55.560 --> 00:35:21.560 Was there not a larger chain of land, were there not a larger number of microprocesses in the business, a distinction about the carter category and the other category where the group was coming down and buying land and the kind of thing where the landowners and the travelers had to do the best they could? 252 00:35:25.560 --> 00:35:55.560 to the idea, basically, the agricultural sector could get restarted, the, you know, basically, they would just, between the landowner and the former slaves, they agreed to, you know, share the output, so that the amount of inputs, necessary for 253 00:35:55.560 --> 00:36:01.560 The things that were necessary to start up agriculture were fairly minimal. 254 00:36:01.560 --> 00:36:08.560 The owners didn't have to sustain the workers. The workers sustained themselves and that kind of thing. 255 00:36:08.560 --> 00:36:21.560 The problem occurred when the reconstruction governments started imposing property taxes on the landowners. 256 00:36:21.560 --> 00:36:51.560 and the landowners couldn't, they could barely sustain themselves and they couldn't pay their property taxes and so those property taxes actually caused a lot of owners to go into bankruptcy and for their lands to be sold off at auction and the problem there of course was that nobody had, I mean there wasn't a lot of money, there was no savings left 257 00:36:51.560 --> 00:36:56.160 left, Southerners who put their money into Confederate bonds had lost everything, Confederate 258 00:36:56.160 --> 00:37:01.920 currency wasn't worth anything, and so there was no savings, there was very little medium 259 00:37:01.920 --> 00:37:09.280 of exchange money circulating in the economy, and so the inability to pay those property 260 00:37:09.280 --> 00:37:18.280 taxes meant that the lands would be sold off, and they would be sold off very cheaply, and 261 00:37:18.280 --> 00:37:27.160 So this is what provided an avenue for wealthy northerners who had plenty of cash to come 262 00:37:27.160 --> 00:37:30.040 down and exploit that situation. 263 00:37:30.040 --> 00:37:36.560 I don't know what the extent of that was, so I can't really accurately characterize 264 00:37:36.560 --> 00:37:42.080 it, but I know that that was the process that essentially pried this land out of the people 265 00:37:42.080 --> 00:37:45.080 who had owned it for a long time. 266 00:37:45.080 --> 00:37:54.080 So that kind of reconstruction is a little resemblance to what we think of as being a reconstruction today. 267 00:37:54.080 --> 00:38:06.060 Oh, and it's funny when you go into Iraq, where everybody's came up with this huge amount of money, they all kind of just push it to get it out of the budget. 268 00:38:06.060 --> 00:38:15.940 And that kind of thing is kind of a good way to modify and change and create new institutions. 269 00:38:24.080 --> 00:38:46.080 was certainly a military occupation, primarily, and that's basically the way it was, and it did transfer ownership from Southerners to Northerners. 270 00:38:46.080 --> 00:38:56.560 The market provided an avenue where it transferred some of it from white to black and there wasn't 271 00:38:56.560 --> 00:39:04.120 really any significant program to help the people get back on their feet. 272 00:39:04.120 --> 00:39:15.800 It was more or less a military occupation of enough significance to get the cotton flowing 273 00:39:15.800 --> 00:39:27.200 into the northern mills, just as the Iraqi occupation seems to be only significant enough 274 00:39:27.200 --> 00:39:39.040 to get the oil flowing, but no big program to help the local people directly. 275 00:39:39.040 --> 00:39:45.600 Not that I think that they could come up with a program that would actually restore either 276 00:39:45.600 --> 00:39:56.480 or southerners or slaves or Iraqis to normality. War is something you just don't get over. 277 00:39:56.480 --> 00:40:02.720 It's not something that you can, where there's any kind of magic eraser that we can just 278 00:40:02.720 --> 00:40:06.520 erase like on the board and then all of a sudden the board goes back just the way it 279 00:40:06.520 --> 00:40:15.160 was. With war you can't, you can never do that. But hopefully over a long period of 280 00:40:15.160 --> 00:40:24.120 things always improve but one of the lessons of war is that it does leave a permanent scar 281 00:40:24.920 --> 00:40:32.440 and institutionally it almost always leaves us with a bigger government. 282 00:40:34.600 --> 00:40:42.760 In particular in countries that win wars end up with bigger governments. There's actually a 283 00:40:42.760 --> 00:40:52.840 phenomenon where war helps reduce government, but in order to get that sort of thing, you 284 00:40:52.840 --> 00:40:58.280 have to lose the war. 285 00:40:58.280 --> 00:41:08.020 This is not clearly a straightforward win-win situation, but for example, this is debatable, 286 00:41:08.020 --> 00:41:20.020 But it is said that as a result of World War II that Germany and Japan benefited in the 287 00:41:20.020 --> 00:41:26.580 sense that the war destroyed their fascist governments and their fascist economic policy 288 00:41:26.580 --> 00:41:37.420 and their fascist bureaucracy which had gotten entangled in industry and unions and distribution 289 00:41:37.420 --> 00:41:47.100 Networks, with the government in control of the vital switches and dials in the economy, 290 00:41:47.100 --> 00:41:51.980 and that all sorts of regulations and price controls were put into place, and all forms 291 00:41:51.980 --> 00:41:58.220 of subsidies and credit rationing were put into place, and that the war and losing the 292 00:41:58.220 --> 00:42:08.980 in the war essentially destroyed all that and those countries then adopted fairly simple 293 00:42:08.980 --> 00:42:22.980 straightforward forms of government and economic policy and of course Germany and Japan were 294 00:42:22.980 --> 00:42:34.980 two of the all-star economies on the globe during the 1950s and 1960s and even the 70s. 295 00:42:34.980 --> 00:42:43.980 Would somebody from Germany buy that story? Does that something that sounds like a fantasy? 296 00:42:43.980 --> 00:42:52.980 Don't you think? Which the fact is, in the 48 or 47 in the U.S., because of all the money in West England, 297 00:42:52.980 --> 00:42:58.980 even the new amount of issued money to people needed so much that they at least managed to get a little more 298 00:42:58.980 --> 00:43:01.980 because of all their emergency periods. Right like that. 299 00:43:01.980 --> 00:43:07.980 And it wasn't a few years ago we had the German miracle and the market was the hardest money in the world. 300 00:43:07.980 --> 00:43:10.980 I think since that time, though, the Germans have... 301 00:43:10.980 --> 00:43:40.980 The Greek bureaucratized and the Japanese too in a different way, but they thought they would centralize planning and that kind of stuff, but this is twice Schroder, and Germany is micro-urban from what I've really been doing with my question about this design, but this is micro-urban, they're having to come to terms with labor agreements, and they're having to do a limit of 35 hours a week to build a board 302 00:44:10.980 --> 00:44:18.980 The case, and I don't know whether this is part of the German culture, is our tendency to do this. I think all nations do it. 303 00:44:18.980 --> 00:44:28.980 It seems to me, based on my comprehension of history, is that the longer you go and the more you engage yourself in wars, as we do, 304 00:44:28.980 --> 00:44:32.980 that the more top-heavy you come with government. 305 00:44:32.980 --> 00:45:01.980 and our government is doing things now that a decade or two ago, they've never done it before and I think it's more centralized government and more burdensome taxes and more people being employed in the public sector and it's just very difficult. 306 00:45:01.980 --> 00:45:04.380 or both for the economy affair. 307 00:45:04.380 --> 00:45:08.780 Yeah, I don't think it has anything to do with being German or being Japanese. 308 00:45:08.780 --> 00:45:22.380 I think that they are good examples of how war destroyed the apparatus of too much government 309 00:45:22.380 --> 00:45:24.980 and cleared out all that bureaucracy. 310 00:45:24.980 --> 00:45:34.500 and but then this natural tendency of allowing government to grow over time 311 00:45:34.500 --> 00:45:44.180 seems to be unstoppable in many respects and there's really, there's two things here 312 00:45:44.180 --> 00:45:50.580 and I'm going to go back to Bob Higgs again and another one of his books it's called 313 00:45:50.580 --> 00:45:56.420 Crisis and Leviathan and critical episodes in the history of the growth of 314 00:45:56.420 --> 00:46:01.940 government in the United States. That may not be exactly correct but it's pretty 315 00:46:01.940 --> 00:46:11.220 close to the truth and in that book Higgs explains that the growth of 316 00:46:11.220 --> 00:46:18.020 government occurs in two ways. One is the slow steady growth where the size of 317 00:46:18.020 --> 00:46:48.020 Government gets bigger and bigger relative to the economy over time. And the second way in which government grows is through emergency. And in an emergency, government gets ratcheted up so that there's a big buildup in government for a crisis to address an emergency. And then once the crisis is resolved, government is 318 00:46:48.020 --> 00:47:17.980 cut back, but it's never cut back to its pre-crisis level. So that if we looked at government is relative to the size of the economy, and then we looked at it over time, what we see is that government starts out, in the United States it starts out very small, 319 00:47:18.020 --> 00:47:24.380 The Federal Government is almost non-existent really. 320 00:47:24.380 --> 00:47:30.100 The majority of Americans in the beginning of the country will live their entire lives 321 00:47:30.100 --> 00:47:34.180 without ever seeing a federal government official outside of the postman. 322 00:47:34.180 --> 00:47:37.180 Don't you have it in here? 323 00:47:37.180 --> 00:47:38.900 5% of the gross national product. 324 00:47:38.900 --> 00:47:46.660 It's very low and it starts out low and this is just, this is not a historical model or 325 00:47:46.660 --> 00:47:56.660 more of a stylized model of the growth of government relative to the economy over time. 326 00:47:56.660 --> 00:48:06.660 And then at some point a crisis occurs or is engineered in some form. 327 00:48:06.660 --> 00:48:35.660 Alright, well the crisis occurs and the size of government gets ratcheted up. Very quickly there's a mobilization to address this emergency and then the emergency lasts a period of time 328 00:48:35.660 --> 00:48:41.660 where essentially government is getting big bigger but just at the old rate and 329 00:48:41.660 --> 00:48:49.460 then the crisis is resolved and so there's a demobilization after the crisis 330 00:48:49.460 --> 00:48:59.820 and then government gets back on its old path. This angle or this ascent can also 331 00:48:59.820 --> 00:49:09.460 will change due to institutionalized forces such as constitutional changes. If we were 332 00:49:09.460 --> 00:49:18.460 to adopt an income tax, for example, we might see this growth rate increase. But in the 333 00:49:18.460 --> 00:49:26.980 absence of that, we just wait for another crisis and another resolution to the crisis. 334 00:49:26.980 --> 00:49:33.880 and then we get back on the peacetime path or whatever and we go until we hit another 335 00:49:33.880 --> 00:49:41.260 crisis and another resolution. And so, Higgs' model of the growth of government is called 336 00:49:41.260 --> 00:49:54.300 a ratchet model. Well, I can't recommend more highly a book than Higgs' book. It's historical, 337 00:49:54.300 --> 00:50:02.660 It's theoretical and I think the model is very compelling. 338 00:50:02.660 --> 00:50:09.980 I will say that he mentions the Civil War as one of the first real ratchets in the growth 339 00:50:09.980 --> 00:50:10.980 of government. 340 00:50:10.980 --> 00:50:19.740 It doesn't form a major basis of his work, he just mentions that he's more concerned 341 00:50:19.740 --> 00:50:29.740 with World War I, America's Great Depression, World War II, and the Cold War. 342 00:50:29.740 --> 00:50:34.740 Isn't the ratchet coming back down, not going up? 343 00:50:34.740 --> 00:50:40.740 Why does it go up and then ratchet back down? 344 00:50:40.740 --> 00:50:44.740 Yeah, it's a mechanical process. 345 00:50:44.740 --> 00:50:47.740 But not ever back where it was? 346 00:50:47.740 --> 00:50:59.140 except in those other cases you know where you lose the war and then you get 347 00:50:59.140 --> 00:51:16.980 you know then you get the the benefit of well I haven't written that book 348 00:51:16.980 --> 00:51:42.980 Well, in any case, there's other authorities or ways of looking at this growth of government. Richard Benzell, who's actually a Marxist, I think, describes the Civil War in great detail as the episode in America when central state authority was born. 349 00:51:42.980 --> 00:52:12.980 So where Higgs just says, oh this was the first major crisis and then goes on, Benzell says, hold on a minute, this war really changed everything, we used to be a decentralized republic of states and now we are a centralized state authority that has all this precedent 350 00:52:12.980 --> 00:52:26.980 for presidential powers, the income tax, we have these new constitutional amendments which essentially take away real authority from state government 351 00:52:26.980 --> 00:52:38.980 and leave all ultimate authority in the central government. So I think that's also an important perspective on the Civil War and the growth of big government. 352 00:52:38.980 --> 00:52:48.620 Management, and then finally, it's important to note, as we do in the book, that the Republican 353 00:52:48.620 --> 00:52:56.940 Party agenda, and this is something I've been pointing out over and over again, is an economic 354 00:52:56.940 --> 00:53:05.720 agenda of mercantilism. Mercantilism where basically the government provides a set of 355 00:53:05.720 --> 00:53:30.720 of Economic Policies that create more government in the economy, such as protectionism, such as a national monetary authority, banking authority, and monopolies, special grants and privileges, and public works projects on the part of the government. 356 00:53:30.720 --> 00:53:58.720 and so that where the Republican agenda was known and still is today known as the laissez-faire economic policy the truth of the matter is precisely the opposite that they have and continue to represent and I must say there's the modern Democratic Party represents pretty much the same thing. 357 00:53:58.720 --> 00:54:15.720 This agenda where you have a market economy, but the government is actively and constantly involved on a whole variety of fronts, and that is known as mercantilism, not capitalism. 358 00:54:15.720 --> 00:54:20.720 Isn't it a matter of moving away from the Constitution, too? 359 00:54:20.720 --> 00:54:29.720 In other words, when I read the Constitution, the fact that the Federal Reserve System can be bought back anytime, 360 00:54:29.720 --> 00:54:37.720 and they still put up with the regulatory character there. 361 00:54:37.720 --> 00:54:46.520 Everyone finds that the interest rates are going up or down and they all jump like that. 362 00:54:46.520 --> 00:54:50.120 I mean, that's a departure from the Constitution. 363 00:54:50.120 --> 00:54:57.620 And as you go along, you find that that's what's happening and nobody's going the other way. 364 00:54:57.620 --> 00:55:04.120 Yeah, certainly the Federal Reserve is not in the Constitution. 365 00:55:04.120 --> 00:55:08.840 It's a separate act and Congress could change that at any time. 366 00:55:08.840 --> 00:55:17.240 You know the, the, and this is another example of sort of an untrue type of laissez-faire. 367 00:55:17.240 --> 00:55:23.800 The Federal Reserve is kind of one of the first public-private partnerships where you've got this 368 00:55:23.800 --> 00:55:33.920 private semi-autonomous regulator of the money and banking attached to the government. 369 00:55:33.920 --> 00:55:43.920 and the government could sort of tell them what to do and they can get rid of them, but they're still there. 370 00:55:43.920 --> 00:55:51.920 Yeah, it's kind of one of these public-private partnerships and I've always found that to be a bad idea. 371 00:55:51.920 --> 00:56:02.280 I think people get sort of succumbed to the idea that, well, it's private enterprise, but it's government regulated, so it's got to be the best of both worlds. 372 00:56:02.280 --> 00:56:05.720 I think it actually turns out to be the worst of both worlds. 373 00:56:05.720 --> 00:56:09.200 And so that's a good point. 374 00:56:09.200 --> 00:56:12.400 And your general point about the Constitution, I think, is 375 00:56:12.400 --> 00:56:17.200 is also valid, whether you're talking about the changes that occur 376 00:56:17.200 --> 00:56:21.600 in this historical time or for that matter today. 377 00:56:21.600 --> 00:56:24.600 It's a terrifically flexible organism. 378 00:56:24.600 --> 00:56:29.240 It's full of simple, declarative sentences. 379 00:56:29.240 --> 00:56:35.240 and the Supreme Court has been twisting them ever since the Supreme Court was set up. 380 00:56:35.240 --> 00:56:42.240 In other words, if everybody would more or less go according to the Constitution and do their job, 381 00:56:42.240 --> 00:56:47.240 but by now they've got a triple-layer bureaucracy in them, 382 00:56:47.240 --> 00:56:57.240 and the Constitution is like peanuts when you go to kick the football. 383 00:56:57.240 --> 00:57:04.240 They pull it away. In other words, you never get a feel endure the man that's making the thing go. 384 00:57:04.240 --> 00:57:10.240 It's some joker down there that pulls the string, and then it throws it off. 385 00:57:10.240 --> 00:57:15.240 You get the point about this discussion, it's a woman that pulls that football away. 386 00:57:15.240 --> 00:57:17.240 Yeah, I know. 387 00:57:17.240 --> 00:57:19.240 Speaking of that, do you have a question, Clara? 388 00:57:19.240 --> 00:57:25.240 I have a question. Is it true that Texas puts a city on the union, legitimately? 389 00:57:25.240 --> 00:57:51.240 It may have that authority. I know that they made some special provision when they agreed to enter the Union that at some point in time the Texas legislature could decide to subdivide Texas into as many as four or five different states but remain in the Union. 390 00:57:51.240 --> 00:58:00.960 Of course, the big advantage of that was that it would give Texans ten senators. 391 00:58:00.960 --> 00:58:08.520 But I don't know, they may have also had a provision in there for seceding from the union. 392 00:58:08.520 --> 00:58:19.180 Several states, when they accepted statehood into the United States, made declarations 393 00:58:19.180 --> 00:58:23.300 that they were a free and sovereign nation and that if any time in the future they were, 394 00:58:23.300 --> 00:58:28.100 you know, wanted to that they would and no one would stop them. 395 00:58:28.100 --> 00:58:31.460 And you know, that's the way everybody kind of understood it. 396 00:58:31.460 --> 00:58:37.740 But the Constitution did not, one thing that it did not do, and I think it should have 397 00:58:37.740 --> 00:58:49.060 done was to have an explicit statement regarding the means of which an individual state could 398 00:58:49.060 --> 00:58:54.500 would extricate itself from the Union under what conditions and under what procedures. 399 00:58:54.500 --> 00:58:56.780 It was something that was never done. 400 00:58:56.780 --> 00:59:05.020 I don't know if the writers of the Constitution just assumed that states could withdraw at 401 00:59:05.020 --> 00:59:20.180 anytime or not, but the failure to do that one simple thing, and you know, every important 402 00:59:20.180 --> 00:59:28.620 contract has articles of, you know, what dissolves the contract, and this one unfortunately did 403 00:59:28.620 --> 00:59:36.500 did not have those explicit statements and so but now it does and those explicit statements 404 00:59:36.500 --> 00:59:43.260 say that you're not allowed out and that you don't you no longer they no longer have the 405 00:59:43.260 --> 00:59:52.860 authority of the type and character that they that they once did so it got us into that 406 00:59:52.860 --> 01:00:01.780 that mess and it resolved it in a way I think would be in complete contrast to the wishes 407 01:00:01.780 --> 01:00:09.940 of the majority of the original signers of that document and to the leaders of the states 408 01:00:09.940 --> 01:00:12.940 that agreed to it at the time. 409 01:00:12.940 --> 01:00:21.940 The Regulation states that a certain number of states approve the Constitution, then it's established. 410 01:00:21.940 --> 01:00:34.940 And every document, every commission, military commission of the Constitution of the United States is 200 and something something. 411 01:00:34.940 --> 01:00:50.940 In other words, if that goes down, you might go check it in, because that's the only organ that has stayed up there and made sense out of the United States. 412 01:00:50.940 --> 01:01:00.940 But it can happen. It's an institution. Any institution can fall down, because the right number of people get a whole wrong steering wheel or something. 413 01:01:00.940 --> 01:01:07.880 I mean there's, human institutions, they not only just change, evolve and grow, but they come and go. 414 01:01:07.880 --> 01:01:09.100 Jack? 415 01:01:09.100 --> 01:01:18.020 Yeah, Mark, I wanted to take a revisit with this thing, the tendency for governments to grow bigger and bigger. 416 01:01:18.020 --> 01:01:26.220 And I think that also applies to all public institutions, at whatever level and whenever they're possible. 417 01:01:26.220 --> 01:01:56.220 Well, that's true, I don't get that, but to a lesser extent, because public institutions are spending somebody else's money, tax money, or whatever, and private institutions aren't, at least those that haven't been co-opted and are being funded by public money, and there are those, too, because they have the balance sheet, they have to compare them, and it is true that some corporations get so huge that it's only 418 01:01:56.220 --> 01:02:06.220 All these two slides overweigh the bureaucratically, that they have the same problems, but nevertheless, even they have limits to what they're doing. 419 01:02:06.220 --> 01:02:12.220 It seems that public institutions don't have it, especially central government. 420 01:02:12.220 --> 01:02:19.220 And you look at the banking system, it was created by government to take care of government needs. 421 01:02:19.220 --> 01:02:46.220 Well, we've got a couple minutes, and so I hadn't planned on doing this, but I think it might be worthwhile to provide a solution to this problem of the growth of government, because... 422 01:02:46.220 --> 01:03:02.820 Well, I do have an answer, and so you want to keep this government, the size of the economy 423 01:03:02.820 --> 01:03:11.700 model in the background here to our thinking, and Ozzy, what does it say in the Constitution 424 01:03:11.700 --> 01:03:22.140 And regarding how we are represented in the House of Representatives, how many constituents 425 01:03:22.140 --> 01:03:23.140 is a congressman's position? 426 01:03:23.140 --> 01:03:24.140 Does each congressman have? 427 01:03:24.140 --> 01:03:37.860 I don't know a figure, but it's there again by the Constitution, it essentially lays down 428 01:03:37.860 --> 01:04:07.860 the rule, but I know they can, now they're, the big, the big, you know, fronts are changing, the districts are, they're, just like back in the gerrymandering times, and that they can do, but they're supposed to only do it up to a certain point, it's supposed to be a limiting factor, that's the thing about a constitution, it's the reigns of government, and as long as that's held in, you've got a chance, but once a big hero, 429 01:04:07.860 --> 01:04:16.860 The man on horseback doesn't hold up, because they're not doing what the Constitution says. 430 01:04:16.860 --> 01:04:23.860 They're making an excuse to do what they shouldn't do. 431 01:04:23.860 --> 01:04:32.860 I remember that we worked this out one day. There'd be 4,000 members of the House of Representatives if we adhered to the Constitution. 432 01:04:32.860 --> 01:04:35.860 If you think about it, that would be a good idea. 433 01:04:35.860 --> 01:04:45.860 Yeah, well that's the idea here, is that the Constitution says that each state must have at least one member in the House of Representatives. 434 01:04:45.860 --> 01:04:58.860 And it can have, each congressman would have a minimum of 30,000 citizens to represent. 435 01:04:58.860 --> 01:05:12.360 But it doesn't provide any maximum. It provides a minimum, 30,000. Every state gets at least one. But there's no maximum. 436 01:05:12.360 --> 01:05:28.460 In the early days of the Republic, from 1790 up until the late antebellum period, 437 01:05:28.460 --> 01:05:34.340 When they would do the census, and they would find out how many people were in each state, 438 01:05:34.340 --> 01:05:40.060 they would allocate congressmen on the basis of population changes. 439 01:05:40.060 --> 01:05:45.780 So if one state got more populace, they would get more representatives. 440 01:05:45.780 --> 01:05:52.500 If all states got more populace, they would increase the number of representatives. 441 01:05:52.500 --> 01:06:02.940 And the allocation would occur on the basis of what I call the Jefferson Plan, which is 442 01:06:02.940 --> 01:06:14.220 basically that they increase the number of representatives in proportion to the increase 443 01:06:14.220 --> 01:06:17.180 in population. 444 01:06:17.180 --> 01:06:21.540 And so we started out with a Congress of less than a hundred people and it quickly grew 445 01:06:21.540 --> 01:06:32.540 And that's representative government. That's what constitutionality means. As long as they make allowances for that. Isn't that correct? 446 01:06:32.540 --> 01:06:58.540 The population increases, they apportion representatives, and therefore they have representative government, but any anti-constitution, in other words, I write my congressmen or senators, and some of this stuff, they don't even know what laws are on the books now. 447 01:06:58.540 --> 01:07:15.540 I asked him to, like that, Al Sharpton went over and he was a citizen, and he was, quote, campaign down, quote. 448 01:07:15.540 --> 01:07:24.540 He goes over to Ghana and consults with the head of the Ghanaian government about the thing in, what's that, Liberia. 449 01:07:24.540 --> 01:07:49.540 In other words, he did it for a humanitarian reason, but that was unconstitutional because he had no representation, I got it from my council, there was no representation, the State Department had nothing to do with it, nevertheless he went over there, and when I got the congressman's answer back I knew darn well he didn't know that that was law. 450 01:07:49.540 --> 01:07:55.780 Okay, in this next period from 1860 to 1930, and these are very rough characterizations, 451 01:07:55.780 --> 01:08:03.660 obviously there's a lot of things going on, reapportionment of Congress is the real political 452 01:08:03.660 --> 01:08:09.700 battle in Washington D.C. All this stuff about legislation or treaties, almost meaningless 453 01:08:09.700 --> 01:08:15.260 to the political parties. Reapportionment of districts and things like that is the be-all 454 01:08:15.260 --> 01:08:20.220 All and End All of Politics. Most citizens don't even know what's going on, they don't 455 01:08:20.220 --> 01:08:25.100 care, they don't think it's important. Believe me, it's the number one thing. 456 01:08:25.100 --> 01:08:34.540 Well, in this period, you have Congress increasing with the population. In the Hamiltonian period, 457 01:08:34.540 --> 01:08:42.780 and with his sort of view of things, Congress continued to increase in size, but less than 458 01:08:42.780 --> 01:08:45.620 and the Rate of Population Growth. 459 01:08:45.620 --> 01:08:54.420 And then finally, with the 1920 census, there was a big squabble about it, so they didn't 460 01:08:54.420 --> 01:09:03.180 do a reapportionment, and in 1930, one of the conditions of the reapportionment of Congress 461 01:09:03.180 --> 01:09:12.540 was the compromise which left us with 435 congressmen, and it's stayed that way ever since. 462 01:09:12.540 --> 01:09:19.500 So that the nature of representative government has changed in the United States at the congressional 463 01:09:19.500 --> 01:09:32.620 level from 1790 when congressional districts had anywhere from 30 to 60,000 citizens. 464 01:09:32.620 --> 01:09:41.180 Today there are over 700,000 citizens in a district. 465 01:09:41.180 --> 01:09:49.080 So the whole nature of how congressmen get elected and how they represent their constituents 466 01:09:49.080 --> 01:09:51.460 has changed. 467 01:09:51.460 --> 01:10:02.180 You no longer have direct access, direct input into how your congressman represents you. 468 01:10:02.180 --> 01:10:04.360 They're often a different city. 469 01:10:04.360 --> 01:10:06.320 There's somebody you've never met very often. 470 01:10:06.320 --> 01:10:11.320 You might see them on TV, hear their name occasionally. 471 01:10:11.320 --> 01:10:18.340 It even influences the way campaigning is done, which today it's mostly done through 472 01:10:18.340 --> 01:10:27.160 the media, through television, through TV reporters, sound bites, those sorts of things. 473 01:10:27.160 --> 01:10:32.940 They still have meetings and town meetings and that kind of, that's all just staged. 474 01:10:32.940 --> 01:10:40.300 It's not really the process of elections and the process of campaigning anymore. 475 01:10:40.300 --> 01:10:50.420 So the idea that I've come up with, and I've done run statistical tests which support the 476 01:10:50.420 --> 01:10:59.660 inference that the fact that we have a much higher population per representative leads 477 01:10:59.660 --> 01:11:10.660 leads to more government spending in terms of real per-capita spending relative to the size of the economy. 478 01:11:10.660 --> 01:11:20.660 This lack of representation means higher levels and higher growth rates of government spending. 479 01:11:20.660 --> 01:11:23.660 And the same is true with the local area. 480 01:11:23.660 --> 01:11:28.660 I mean Auburn has grown in population from 22,000 to 50,000, 481 01:11:28.660 --> 01:11:35.100 I don't think they've increased the size of the city council, you know, and the state 482 01:11:35.100 --> 01:11:41.100 governments are the same way. They stopped increasing the size of their House of Representatives. 483 01:11:41.100 --> 01:11:46.100 That's the only way you're going to control the Congress, though. Do they think they're 484 01:11:46.100 --> 01:11:53.100 going to get elected every election? They couldn't give a tinker's damn about what 485 01:11:53.100 --> 01:11:55.100 the people think of them. 486 01:11:55.100 --> 01:12:01.620 That's right, you know, and I think that, you know, just imagine if instead of your 487 01:12:01.620 --> 01:12:08.820 congressman being in some far-off city, somebody you've never met, just think if your congressman, 488 01:12:08.820 --> 01:12:14.980 first of all, if we go back to this original ratio, the size of the House of Representatives 489 01:12:14.980 --> 01:12:21.460 would increase from its current level of 435 to several thousand members of the House of 490 01:12:21.460 --> 01:12:22.740 of Representatives. 491 01:12:22.740 --> 01:12:26.180 That would, if we brought it back to the 30,000 level, 492 01:12:26.180 --> 01:12:28.900 would mean that there'd be probably two congressmen 493 01:12:28.900 --> 01:12:30.280 living here in Auburn. 494 01:12:31.420 --> 01:12:35.940 You pay these scoundrels, though, for many of them. 495 01:12:35.940 --> 01:12:38.500 Originally, they weren't even paid. 496 01:12:38.500 --> 01:12:40.060 They didn't want to pay. 497 01:12:40.060 --> 01:12:41.180 Yeah, I mean, there's no. 498 01:12:41.180 --> 01:12:44.500 Now you gotta pay them, what is it now, 175,000? 499 01:12:44.500 --> 01:12:48.500 Well, no, see, you wouldn't have to, necessarily. 500 01:12:48.500 --> 01:12:56.500 Those are things that probably only developed because Congress has become such an elite group. 501 01:12:56.500 --> 01:13:04.500 If you had a Congress of 4,000 people, George might have been the congressman at one point and you might be the congressman in a few years. 502 01:13:04.500 --> 01:13:10.500 It wouldn't be a job that you would be a career type of a job, necessarily. 503 01:13:10.500 --> 01:13:14.500 It looked more like the Chinese National Assembly. 504 01:13:14.500 --> 01:13:20.180 something like that and you know this would be somebody this would be somebody 505 01:13:20.180 --> 01:13:24.500 that you could walk to their house and knock on their door or maybe drive to 506 01:13:24.500 --> 01:13:30.300 their house and knock on their door to let them know how you feel about the way 507 01:13:30.300 --> 01:13:36.900 they voted on a particular item so that it would provide a lot more diversity a 508 01:13:36.900 --> 01:13:41.260 lot more representation and think of the type of campaign that somebody would do 509 01:13:41.260 --> 01:13:47.060 to become a congressman. Running TV ads wouldn't be very effective because your 510 01:13:47.060 --> 01:13:53.420 TV ad would go over, overlap several congressional districts. The type of 511 01:13:53.420 --> 01:14:00.220 campaigning you would need to do would be door-to-door, direct mail, type of 512 01:14:00.220 --> 01:14:06.380 neighborhood, what do they call them, neighborhood teas or coffees to meet the 513 01:14:06.380 --> 01:14:13.620 candidate type of campaigning and so the type of campaigning, the type of 514 01:14:13.620 --> 01:14:21.860 representation, the description of the job itself would all change under this 515 01:14:21.860 --> 01:14:28.260 type of system where representation is more money than you are, there goes your 516 01:14:28.260 --> 01:14:40.260 Well, Ozzie, with 4,000 congressmen, if you buy one congressman, you know, what's the big deal? 517 01:14:40.260 --> 01:14:53.260 It's a lot easier to buy the votes of 225 congressmen than it would be 2,500 congressmen. 518 01:14:53.260 --> 01:14:56.260 25,000 congressmen who are no longer... 519 01:14:56.260 --> 01:14:57.260 You know what you're saying? 520 01:14:57.260 --> 01:15:00.260 No, you're defining a corrupt government. 521 01:15:00.260 --> 01:15:02.260 Well, but there's no... 522 01:15:02.260 --> 01:15:05.260 The nice thing is that all these congressmen, 523 01:15:05.260 --> 01:15:11.260 I don't think that they would be career congressmen, congresspeople, whatever. 524 01:15:11.260 --> 01:15:19.260 I think you would see more of the type of government that the founders originally thought of, 525 01:15:19.260 --> 01:15:36.260 which would be the citizen representative, and we would elect people of known intellect and integrity, and we could do that, people who we knew. 526 01:15:36.260 --> 01:15:45.820 and so that's just a taste of of this idea and it's it's something that is a 527 01:15:45.820 --> 01:15:49.460 little surprising it's it's it's but it's something that's built right back into 528 01:15:49.460 --> 01:15:54.140 our history you know that this is the way things once were this is another 529 01:15:54.140 --> 01:15:59.340 example however of a little thing in the Constitution that I think is a defect I 530 01:15:59.340 --> 01:16:10.220 I think we needed that explicit way out and I think we needed this, an explicit cap on 531 01:16:10.220 --> 01:16:15.220 the size of the congressional, you know, it could be no smaller than 30,000 but it can 532 01:16:15.220 --> 01:16:23.660 be no greater than say 60,000. If we had kept that cap working, I think, you know, you'd 533 01:16:23.660 --> 01:16:29.140 have a government, both of those things fixed. I think you'd have a government in the United 534 01:16:29.140 --> 01:16:37.820 States, which would be so good, in a sense, that nobody would want to get out. What we'd 535 01:16:37.820 --> 01:16:42.820 have to be worried about is, you know, other provinces and regions around the world trying 536 01:16:42.820 --> 01:16:48.900 to get into the United States. I don't think we'd have to worry at all about states getting 537 01:16:48.900 --> 01:16:53.980 out of the United States. I think things would be just too darn good for anybody to consider 538 01:16:53.980 --> 01:16:57.900 it. Maybe that's what the founding fathers were thinking in the first place, that things 539 01:16:57.900 --> 01:17:01.900 These are going to be so good in the United States that nobody in their right mind would want to leave.