As the tea from the shattered chests of the famed Boston “Tea Party” began to darken the waters of Boston Harbor that night in 1773, a protectionist virus infiltrated the moral bloodstream of the embryonic nation that became America. It was effective political protest but dangerous economics. After all, it amounted to the destruction of private property that denied to consumers access to valuable goods to which the attacking gang had not the slightest claim of ownership. FULL ARTICLE
Source link: http://archive.mises.org/6110/the-downside-of-the-tea-party/
The Downside of the “Tea Party”
Previous post: The Keynes of Marx; the brother Groucho that is
Next post: Vietnam’s Communist/Capitalist Boom
{ 20 comments }
Wasn’t the tea company a government monopoly? British East India Company or some such thing?
Mr. Potts notes,
All this was anticipated by the Congregationalist minister Mather Byles, who in that same Boston, in that very time, asked his congregation (referring to King George III of England), “Which is better, to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away, or by three thousand tyrants not a mile away?”
One might ask today if it is better to be ruled by 435 tyrants, or one hundred, or nine, or one, provided they all rule from D.C.
It seems to me that single issue politics is a difficult argument to maintain. The “Tea Party” was one of many possible points of protest to the problems that the colonists had with the British. Free or fair trade seems to have been an excuse for a demonstration. And in all such acts, real property often gets damaged.
One has to also understand that most free market arguments are based on classical economics, which, over the years, even in its neo-classical manifestation, has proven to be, in both theory and pratice, not tractable, though, possibly, in its ideal form, a desirable manifestation.
Banker: the article says the East India Company was a government monopoly.
Tom: Got to break some eggs to make an omelette, eh? Stalin said that, too. Now, he was killing people, and supposedly no one got hurt the night of the tea party. They sure did in the ensuing war, however.
Of course, here in this country, we hear that war was, if not a great idea, then at least “necessary.” The people who were forced out of the country (to Canada, the Bahamas, including Mather Byles) didn’t think so, but they aren’t heard from in this country. The people who were killed may not (ultimately) have thought so, either, but they aren’t heard from ANYWHERE.
rather like the opening of a town’s first Wal-Mart.
No, it would be like the opening of a town’s first Wal-Mart where no other store is allowed to charge the same prices that Wal-Mart does.
In that case, buring down Wal Mart would be a perfectly acceptable way to protest the tyrants created the situation, and the anti-capitalist businessmen at WalMart who went along with it.
David St. Hubbins: There are plenty of targets in the US today that qualify by your standards. How about we go torch a bunch of Postal Service trucks tonight? 39 cents an ounce, indeed!
Halliburton is inviting. Government-backed monopolists abound, and not just at the federal level by any means. A business-government-partnership shopping center that disposessed its land’s previous owners by eminent domain?
The Sons of Liberty were simply put, a mob. Nothing more, nothing less. Mobs back then act pretty much as mobs today. In Seattle a few years ago, the mob damaged and burned innocent merchants stores in the name of anarchy and anti-globalism. The Boston mobbed destroyed tea in the name of free trade. To expect rationality from a mob is simply, irrational.
“Which is better, to be ruled by one tyrant three thousand miles away, or by three thousand tyrants not a mile away?”
It is certainly true that at some point in the now very distant past (the exact point is disputable), the U.S. government became a worse tyrant than George could have hoped to be.
How about we go torch a bunch of Postal Service trucks tonight?
If it were an effective act of demonstration, why wouldn’t we?
A business-government-partnership shopping center that disposessed its land’s previous owners by eminent domain?
Sounds like a valid target for violence to me. Are you arguing otherwise?
1. “Sons of Liberty” is not what they “came to be known by later hagiographers,” but, rather, what they called themselves.
2. The British East Indies Co. was a government-owned entity which received a monopoly from the government. It was therefore an entirely legitimate target of revolutionary “violence.”
Roy W. Wright (and everyone else advocating vigilante-style destruction of property whose ownership doesn’t seem properly come-by): let’s look at the Postal Service trucks, as one. They are owned by an organization operating a monopoly protected by (legal) violence. Is that why you justify violating its property rights in the trucks?
Or do you dispute THEIR property rights themselves in the trucks, since they were purchased with tax proceeds? I do, but I still deny that others having no property rights in them at all may destroy them at will. Let’s say the Postal Service HAS no property rights in them. Might one say that they belong in some sense to the people who depend on them to receive their mail? Do you have the right to disrupt their mail service? How about the people who depend on the shopping mall for their supplies?
By the way, I own and occupy a house in Miami. Is there anyone on this blog who is displeased by how I acquired ownership of the house, or of the money I used to buy the house? Please let me know now what your beef might be, so I can at least start sleeping with a gun under my pillow (I still don’t).
There’s a difference between anarchy and chaos, and the difference is property rights.
Yeah that make sense, I always thought the tea party was a revolt against a distant monopoly, until now…
A much better way to have protested without promoting protectionism was to make their own tea and give it for practically free (or “predatory pricing”) They could just dressed up as Native Americans, set up small shops just in front of Boston Harbor, give out their tea to distributors before the east India company can, and just beat up any British agents that tried to stop them. They would have the energy to since they drank so much “American” tea.
Now THAT would be a Tea Party!
I can’t remember where I got this side of the story and I can’t swear to the facts but the way I heard it was this. To keep London the hub of the empire there were Acts of Parliament that all goods shipped within the empire had to pass through the London Docks. This made all goods highly expensive, especially tea in the colonies. So some people, Samuel Adams, etc., made a nice little earner running contraband tea on the direct routes and avoiding this tax. The Boston Tea Party was a result of the shipping acts being *repealed*. Now legitimate shippers could compete on price with the blackleg tea thus Sam and co were no longer able to make such fat profits. Hence they objected to the repeal of this act. In otherwords they were protesting a tax cut!
This is just like the War On Drugs, the DEA and the cartels would both suffer by a repeal of those laws hence become unlikely allies!
Mr. Potts:
By and large an interesting and useful piece.
I understand your sympathies concerning the “twelve-year embargo visited upon Iraq from 1991″, but I would say that your conclusion that the embargo “finally erupted in—that’s right—war in 2003″ is unjustified. The embargo itself didn’t damage the US, and didn’t prompt Saddam to do anything that provoked the US war. Rather, Iraq was simply weak and vulnerable, and we went to war for our own reasons.
Som, they couldn’t just “make their own tea” that easily. Tea wasn’t grown in America but it was in India. The British restricted importation from abroad, which is why there was smuggling.
TT: You’re quite right that the blockade of Iraq didn’t cause the war, but the blockade and the war came from the same source. Indeed one might argue that the idea of the war was supported because the blockade had not had the desired effect of toppling Saddam Hussein.
The blockade, after all, was conducted by the same party(ies) as the war was.
Let’s say the Postal Service HAS no property rights in them. Might one say that they belong in some sense to the people who depend on them to receive their mail?
Of course not. How would such a thought even cross your mind as a libertarian?
Do you have the right to disrupt their mail service?
I certainly do, if their mail service comes at my unwilling expense (which it does). Now, whether or not I exercise that right depends on how effective I think such an act would be.
Roy
Rather than attacking the mail trucks and putting other people out (including innocent parties) surely you’d be better off visiting your wrath and opposition directly and personally upon your enemies. That way evil doers get the results, them and them alone.
Tea party indeed! All the parties we have around here involve bouts of copious beer drinking. Tea! Really!
Sione
Or do you dispute THEIR property rights themselves in the trucks, since they were purchased with tax proceeds? I do, but I still deny that others having no property rights in them at all may destroy them at will. Let’s say the Postal Service HAS no property rights in them. Might one say that they belong in some sense to the people who depend on them to receive their mail? Do you have the right to disrupt their mail service? How about the people who depend on the shopping mall for their supplies?
Or do you dispute THEIR property rights themselves in the trucks, since they were purchased with tax proceeds? I do, but I still deny that others having no property rights in them at all may destroy them at will. Let’s say the Postal Service HAS no property rights in them. Might one say that they belong in some sense to the people who depend on them to receive their mail? Do you have the right to disrupt their mail service? How about the people who depend on the shopping mall for their supplies?
Or do you dispute THEIR property rights themselves in the trucks, since they were purchased with tax proceeds? I do, but I still deny that others having no property rights in them at all may destroy them at will. Let’s say the Postal Service HAS no property rights in them. Might one say that they belong in some sense to the people who depend on them to receive their mail? Do you have the right to disrupt their mail service? How about the people who depend on the shopping mall for their supplies?
Comments on this entry are closed.