Book review: The Not So Wild, Wild West

This isn't a fully fledged book review, really, but I did just read the book and I felt I should say something.

The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier, by Terry Anderson and Peter Hill, published by Stanford University Press 2004.

The authors map out the development of property rights in the American West, and make the argument that the West wasn't all that wild. In fact, settlers, miners and cattlemen worked out co-operative systems for safeguarding property rights and arranging co-operation on grazing rights and water rights to prevent the tragedy of the commons, and were succesful in doing so.

The core argument of the book is that property rights in the West didn't develop from top down, with the federal government imposing the rule of law on an anarchic West. Instead, property rights and arrangements for preventing both the tragedy of the commons and harmful races for property that would dissipate incomes. In fact, the government's interventions were more often harmful than the opposite.

Like so many libertarian-themed books, they cut some corners and make things appear a little more straightforward than they are. This doesn't take anything away from their general points, but it is a little disappointing that they occasionally far oversimplify complex historical processes.

I definitely recommend the book to anyone interested in the history of the American West, or in property rights and frontier economics in general. The authors make the point that learning from the institutional history of the West can help us understand the problems faced on today's frontiers and the frontiers of the future.

For this aspect of the book, they draw on the work of Hernando de Soto, whose seminal book The Mystery of Capital I also have to recommend. That's a topic for another time, though.

More on the "Wild" West at mises.org.