The book starts off slowly and seems a bit dry. Chief among them, the wild, wild west wasn't.

This only helps to prove it's many points however.

An economics treatise on the wild west it seems highly unusual. The Western Frontier offers up a case study in practical anarchism and Anderson and Hill have done an excellent job of documenting the achievements of institutional entrepreneurs and debunking the Hollywood caricature of the West as a wild, lawless place.įour and a half stars. Not only did a vibrant, peaceful, and cooperative social order develop absent formal government, but in almost all cases where the government attempted to impose order, such as with the Homestead Act, it disrupted the natural social order and left settlers worse off than if it had simply done nothing. The Not So Wild, Wild West demonstrates conclusively time and again that in areas of the Western Frontier that were settled before governments arrived property rights did evolve naturally with the help of institutional entrepreneurs who defined and protected such rights. It is thought that property rights must be imposed by an outside force and cannot evolve endogenously. The book concludes with a chapter that takes lessons from the American frontier and applies them to our modern 'frontiers'-the environment, developing countries, and space exploration.Ĭertainly among the political mainstream but even among certain groups of libertarians there is a belief that government is necessary to define and enforce property rights. This theory is brought to life in the colorful history of Indians, fur trappers, buffalo hunters, cattle drovers, homesteaders, and miners. Rules evolving at the local level will be more effective because local people have a greater stake in the outcome. The authors emphasize that ownership of resources evolves as those resources become more valuable or as establishing property rights becomes less costly. Rather than describing the frontier as a place where heroes met villains, this book argues that everyday people helped carve out legal institutions that tamed the West.

In contrast, The Not So Wild, Wild West casts America's frontier history in a new framework that emphasizes the creation of institutions, both formal and informal, that facilitated cooperation rather than conflict. Mention of the American West usually evokes images of rough and tumble cowboys, ranchers, and outlaws.

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