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Julian Sanchez | December 16, 2005

It's the time of year when Ronald Bailey contemplates the source of all our earthly blessings, that invisible force that binds us all together—the rule of law.

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|12.16.05 @ 12:33PM|#

might that invisible force bind a link to the article somewhere?

|12.16.05 @ 12:34PM|#

Wow, that was a breezy read. Felt like I didn't read anything at all.

:|

http://www.reason.com/rb/rb121605.shtml

|12.16.05 @ 12:37PM|#

I notice that there was no ranking for Somalia...

Warren|12.16.05 @ 12:37PM|#

Pointing out that there is wealth that the GDP doesn't capture, is all well and good, but trying to put a dollar figure on such intangibles is the sort of fiscal fiction clap-trap you hear out of the Worl Ba... oh wait.

|12.16.05 @ 12:37PM|#

"It's the time of year when Ronald Bailey contemplates the source of all our earthly blessings, that invisible force that binds us all together�the rule of law."

Interesting sentiment, but don't these kinds of posts usually introduce an article of sime kind?

|12.16.05 @ 2:53PM|#

Most of us won't be buying a World Bank rule-of-law index.
There IS such a thing as order that emerges for free from complexity. It's cousin is the Invisible Hand. But order and prosperity would emerge much more effectively without any laws. Furthermore, looking at the complexity of the world's societies, we should not be suprised that some societies are more prosperous than others, and that there is a wide variation.

kgsam|12.16.05 @ 3:32PM|#

I have suspicions aboout those who tout rule of law. What that might to mean is the government plays by the rules it imposes, thereby limiting the damage to the functioning of the market that is too often a product of political government.
In other words, limited (political) government is better than unlimited government. But limited government is not the opposite of unlimited government.

kgsam|12.16.05 @ 3:52PM|#

My suspicions have to do with the assumption of said touters that some form of political government is absolutely and perpetually necessary.

|12.16.05 @ 6:26PM|#

Sorry to threadjack but I noticed this post by Ronald Bailey on a thread from the other day, and I wanted to ask about it on a newer thread:

"Fabricating results is the worst scientific crime that a researcher can commit. It's the moral equivalent of capital murder."

Isn't that slightly hyperbolic, Mr. Bailey?

|12.16.05 @ 6:46PM|#

Andy-
Depends on the situation. Faked scientific results certainly could lead to consequences as grievous as murder. This could be as direct as supporting the use of an ineffective medicine, or something less direct, such as banning the spraying of DDT on interior house walls in malarial countries for quasi-scientific reasons. The latter has caused a lot more deaths than Vioxx ever did.

|12.17.05 @ 12:21AM|#

I guess I'm not as cynical as some of the other posters I've just read. Maybe I read it differently. Contrasting Nigeria and Switzerland, to use the extreme examples, we find in the first country very widespread fraud, violence, robbery, and contempt for the owners of private property. This last is based on the theory, largely applicable in Nigeria, unfortunately, that "behind every fortune lies a crime." And therefore, it's no crime to thieve.

In the latter we see general confidence that property is rightly assigned, that people have what they have earned and no more, and therefore less fraud, violence, robbery, and rebellion. The Swiss have confidence in their courts and laws and believe that if they work hard they will prosper. This is an "intangible" that clearly is to their benefit. Trying to assign an economic value to that belief is not an illogical enterprise, though methodology will necessarily be subjective.

Why are things the way they are in Nigeria? Nigeria is a failed state in a way that the US Government doesn't recognize. It has considerable temporal authority and can do whatever it wants, which is the gold standard of states according to the thugs who run this planet, but it has no moral authority. The citizens believe that anyone who has anything valuable, from fancy cars to oil leases, has gotten it through criminal connections with the state. And they're probably not far off. Accordingly, they obey the state when they must and undermine it when they can. Mao's dictum that power grows out of the barrel of a gun is a half-truth. Even the Mob has to have rules or else the shopkeepers will burn their own businesses down out of spite.

|12.17.05 @ 2:02PM|#

Variation on an old joke: Why is there so little crime in Switzerland? Because it's against the law.

I haven't read the cited study, but I can't help but wonder what "law abiding" means, let alone "effective government." (I say that having lived in prosperous Italy for several years.)

On the other hand, I have no doubt that a functioning legal system the majority of the population both trusts and, where important (taxes? speed limits?), complies is a necessary condition of an affluent society. Whether there is a causal relationship between the extent of such trust and compliance and the extent of that affluence, let alone whether it makes sense to calculate a per capita effect, is another matter.

I also wonder about the economic benefits of education, per se. While I have no doubt that the undeveloped nations would benefit from a better educated society, there must be some point where the marginal return on an additional year of education actually turns negative. Moreover, given the state of both secondary and higher education in the U.S., it may be that the educational benefit of college for the average student merely makes up for the deplorable failure of our high schools at the cost of four years lost from the productive economy.

Finally, if "the rule of law explains 57 percent of countries' intangible capital while schooling accounts for 36 percent," does it follow that one is better off ignorant in Canada than well educated in Mexico?