The lecture I give on the first day of class can either be viewed in the video below or read in the transcript below.
(A) TWO ATHENIAN TALES
(A.1) A horrid day to you, a good day to him
You are a Greek man of modest wealth living in Athens, 725 BC. You just had a good day, as far as you are concerned, but a day that would seem horrid to a 2014 American. On this day you threw a spear at your own brother to prevent him from leaving his ship and returning home. You love your brother, but doing your duty to your fellow Athenians is more important.
About this time last year it was becoming clear that the region was not producing enough food to feed everyone. Athens produced more food every year, but population grew faster. Some people had to leave. So for the fifth year in a row 250 citizens would depart in search of new lands to establish colonies. Your brother didn't want to go. He was just becoming a man and looked forward to marrying and entering political life. Athens went through the routine process of determining who would leave. They issued a call for volunteers and, as expected, those who answered the call were mostly young, adventurous men of little wealth, hoping to find a more promising future elsewhere. There was a problem though. None of these men were aristocrats, and there had to be at least one noble leading the group. The thought of an Athenian colony not led by a nobleman seemed absurd.
The noblemen of Athens were asked to volunteer, but no one did, so the city set about deciding as a group, in its trademark democratic way, which nobleman would be forced to leave. They voted, and they voted to send your brother.
Being chosen was, in many ways, an honor. Athens wanted to be represented well, by a man of Greek strength and Greek values. A man with the strength and audacity of Heracles, a man who earned as much respect as Odysseus. They chose your brother because he was an Athenian to the bone, because he was young, and because he had not yet started a family.
I should add that your brother was also your best friend, and throughout the last year you have missed him deeply.
But when your brother left with his men he was forbidden to return. Again, he left because there was not enough food, and it was an insult to return and suggest that the little food that existed should be shared with him. Today he shamed himself by attempting to return home. He tried to explain from the boat that no suitable colony could be established. They either encountered hostile natives or infertile soils. Three-quarters of his men had already died of malnutrition, and you believed him, for he appeared to be a skeleton.
Still, it was your duty to ensure no colonist returned, and that is why you threw your spear; that is why you and your fellow citizens forced the colonists to turn their ship around and leave for the second time. From now on, if their boat appeared over the horizon, you promised him you would take a ship, hunt him down, and kill him yourself—this was not a threat, but a promise.
A difficult life requires difficult choices, like the one you made today. But you felt no guilt. It was not your fault Athens grew faster than its food supply. Something had to be done, and sending men away to establish colonies was, in your opinion, the best strategy. Moreover, you know you made the right choice, for as you walk home your fellow citizens congratulate you for your service. There is little time to stop for honors though, for your wife is giving birth.
(A.2) A horrid day to you, a good day to her
Now you are the wife giving birth, and you are filled with dread. Painful memories of the past two births haunt you. You already had one daughter, and your family simply couldn't have another. Girls were expensive, and with a limited food supply a family could only build wealth and pass down it through the generations if the family size was small and included a healthy male. When your first daughter was born you had to present it to your husband. On that day he looked down on that sweet little girl, and thought. It was his decision of whether the girl infant would be accepted into the family or left to die by exposure. He thought hard, and long. Although he decided to keep it, he made it clear that he would allow no more daughters. The next female infant would be left for the wild animals and nature to take.
Indeed, in ancient Athens only one out of 100 families reared more than one daughter, and in some regions of Greece there were five sons for every daughter.
The second child was a son, which at first brought relief, until you looked at it closely. He didn't looked right. His face was smashed flat, and one of his arms seemed slightly shorter than the other, but you were not sure. Although you didn't mention any of this you knew your husband saw the same thing when the child was presented to him. After looking at the child—his first infant son—he shook his head no, and the boy was taken, never to be seen again.
As you are giving birth you curse the soils and you curse the crowded city. If only there were more food, or less people, you could think of giving birth as a joyful occasion. Damn that dirt, damn these people.
Goddess Athena was kind that day, for you gave birth to a healthy son. When your husband rushed into the house, exhausted from his work that day, exhausted from his run, he smiled upon seeing the boy and nodded in the affirmative. You would keep this child.
(A.3) The Athenian problem
There was no political problem in Athens causing such suffering. No civil wars, no political instability, no wars with neighbors. The problem was agricultural. Surely, one would think that if Athens had the agricultural technology of today there would be no food shortage, and indeed, Greece today is a democracy going through a terrible economic recession, but no one is starving. Athens could only fertilize their fields with manure whereas we have factories that pull nitrogen out of the atmosphere and convert it into nitrogen fertilizer. A pest infestation could destroy an entire crop in ancient Athens, while we have synthetic pesticides that can deter almost any pest without threatening the safety of the food supply. Ancient Athens harvested their grain by hand; we have combines.
Our advanced agricultural technologies allow us to easily feed the world, if the whole world had stable political democracies like Athens. Sadly, that is not the case.
(B) A MODERN TRAGEDY
Below is a satellite picture of two countries taken at night. Look closely. Can you tell what these two countries are?
Figure 1—Satellite photo of two countries at night
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When psychologists set about measuring the impact of nature versus nurture they usually study identical twins. If identical twins raised in different households bear little resemblance to one another, that is an indication that the environment is more important than genetics. Likewise, we can study the effect of economic systems by taking a homogeneous region, splitting it in half, and installing one economic system in one half and a different system in the other.
This picture shows the results of one of the largest experiments ever conducted. A single nation with a similar climate and culture in both the southern and northern part of the country were split in half after the Korean War. The northern half became a communist state ruled by an autocrat. The southern half became a capitalistic democracy. Both countries have access to the same store of agricultural knowledge, the same agricultural technologies, the same countries ready to befriend them and help them develop their agricultural sector.
Yet, as you can see from the picture, the capitalistic half is thriving, its brightly illuminated cities a symbol of its vibrant economic activity and wealth. The northern half seems basically dead, and indeed, death is something all too familiar in North Korea.
Quotation 1—Historian Richard Pipes on the failed North Korean state
The failures of Communist economic policy had the most tragic consequences in agriculture, the basis of the economy of nearly all countries subjected to Communist rule. The confiscation of private property in land and the collectivization that ensued disrupted traditional rural routines, causing famines of unprecedented dimensions. This happened in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Ethiopia, and North Korea; in each country millions died from man-made starvation. In Communist North Korea as late as the 1990s, a large proportion of children suffered from physical disabilities caused by malnutrition; in the second half of the 1990s, up to 2 million people are estimated to have died of starvation there. Its infant mortality rate is 88 per 1,000 live births, compared to South Korea’s 8, and the life expectancy for males 48.9 years, compared to South Korea’s 70.4. The GDP per capita in the north is $900; in the south, $13,700.
—Pipes, Richard. 2001. Communism: A History. Modern Library.
The world would love to offer North Korea humanitarian aid and to help it develop its agricultural sector to produce food efficiently. The scientific knowledge, the technological innovation, it is waiting for North Korea to take, and for free.
We all know why North Korea won't accept our charity. Because to farm as Americans farm requires American freedom: it requires private property, it requires markets, free-enterprise, and free trade. Its citizens are of little concern to North Korean leaders though. They only care about power. Fearful it will lose its iron grip on its people, it would rather send its people into a famine every ten years than risk losing political power.
North Korea is the opposite of ancient Athens. If the political situation was better they could easily grow enough food. North Korea rejects everything American, because one way it maintains power is by depicting America as an aggressive enemy who is anxious to invade. Well, it doesn't reject everything American. It accepts Dennis Rodman. It also allows its people to read and watch Gone With the Wind, because it hopes its citizens, during times of hunger, will be inspired by these famous lines of Scarlett O'Hara.
Video 1—Inspiration for Starving Koreans? (From 1939 film version of Gone With The Wind)
But think ... why is Scarlett O'Hara hungry. Is it because the soils of her estate are infertile? No. Is it because of a recent drought? No. Is it because the South was overpopulated? No. Why, then? Because of a political problem: the Civil War. If North Koreans identify with this scene I suspect it is not just their experience with hunger, but a government hell-bent on the destruction of others to maintain the power of a few.
(C) I, AMERICAN
We Americans have it made. We have a stable democracy like ancient Athens and access to the same agricultural technologies available to—though denied by—North Korea. We Americans are more likely to be obese than hungry. Food is not problem. You will spend much of your life trying to diet!
What is it about a society that requires there to be both democratic freedoms and knowledge to produce an abundant food supply? To answer that, consider this. Think of all the things that you will consume in a single day. All the foods, clothes, gasoline, automobiles, music, tv shows ... everything. Now consider all of those things that you produced yourself. Chances are, there was almost no overlap. Try and imagine how long it would take you to produce yourself all the things you consume in a day. A lifetime is not enough.
No matter how much one person knows about everything, including agriculture, place a person alone on a deserted island and they will be poor. Little would change in the story of Robinson Crusoe if the author made him the smartest man in the world. One person alone will always be a poor person.
Yet compare that one brilliant Robinson Crusoe to ordinary people, like us, who are able to work together and trade with one another. You will spend most of your life producing things for other people. If you grow food, other people will eat most of it, not you. You produce these things for other people to earn money, and you then take that money and buy things made by other people. So virtually everything you consume is acquired by trade. The ability to freely trade with others is what makes us so wealthy and Robinson Crusoe, however smart or hard working he may be, poor.
Understanding how to feed a large population does require plant science, and it does require animal science. It requires sophisticated tractors, fertilizers made in factories, and new genetic varieties of crops and animals. But it also requires an economic and political system that allows and even encourages voluntary trade between people, and most of the times these trades are between strangers. And that is what economics is about: trade. It is about how a social system allows you to consume goods produced by strangers in far greater quantities than you could ever produce yourself.
Economics, ultimately, is about a free, harmonious society. Economics teaches us that life is not a zero-sum game, where the only way for me to gain in wealth is to take the wealth of others. No, by living in a free society with private property and markets we can all grow wealthier at the same time. Haven't we been doing this, since the time of the ancient Greeks?
Yes, we have, and to continue to do so requires you to understand these concepts we call free-trade, markets, supply and demand and the like. Given that this is what makes us different than North Korea, I cannot think of a more important subject to study.
