While reading The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier, I came across one of the earliest forms of stupidheadedness in the American government, concerning property:
On March 3, 1889, [President] Harrison announced the government would open the 1.9 million-acre tract of Indian Territory for settlement precisely at noon on April 22. Anyone could join the race for the land, but no one was supposed to jump the gun. With only seven weeks to prepare, land-hungry Americans quickly began to gather around the borders of the irregular rectangle of territory. Referred to as “Boomers,” by the appointed day more than 50,000 hopefuls were living in tent cities on all four sides of the territory.
The events that day at Fort Reno on the western border were typical. At 11:50 a.m., soldiers called for everyone to form a line. When the hands of the clock reached noon, the cannon of the fort boomed, and the soldiers signaled the settlers to start. With the crack of hundreds of whips, thousands of Boomers streamed into the territory in wagons, on horseback, and on foot. All told, from 50,000 to 60,000 settlers entered the territory that day. By nightfall, they had staked thousands of claims either on town lots or quarter section farm plots. Towns like Norman, Oklahoma City, Kingfisher, and Guthrie sprang into being almost overnight.
Besides the injustice of stealing property from one group (natives) and offering it for sale to another (whites), the entire process is an rich embarrassment of bureaucracy…though the history.com site whitewashes some of the incidents that took place.
Compare this with the complex process of property rent evaluation, ownership, and sale between parties that were mostly peaceful and non-zero-sum.
Unfortunately there isn’t a free electronic version of the book online so I can’t copy-paste any relevant text concerning that. Google Books has some free chapters but the text isn’t HTML. It’s worth a look at if you’re interested in how property rights can develop “naturally,” without state forces having its hand.
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For a real embarrassment, try reading the report of the Dawes Commission. Not that anyone did anything to correct the abuses, but it did all get recorded.
Similar to the Dawes Commission, the communal lands, or Spanish land grant lands, in New Mexico were parceled out. The bureaucracy and idiocy of how that occurred has followed us into the 21st C. The government’s response to problems seems to be: if you can’t solve a dispute, make it federal land; or, if all else fails, just fence it off!!
It’s like there’s a race to the bottom to see who can make the worst bureaucratic decision on earth.