According to Rothbard, in the American West after the Homesteading Act, the 160 acre farms granted were not large enough for grazing in more arid regions. Apparently, a sort of land communism emerged until about the 1890s. Does anybody have any further information about this? Where can I go to learn more? Thanks in advance (I apologize if this is covered in one of the lectures here; I have not yet listened to many of them).
Oh, I would love to know this. I have an enviromental class upcoming next week, and according to the syllabus, we are to read Garret Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons and I would love to add some Austrian flavor to the class. I’ve already looked at Walter Block’s material, plus I’ve been citing Julian Simon’s book The Ultimate Resource
Okay, after having done a little bit of googling, I found that Rothbard himself wrote about it in For a New Liberty. I had only previously heard him mention it in the end of his lecture on the legacy of the Civil War but he addresses it here, starting on page 256. Following his footnotes leads to E. Louise Peffer’s The Closing of the Public Domain.
Pages 22-31 are directly relevant and available to read in the preview.
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