In ancient Rome there was a long standing tradition of grain being provided by the state. The city, having grown far beyond the ability of neighboring farms to support, very early in its history began importing grain a considerable distance, mostly from north Africa, mostly the areas now making up Libya and Tunisia, and sometimes from Egypt or even farther afield in hard times. As is so often the case, a combination of humanitarian impulses and the chance to win the favor of the mob made politicians decide that the importation of grain should not be a private venture, but a state function. And so, over time, Rome developed a grain dole, under which every citizen was entitled to a free share of grain daily from the public stores.

The results of this policy were many. First, and most obviously, the destruction, or near destruction, of the private merchants who once imported grain. Competing with grain costing nothing business was no longer possible. However, they were only the first victims. Another problem was the payment for grain. When prices were set too high by the state the number of farms proliferated, but the state ended up paying more for grain than it would cost in free trade. More often, the government tried to pay too little and grain flowed elsewhere, leaving a meager supply for the city, leading to shortages in lean times, which also led to riots in the city when supplies dwindled.

However, none of that matters right now. What we need to do is consider the mindset of those Romans, after centuries of free grain. They were simply incapable of seeing grain sales as a private venture. As so many of us imagine eliminating public schools would result in only the rich learning, they imagined making grain trade private would result in starvation. Even with the examples of dozens of other large cities privately supported, they could not imagine private trade in grain.

Worse, when problems made grain scarce, they would begin to complain of the crises, would push for the government to more adequately prepare. Maybe for more farms to be owned by the state to ensure supplies regardless of price. The one thing they would not consider was that paying for grain, allowing the price to be set by the market and to rise in shortages, would result in adequate grain being available. Instead, seeing the problems caused by the government dole, they asked for even more government to fix it.

And that is our situation today. Mostly in terms of health care reform recently, where we want to "fix" the problems caused by intervention with even more intervention, never considering a private solution. But also in public education, banking, and a host of other areas. We have been so long adjusted to government ubiquity, we no longer even imagine a private solution possible.

POSTSCRIPT

I wrote on this topic in regard to medicine in "Redefining Insurance... To Actually BE Insurance", "The Insurance Sham" and "My Health Care Plan", as well as, more radically, in "Medical Regulations" and "Medical Regulation II". I also wrote about education in "You Don't Drown in a Glass of Water - Vouchers Revisited", "Why Vouchers are not the Answer" and "Never Ascribe To Evil, A Discussion of Education", as well as banking ("The Limits of "Scientific" Management", "The Limits of Econometrics", "The Limits of Technocracy", "Technocrats", "Inflation and Uncertainty", "Bad Economics Part 7 ", "Bad Economics Part 8"), retirement ("Social Security is Not Insurance"), student loans ("The State Versus Universities", "When Help Hurts", "The Wrong Reform"), and even energy ("A Conservative Energy Policy? What's Next? Conservative Welfare?"). I spoke of this more generally in the posts "The Difficulty of Principle", "Don't Blame the Politicians", "What We Deserve", "Who Is To Blame?", "What is Wrong with Us", "The Single Greatest Weakness" and "The Presumption of Dishonesty". I also discussed the tendency to blame the free market for the failings of government in "How To Blame the Free Market", "Recipe For Disaster", "The Endless Cycle of Intervention", "The Cycle of Compassion" and "Greed Versus Evil". I would also recommend, in general, my series "Bad Economics", starting with the most recent "Bad Economics Part 14" and following the links to earlier installments.

POSTSCRIPT II

An interesting aspect of this is that the market features which allow the market to adjust to real crises, such as price rises, and the tools by which such fluctuations are leveled out and prevented, such as individual speculation, tend to be reviled by populists, who blame speculators for the fluctuations they actually serve to reduce, and shout about "price gouging" and thus delay the influx of necessary goods by short circuiting essential price signals. Just as the health care reformers are likely to destroy medicine to save it, those who complain about price gouging and speculation thus end up making worse the very problems they claim to detest. Then again, I have often thought populists are motivated more by envy than any concern for others, at least some of them give signs that is the case. ("Beware Populist Deception", "Fear of the "Big"", "Envy Kills", "Envy And Analogy")

Actually, that may make a good future post, the way that well meaning but economically illiterate reformers often produce the opposite results of what they set out to do. I discussed it somewhat in "Perverse Incentives", "When Help Hurts", "When Help Hurts II", "Subsidizing Irresponsibility and Poor Planning", "Consequences" and  "Utopianism and Disaster", as well as less directly in "Gun Control, The FDA and Regulating the Law Abiding", "Bad Economics Part 2", "Bad Economics Part 3" and "Bad Economics Part 5". However, I still think the topic deserves more examination, and may be revisiting it again soon.

POSTSCRIPT III

A few little clarifications of details about Rome and the grain dole.

First, I realize there were no cities of the same size as Rome at its height, though Alexandria and Antioch both were quite large at times, as were Athens, Corinth, Thebes, Syracuse and others. Still, there were cities quite large which did not practice the grain dole, despite a similar lack of local food sources.

Second, I realize that many large cities in the empire, and the late Republic, emulated Rome in all things, including developing their own grain dole. Partly because local governors, coming from Rome and thus thinking of the grain dole as natural, simply made things abroad similar to the way they were at home. And partly because adopting the practices of Rome was seen as a sign of high civilization. And so, as baths, theaters and aqueducts were signs of opulence and taste, so too was the dole. So, though I say there were a number of cities without a dole, at various times the number was much smaller thanks to this habit of copying Rome.

Finally, I realize during the imperial period many of the farms which supplied grain were imperial property and thus technically the price was zero. However, as the grain sent to Rome could have been sold elsewhere and the money used to purchase grain on the market, effectively the grain still had a price. In addition, like all government ventures, imperial farms were often less efficient than private ventures, and so produced less grain per acre. ("The Inevitability of Bureaucratic Management in Government Enterprises", "Bureaucracy Revisited") Not to mention that, as slavery became more common, first when the era of rapid conquest began, and later during the late imperial period where economic decline drove many of the poor into servitude, all the inefficiencies of slavery were experienced on Roman farms as well. (See the discussion of inefficiency and slavery in "Unfair Advantage and Foreign Trade", as well as "Symmetry and Asymmetry in Government".)

None of these change my argument. In fact, most of these clarifications don't even change the meaning of a single sentence. But I wanted to make clear that, while some of my statements may have seemed incorrect, I was aware of the facts, and did not make a mistake.