Building Regulation, Market Alternatives, and Allodial Policy [Hardcover]

John M. Cobin Ph.D (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1997

Building safety and quality regulation is developing into an important concern of public policy. For over 200 years, government has had a growing role in this process. This text questions whether government is the best or only provider of such grading or certification services. Building on theoretical work in several key areas, it discusses market alternatives, and includes new evidence about building regulation and a revitalization of some presently obscure aspects of legal philosophy. The matter of cost in public decisions is also considered on an abstract level in conjunction with knowledge and public choice problems.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Dr. John Cobin is Professor of Economics and Public Policy at Universidad Finis Terrae in Santiago, Chile. He also teaches at Universidad Adolfo Ibañez and Universidad Marítima de Chile, business schools in Viña del Mar, Chile. He is active in public policy research and writing, including working with Centro de Estudios Publicos and Instituto de Libertad y Desarrollo in Santiago, Chile. Dr. Cobin received his ARE from Reformed Bible College, Grand Rapids, Michigan (1984), his BA in Business Economics from University of California, Santa Barbara (1987), his MA in Economics from George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia (1995), and his PHD in Public Policy also from George Mason University (1996). In addition to his teaching activities, Dr. Cobin has been a successful entrepreneur and consultant, having started and operated three small businesses for several years. He and his wife Joan have been married since 1984 and are home schooling parents of six children. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 249 pages
• Publisher: Avebury (March 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1859725872
• ISBN-13: 978-1859725870
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,169,069 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Foreword by Dr. Walter E. Williams, October 14, 1999

By 

Walter E. Williams (Fairfax, Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Building Regulation, Market Alternatives, and Allodial Policy (Hardcover)

In contemporary society, people increasingly rely on governmentto provide many goods and services. Those who champion governmentallocation of resources fail to consider both the effectiveness of government allocation and the moral questions involved. In the last century, resistance to government intervention, from paper money to economics regulation, was far more pervasive and effective than it is today. Indeed, today's Americans only have a faint understanding of the Constitution and its envisioned restraints on government activity. The Constitution and its philosophical underpinning are rarely taught and understood by most Americans. That is a remarkable change from the time of our nation's founding when a large percentage of Americans were conversant with the ideas of Locke, Cato, Paine and the Federalist Papers.

The Declaration of Independence, one of America's most important political documents, contains statements that are today greeted with hostility, or at best, viewed as extremist. The motif of America's inauguration has become too radical to discuss without extreme qualification, and those who want to use it to assail the present political process are labeled 'radicals.' Of course, the liberty-loving American founders also carried this sobriquet. Another characteristic of the modern age is that Americans have become carelessly oblivious to the historical struggle for the vast liberties they enjoy but the preservation of which they now seem to disregard.

Dr. Cobin's book is part of the growing literature of case studies legal-philosophical treatises that provide economic analyses of public policy. While many other studies about regulation have been produced, Dr. Cobin has provided a major contribution to local regulatory issues. Building regulation and the modern system of private property rights are areas which are taken for granted by most people. However, this book reveals that there are more than trivial policy defects in our system of private property rights. Dr. Cobin has established that there is a real need to re-examine how private property rights are regulated. In the same way that public choice theory has exploded the notion of altruistic bureaucrats and politicians, who serve the interest of the public to the disregard their private interests, Dr. Cobin's book unmasks local building regulations whose ostensible purposes are to serve the public interest.

The results of Dr. Cobin's work lead us into a new dimension of public policy deliberation, i.e., whether government regulations produce more or less safety than that provided through the market 'regulation.' If government regulations reduce the safety and quality of goods or services, then it is in the public interest to revise or eliminate such regulation. Dr. Cobin has also done a commendable job of demonstrating that market provision can produce efficient and effective regulation, even for informational services that are assumed to be public goods. After demonstrating the failings of government regulation and provision of information about quality, Dr. Cobin shows us that markets can do in building and safety regulations what it has done the rare coin and gemstone industries.

Dr. Cobin's work goes even further. In addition to suggesting an adequate policy alternative for a failing system of building regulation, he also resurrects an alternate legal philosophy of real property. This system, known as 'allodialism,' is not a novel concept but has deep roots in Western civilization. However, it has been obfuscated over the years in favor of feudalism. It may surprise many readers that the American system of real property, not to mention the rest of the world's is essentially feudalistic. This fact should be repugnant in America where the Founding Fathers sought to abrogate all fetters of tyranny and oppression. An allodial real property system would make private property rights absolute and not subject to any form of coercive taxation or regulation. Subsequently, allodialism would serve to secure rights to property as guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the Declaration of Independence.

Hopefully, this study will provide the impetus for scholarship, in both case studies of local regulation and renewed discussion and analysis of allodial property rights. Not only can this book be added to the annals of regulatory studies which support market over government provision, but its philosophical basis can be used in basic disciplines, including law, economics, philosophy, political science and history. Dr. Cobin has made an important contribution to an important public policy area in a novel and frequently overlooked way.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A compelling example of government failure and theory why., August 28, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Building Regulation, Market Alternatives, and Allodial Policy (Hardcover)

This book provides evidence that the state has failed to provide building safety regulation in the public interest. Useful market alternatives are suggested to replace government regulation. A must read for anyone studying urban regulation or interested in policy applications from free market economics.