This book is written by two scholars who would describe themselves as free market environmentalists. If you don't know what that is, you should probably read this book. In contrast to other tomes on such matters, it engages the topic through inherently fun examples, taken from the "Wild West" in US history.
In the first chapter, Anderson and Hill discuss various systems of property rights on the Wild West: tribal institutions, fur traders, miners in the Sierra Nevada, water rights of prior appropriation, and Cattlemen's associations.
The second chapter provides a general review of the concept of property rights and how they are designed. Anderson and Hill recognize from the start that many people use systems of property rights to benefit themselves at the expense of others. This "rent-seeking" often involves messing with the market, and harms society as a whole. In short, Anderson and Hill recognize (at least in principle) that property rights may not always be efficient in economic terms. They are fair minded, at least in principle, allowing that government, local communities, and/or entrepreneurs might each provide solutions to these problems in both theory and practice.
The next two chapters make this abstract argument concrete by looking at property rights in Indian country. Obviously, most Indian lands were taken by force or by the threat of force, an excellent example of rent-seeking by whites with tragic effects for Natives.
After this, the authors turn to a series of other property rights issues in the West, from fur traders and wagon trains to mining camps and Mormon irrigation. The core claim is that American economic successes reflect the ability of local communities to develop new institutions of property rights to solve the novel problems that they found. In contrast, when rent-seekers establish property rights that benefit them at the expense of others, bad things happen.
Given their own leanings, Anderson and Hill tend to see "good property rights leading to good outcomes" more than they see rent-seekers perverting markets and harming the environment. However, the misuse of both political and economic power is ubiquitous, and should have been acknowledged more in practice. They do recognize the bad treatment of Indians, but apparently don't find much bad behavior by whites against other whites.
The book makes some pretense of presenting an overall theory, but it really has only a framework that allows the authors to tell a bunch of interesting "just-so stories." They also do not given any attention to research design or case selection, nor do they provide a justification for telling these particular stories as opposed to others. They pose the book as providing a revisionist history, against the myth of violence on the Wild West. They're successful in telling an alternative story, but to do that, they left some things out - - most notably the railroads.
Though it's easy to read this book as part of the Right, there are elements of the argument that will provoke both sides of the political spectrum. On the one hand, the book often serves up a Pollyannish view of the glories of markets and private property that will annoy the Left. On the other hand, Anderson and Hill provide a very sympathetic view of Native American institutions, and are highly critical of how Indian land was forcefully taken and then mismanaged by whites - - issues that the Right would like to gloss over.
Those on the Right will probably like this book because of its emphasis on property rights and markets. Still, those on the Left could also read this book as a powerful indictment of corporate welfare, reflected historically in subsidized grazing and continuing to subsidized mining and oil exploration today, all of which has devastated the environment. That should give the Right pause.
In short, both sides of the debate over free markets and environmentalism could learn something from this book. But, people being the way they are, they probably won't.
