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  • Prof. Matt Mitchell: Ever heard of the dinosaur wars? No the term doesn't refer to T. Rex's duking

  • it out with stegosaurus'. Instead it refers to a way a couple of scientists became downright

  • nasty in their pursuit of fame, fortune and dinosaur bones. Meet Othneil Marsh and Edward

  • Cope. These two 19th Century Paleontologist were some of the most successful and esteemed

  • dinosaur hunters of their day. They wowed the public with their discoveries and attracted

  • a lot of research money in the process. In the early days, their competition was beneficial

  • to science. Each drove the other to work hard and each was quick to point out if the other

  • had made a mistake. Over time, the feelings between them grew less and less friendly.

  • By 1890 the competition had literally become destructive. Their teams began throwing stones

  • at one another when digging in the same territory. Both sides allegedly destroyed important sites

  • with dynamite just to keep them out of the reach of the other. Burying or obliterating

  • a still unknown number of priceless specimens in the process. This rivalry which at once

  • pushed these men to advance science, now grown them to undermine it. Here's where their story

  • can teach us an economics lesson. Under what circumstances does competition of vital force

  • for innovation and progress actually become destructive? The answer is, the competition

  • becomes destructive when people start using fraud or force to out-compete their rivals.

  • By literally destroying the competition's work, an economist would say that each of

  • these men was attempting to artificially contrive exclusivity. In other words, they were trying

  • to get an unfair advantage. In today's economy big businesses rarely dynamite

  • one another but they don't have to because they can use force provided by the government

  • instead. Economists refer to the profits gain from exclusivity as rents. The attempt to

  • use government power to get exclusive benefits has been dubbed rent seeking. Rent seeking

  • is probably the most important economic term that most people have never heard of. It's

  • everywhere in our economy today. Whenever big corporations and other special interests

  • ask a government for special favors, they're rent seeking. They do this because government

  • can offer them a number of special privileges. Some firms like Goldman Sachs, City Group

  • and GM have obtained the privilege of a federal bail out. Others like major agribusinesses

  • are privileged with federal farm subsidies. Still others like major Hollywood production

  • companies are privileged through favorable state and local tax laws.

  • There have now been studies of rent seeking in the economics of special privilege. These

  • studies find that whatever it's guise rent seeking is an enormously destructive force.

  • It wastes resources, it slows the entrepreneurial process and it locks in inefficient technologies.

  • Beyond this though, it's fundamentally unfair. It allows some to succeed based not on their

  • ability to please customers, but on their ability to work the political system. Like

  • the dinosaur wars, rent seeking is an ugly corruption of fair competition and an impediment

  • to progress. Click here to learn more about the destructive economic consequences of rent

  • seeking and government favoritism.

Prof. Matt Mitchell: Ever heard of the dinosaur wars? No the term doesn't refer to T. Rex's duking

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恐龍大戰:當競爭絕跡的時候|自由學堂 (Dinosaur Wars: When Competition Goes Extinct | Learn Liberty)

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