Money, Not Enough…
“The government, both state and federal, could at any time confiscate not only the whole field, but every ounce of gold the man had mined with so much labor and pain. While the three miners were at work they would be well guarded. Only when on their way back with their hard earned loads would they be waylaid or hijacked by a party of fake bandits acting under orders from someone who was paid by the people to protect the country from bandits. Things like that have happened even in the country to the north; why not here? It is the influence of the atmosphere of the continent.”
- From The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, by B. Traven (85)
Economics, the value of hard work, and the proper role of government are subjects that have been debated for centuries. These topics seem to rise to the forefront (as they naturally would) when times are not good…and in America in the 1930’s, things were not good at all. Putting the 1930’s focus on economics and the role of big government into perspective, B. Traven’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre – while a work of fiction – provides something of a textbook on free market theories and how government can get in the way. Traven’s observations contain pieces of early studies on capitalism and the free markets. Before discussing how the book embodies this thinking, it is first necessary to explore the work of early economist/philosophers. As I will point out, this embodiment extends to the three main characters in the novel, each of whom comes to represent the thoughts of an early economist/philosopher.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, following the Renaissance and the era of mercantilism, what became known as capitalism was documented and commented on by three noted economist/philosophers, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704), and Adam Smith (1723-1790). Each man took the theory of capitalism one step further than the man before him. Hobbes was about power, Locke about private property, and Smith expounded
- From The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, by B. Traven (85)
Economics, the value of hard work, and the proper role of government are subjects that have been debated for centuries. These topics seem to rise to the forefront (as they naturally would) when times are not good…and in America in the 1930’s, things were not good at all. Putting the 1930’s focus on economics and the role of big government into perspective, B. Traven’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre – while a work of fiction – provides something of a textbook on free market theories and how government can get in the way. Traven’s observations contain pieces of early studies on capitalism and the free markets. Before discussing how the book embodies this thinking, it is first necessary to explore the work of early economist/philosophers. As I will point out, this embodiment extends to the three main characters in the novel, each of whom comes to represent the thoughts of an early economist/philosopher.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, following the Renaissance and the era of mercantilism, what became known as capitalism was documented and commented on by three noted economist/philosophers, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), John Locke (1632-1704), and Adam Smith (1723-1790). Each man took the theory of capitalism one step further than the man before him. Hobbes was about power, Locke about private property, and Smith expounded
Bibliography: Shlaes, Amity. The Forgotten Man. HarperCollins Publishers. New York, NY, 2007 “These unhappy times call for the building of plans that rest upon the forgotten, the unorganized but the indispensible units of economic power, for plans like those of 1917 that built from the bottom up and not from the top down that put their faith once more in the forgotten man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.” - Gov. Franklin Roosevelt of New York, Radio Address on Albany, April 7, 1932 “As soon as A observes something which seems to him to be wrong, from which X is suffering, A talks it over with B, and A and B then propose to get a law passed to remedy the evil and help X. Their law always proposes to determine what C shall do for X…What I want to do is look up C. I want to show you what manner of man he is. I call him the Forgotten Man. Perhaps the appellation is not strictly correct. He is the man who never is thought of… He works, he votes, generally he prays – but he always pays…” - William Graham Sumner, Yale University, 1883