The Mushroom Wars; R. Coffman

Not so long ago mushroom picking was a somewhat quaint hobby of gentle folk who wandered the forests, enjoying an outing and picking a few mushrooms along the way. No more. These days the woods are full of aggressive pickers with mechanical trenchers. They dig up a mushroom field as fast as they can, then roar offto the next field in high-powered, four-wheel drive pickups. The Wall Street Journal (May 11, 1993) reports that some pickers have made as much as $1,000 a day and that experts estimate about $50 million worth of mush rooms are coming out of the woods every year. But problems are developing. Pickers say their incomes are falling because of the fierce competition. Some mushroom sites have been so dug up and trampled down they may never be productive again, and the violence is heating up. Some pickers are staking out claims, and driving rivals off with gunfire. Forest wardens now wear flak jackets in the woods. Pickers have been robbed at gunpoint.

It should not be too surprising that all this sounds like the Wild West revisited. Many of the storied conflicts of the Old West had Dr. Coffman is Associate Professor ofEconom ics at the University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho. their source in the same problem which lies behind the mushroom wars. The problem is property rights. The mushroom fields of the Northwest are defined as common property, open to all comers. When valuable re sources are free for the taking, takers will rush in. When valuable resources become private property through the "rule of cap ture," people willtry to capture them as fast as possible. When a person has no rights to the property or its future resources, then there will be no conservation. How the West Was Owned The grazing lands of the West were orig inally common property. They were over stocked and overgrazed until the invention of barbed wire allowed the establishment of private property rights. The buffalo were hunted nearly to extinction because they too were common property. In early gold rushes the mining frontier outran the legal estab lishment, and claims were first established and protected by arms. Miners quickly rec ognized they were diverting too much time from the productive activity of gold mining into wasteful stealing of property and de fending of property. They speedily orga nized into communities which defined pri vate property rights, and stood ready to safeguard those rights. This allowed them to get on with the business of gold mining.

The mushroom grounds of the Northwest are found mainly on federal land. The gov ernment administers these lands as common property, just as public grazing land was 382 administered as common property a hun dred years ago. This caused no problems so long as there was little market demand for wild mushrooms. The small tribe of recre ational pickers could pick to their heart's content without getting in one another's way, and without making a dent in the mushroom population. But now there is a big gourmet demand for wild mushrooms, not just in the United States, but in Europe and Japan as well. Prices have skyrocketed, and the mushroom rush is on. Once mushrooms became a valuable re source, the familiar flaws of common prop erty ownership came to the fore. Since the mushrooms were free for the taking, hordes of pickers rushed into the woods. If two pickers happened onto the same mushroom site, neither had a legal right to exclude the other. If they were peaceful folk they would compete through fast picking. Those who discovered mechanical trenchers could outpick those who worked by hand. Soon everyone invested in trenchers. Competi tion speeded up. Sites were quickly ex ploited once discovered. The picker who could get to the next site first had an advantage, hence the appearance on the scene of powerful, four-wheel-drive vehi cles.

Of course, not all competition was peace ful. When competition takes place out of sight of the law there are always those willing to use violence to get an edge. Thus some mushroom claims are asserted through gunfire, just as were gold mining claims in the last century. In high demand situations common prop erty ownership wastes and degrades re sources. There are too many mushroom pickers, using up too much time and effort to harvest the crop. The pickers have put too much investment into mechanical harvest383 ers and fast trucks. Pickers harvest too fast, too completely, and too roughly, perhaps destroying mushroom sites in their haste. None of this would happen if the mush room grounds were private property. A profit-seeking private property owner would hold his costs down by picking systemically with smaller crews. There would be no need to rush from site to site, and thus no need for expensive transportation. Picking might well be done by hand, rather than with mechanical trenchers. Finally, the owner would want to leave mushroom sites in good condition so he could profit from harvesting them again and again in the future.

Unfortunately, it does not seem likely that the mushroom grounds will be converted to private property in the near future. Gold miners solved their common property prob lem by forming communities and establish ing laws. But mushroom pickers are a foot loose bunch who wander all over the West. They are not going to form communities. The open range was fenced in, creating private property. But the federal govern ment is not going to allow privatization and fencing of mushroom grounds. The government may try to regulate some aspects of mushroom harvesting to suppress undesirable behavior. A crackdown on gun play seems likely. Rich mushroom grounds might be allocated through a permit system to cut down on confrontations and overhar vesting. Perhaps a ban on mechanical tren chers will be proposed. But most of these reforms will founder on enforcement diffi culties. Infrequent patrols by forest bureau crats are a poor substitute for the constant attention of a profit-seeking private owner.

Look for problems to continue in the mushroom grounds of the Northwest as long as the woods remain common property. 0 THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY Richard Cobden's Triumphant Crusade for Free Trade and Peace by Jim Powell T he nineteenth century was the most peaceful period in modern history. There weren't any general wars between the fall of Napoleon in 1815 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914. This extraordinary peace followed centuries of endless wars and preceded the colossal carnage of the twentieth century. Peace prevailed, in large part, because nonintervention became the hallmark of foreign policy. Nations seldom tried to bully one another, and economic policy was a major reason why. There was unprece dented freedom of movement for people, goods, and c.apital.By reducing intervention in economic affairs, governments reduced the risks that economic disputes would es calate into political disputes. There wasn't much economic incentive for military con quest, because people on one side of a border could tap resources about as easily as people on the other side of a border. Trade expanded, strengthening the stake that na tions had in the continued prosperity of one another as customers and suppliers. While free trade was never a guarantee of peace, it Mr. Powell is editor of Laissez-Faire Books and Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute. He has writtenforThe New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Barron's, American Heritage, and more than three dozen other publications.