I was reading the amazing Christmas Double Edition of the Economist, and they mention that bathing and cleanliness was not something highly valued in the days when water was (somewhat rightly) seen as a source of disease and ailments, and that aristocrats of those days simply wore linen to absorb sweat, and the peasants never showed much hygiene at all. Most people would at most wash their face and hands on rare occasions, and would bathe in water even more rarely.
But the article showed something that may pose a serious challenge to anti-statists and libertarians, and that is - it was governments of various nations that took initiative in encouraging batheing. I would have assumed that such habits would have arose spontaneously with need to meet changing circumstances. But once men like Pasteur and others started coming down to roots of major illnesses, public officials realized that it could only be through improving public hygiene that illnesses can be eradicated.
It was their initiative in building bath-houses and mass advertising to encourage batheing that changed habits of those days. Of course, in cold Europe, batheing was still seen as something to be done as an occasional thing to be clean. Coming to a much hotter America, batheing became even more of a necessity, and Europeans were seen as unhygeineic people. It was thus again public programs that made bathhouses for European immigrants to turn them from unwashed European peasants to cleanly kept American people.
I just can’t help but wonder - should it not have been personal incentives and constraints which should have encouraged batheing? And not external coercion and collectivist programs?[;)]
The Economist is heavily biased in favour of state action in lots of ways, even as it has a reputation for having a fairly liberal stance (it’s better than the Guardian or the NYT)
In any case, it’s not necessarily the case that bathing did come about due to government action, and if perhaps property rights in water and its transportation had been established, it seems that, were there a demand for clean water, the market would have provided.
If it is really the case that people would have continued to prefer being dirty to being clean this is not obviously a case for government intervention. After all, if we accept subjective preference, which we must, then we must also conclude that what is good for a person is what they desire, or at least, that that’s the best guide to their good. Thus, we must also accept that those who wish to remain dirty, for whatever reason, are perfectly good and correct in doing so; not only is it their moral right, but it is also the case that there is no “fact of the matter” correct level of cleanliness which people must strive for.
Alternatively, you could postulate water was in little supply, and high in demand. Time would have also been a considerable factor - go to public well, or local communal stream or river? Seen more as a chore - not a commodity, potential business venture?
Obviously no piping / sophisticated plumbing… The water you used would be for the most important things, drinking and cooking. Showering, washing are secondary obviously.
Lack of property rights in water, and everything I imagine. I mean, what era are we talking about exactly? Monarchy - eh, could try make the point that is the least worst system with a state?
Public officials my ass. What’s the best it was a private citizen, doctor or whoever discovered it and the state goons take the credit? Don’t worry, I don’t want your fiat.
Public hygiene was bad? Yeah - public roads, alleyways, streets… guess where all the shit got dumped? Yeah, you got it - another tradegy of the commons.
“The most infamous and devastating instance of the plague was the Black Death, which killed a quarter to half of the population of Europe.”
I guess add 200 million to the States death tally.
State got in the way. Not much new in that analysis.
A statist magazine [aren’t they all?] concludes that the ruling elites were responsible for better hygiene/ lower disease risk? No surprise here- more like a foregone conclusion.
There is no correct level of cleanliness for sure - but I am thinking about batheing as a matter of preventive hygiene.
It is often said that improved living conditions have done more to eradicate diseases than vaccines have. And people may or may not have understood the importance of batheing in remaining healthy, but if they had, their personal trade-offs between the decisions they take may still have favoured giving up a little cleanliness and disease prevention for a little convenience and ability to meet other needs and desires. These state-sponsored bath-houses reduced the cost and effort of meeting the former need, and thus allowed people the greater satisfaction of being able to do both.
Now, it is very much valid that the market may have fully provided the same opportunity by itself - after all, cleanliness is a booming industry, and deodorants, face-wash, and other things keep pushing ways for people to remain clean - but this cleanliness revolution was such that it had beneficiaries other than the ones who were batheing, because it stemmed down communicable diseases and improved hygiene of public as a whole. Of course, the health of another stranger may not necessarilly be an immediate concern for me, but where this third-party steps in and allows this stranger to satisfy his need to be clean ends up benefitting me in a way too.
I must say that unless The Economist is exagerrating the role of state in bringing out cleanliness, this perhaps shows one singular isolated situation where state represents a net benefit to society than a net cost.
where did the bath-houses come from? obviously the state didn’t build them or if they did, obviously the materials weren’t discovered by the state.
My #1 rule of interpreting history: all bad is due to the state, all good is due to the market and so all good done by the state is only seemingly so and is infact provided by the market.
This vaccine was first used on 9-year old Joseph Meister, on July 6, 1885, after the boy was badly mauled by a rabid dog.[4] This was done at some personal risk for Pasteur, since he was not a licensed physician and could have faced prosecution for treating the boy. However, left without treatment, the boy faced almost certain death from rabies. After consulting with colleagues, Pasteur decided to go ahead with the treatment. The treatment proved to be a spectacular success, with Meister avoiding the disease; thus, Pasteur was hailed as a hero and the legal matter was not pursued. The treatment’s success laid the foundations for the manufacture of many other vaccines. The first of the Pasteur Institutes was also built on the basis of this achievement.[4]
The Pasteur Institute (French: Institut Pasteur) is a Frenchnon-profitprivate foundation dedicated to the study of biology, micro-organisms,diseases and vaccines. It is named after Louis Pasteur, its founder and first director, who had successfully developed the first antirabies serumin 1885. It was founded on June 4, 1887 and inaugurated on November 14, 1888.
It’s just another of the seemingly endless variations on the " the government knows best, the government is to be trusted, we need government " belief sysem.
Other variations that come to mind are S. Zarlengas “the government invented gold as a medium of exchange” argument, and, LVMI moderator laminustacitus’ [regarding the official 911 story]:
“Why would you believe that they are lying? Believing that they are telling the truth is the logical starting ground. Furthermore, all the pieces fit if one believes that they are telling the truth.”
Everything cannot be blamed on lack of property rights.
Why deny credit where credit is due? Public officials had much to do with the implementation of sanitary breakthroughs, and reforms, nor have I seen credit being stolen from Pasteur - essentially your entire reaction to Sanjay here is ideological tunnel-vision.
A tragedy of the commons does not entail state-intervention.
You really do go a long way getting all of history to fit within your predisposed beliefs.
Too bad there is not a sound thing in your entire post.
I really hope this is sarcastic.
Of course, all of history must support a predetermined opinion.
I read a bunch of Indian (as in redskin) novels and they bathe all the time. So if with the onset of coercive government people stopped bathing, that is nothing on freedom, but is instead a condemnation of government.
If indeed it is true that there was less washing going on in the old times, then that is something for the government supporter to try to explain away. You do not seriously intend to say that peasants and their aristocratic overlords not washing regularly reflects the worst on people who opposes the institutions of aristocracy and government?
Next thing you know anarchists will be made to answer for the illiteracy rates of plantation slaves.
It does seem that a number of people here would rather have their neighbors die from one of the more dangerous contagious deceases that they could hypothetically carry then have their ‘property rights’ violated in an attempt to quarantine them. Granted that is an unlikely scenario today, but still possible.