Features
- Cover Type: Hard Cover with 304 pages
- Published by: Basic Books July 7, 2008
- Written in: English
- ISBN 10 Number: 0465029167
- ISBN 13 Number: 978-0465029167
-
Book Dimensions:
9.4 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
- Weighs: 1.2 pounds
Product Description
25 new runways would eliminate most air travel delays in America. Why can’t we build them?
50 patent owners are blocking a major drug maker from creating a cancer cure. Why won’t they get out of the way?
90% of our broadcast spectrum sits idle while American cell phone service lags far behind Japan’s and Korea’s. Why are we wasting our airwaves?
98% of African American–owned farms have been sold off over the last century. Why can’t we stop the loss? All these problems are really the same problem—one whose solution would jump-start innovation, release trillions in productivity, and help revive our slumping economy.
Every so often an idea comes along that transforms our understanding of how the world works. Michael Heller has discovered a market dynamic that no one knew existed. Usually, private ownership creates wealth, but too much ownership has the opposite effect—it creates gridlock. When too many people own pieces of one thing, whether a physical or intellectual resource, cooperation breaks down, wealth disappears, and everybody loses. Heller’s paradox is at the center of
The Gridlock Economy. Today’s leading edge of innovation—in high tech, biomedicine, music, film, real estate—requires the assembly of separately owned resources. But gridlock is blocking economic growth all along the wealth creation frontier.
A thousand scholars have applied and verified Heller’s paradox. Now he takes readers on a lively tour of gridlock battlegrounds. Heller zips from medieval robber barons to modern-day broadcast spectrum squatters; from Mississippi courts selling African-American family farms to troubling
New York City land confiscations; and from Chesapeake Bay oyster pirates to today’s gene patent and music mash-up outlaws. Each tale offers insights into how to spot gridlock in operation and how we can overcome it.
The Gridlock Economy is a startling, accessible biography of an idea. Nothing is inevitable about gridlock. It results from choices we make about how to control the resources we value most. We can unlock the grid; this book shows us where to start.
About The Author
Michael Heller is one of America’s leading authorities on ownership. He is the Lawrence A. Wien Professor of Real Estate Law at Columbia Law School and has served as the school’s Vice Dean for Intellectual Life. He lives in New York and Los Angeles.
Reader Reviews
This book arrives at a very auspicious moment. The key concept is that property ownership is not an unmitigated good, and, worse yet, it can lead to economic gridlock and underutilization of resources. In a rising economy, with property values going upward, this book would probably not sell too many copies; but in a declining market, with many homeowners stuck with adjustable mortgages greater than the value of their homes, the downside of property ownership is now more manifest. Michael Heller teaches real estate law at Columbia University Law School and he is considered one of the foremost authorities on property law. In the current work, he discusses what he calls the tragedy of the anticommuns. The expression "tragedy of the commons" goes back as far as Aristotle, referring to the absence of individual property rights. Heller's "tragedy of the anticommons" refers to uncontrolled proliferation of individual rights, all clamoring for their own stake with total disregard for the common good. He correctly claims that too many property rights can strangle the market. This is an unpopular and inconvenient idea that runs counter to one of the most fundamental beliefs of capitalism. Heller argues that property rights create gatekeepers. A gatekeeper is someone whose permission we need to get something done. Modern society is complex, and with more and more gatekeepers, the chances of getting things done becomes more difficult all the time. This sounds like commonsense, and economists have traditionally called this the burden of transaction costs. Heller's take on this issue is new and refreshing in that he creates a new vocabulary in describing it. One of the examples Heller uses to illustrate his thesis is the gridlock that is taking place in the pharmaceutical industry. Many important drugs remain off the market because there are too many owners of patents all claiming rights to future profits. Another example is the current mortgage crisis. In the old days when banks made loans and kept them on their books until they were paid off, ownership was clear and simple. Now, after loans have been repackaged and sold to investors many times over, ownership is multiple and no longer clear, making it virtually impossible to restructure them. Although possibly trendy and definitely contrarian, this book does not give any solutions to the problem, other than understanding them better. Property rights are the cornerstone of capitalism as economists and philosophers since Adam Smith have argued, and as Heller himself argues. However, sometimes respecting everyone's rights strangles the economy and something needs to be done for the common good. This book is an interesting discussion of this dilemma.
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