Conservationism, Crony Capitalism, and Propaganda: The History of Florida through Big Sugar

The Dangerous History Podcast is the work of a Florida college professor who wanted to explore aspects of history in more depth and detail than his typical teaching curriculum allows. His approach is unique among history podcasts in its application of Austrian economics and individualist perspective to shed new light on the incentives if historical figures and understand the consequences of their actions.

As Lord Acton so eloquently said, "All power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority: still more when you superadd the tendency or certainty of corruption by full authority. There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it."

CJ uses these podcasts to explore a deeper analysis than the usual Marxist interpretations or the patriotic veneration of the "Great Man." As such, he offers a chance to see past events in a new light. In these three recent episodes, he dives headfirst into the murky history of the sugar corporations, the US government, and the Florida Everglades.

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In order to set the stage for his history of the sugar cane industry, he posted a prologue called Draining the Swamp: The War on the Everglades. It opens with propaganda from the Army Corps of Engineers detailing how the government claimed to conquer nature for the benefit of humanity in the 1950s. CJ then covers the various failed attempts to control the water over the years until the federal government finally stepped in to pour vast sums of money and incalculable labor into re-engineering nature. The results fell short of what had been promised, but certain individuals were able to become very rich at the expense of the taxpayers who involuntarily subsidized them.

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Rise of the Cane Kingdom, Part 1 begins the long and sordid story of the sugar cane industry in the United States, and covers the US government's policies that protected the sugar industry from competition while subsidizing their efforts through the 1950s. Many names largely unknown outside of Florida have had a disproportionate adverse effect on the lives of Americans and foreigners alike.

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Rise of the Cane Kingdom, Part 2 continues from 1959 to the present as international, domestic, and technological changes confronted the Sugar interests, and how political power was the means used at every turn to thwart the market. The major sugar corporations have massive pull in politics, and use their government-granted wealth to steer politics to their own further advantage. Meanwhile, the harsh nature of sugar plantation labor conditions were first denied, then covered up as much as possible despite damning documentary evidence, and finally quietly replaced with mechanization as the businesses continued to shaft everyone who wasn't a bigwig in one of the big sugar families.

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The Marxist would define this as a simple case of the bourgeois crushing the proletariat, but CJ offers a much more nuanced view that, while far from letting Big Sugar off the hook, still offers a glimpse at the more complex nature of the sugar economy and also points out the abject failure of central government to protect either workers or the environment throughout the whole matter. It's not a problem with who is in charge, but rather an unavoidable consequence of there being a central authority in charge in the first place.

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