The Salmon Trap: An Analogy for People’s Entrapment by the State

By Robert Higgs | Thursday January 3, 2013 at 9:51 AM PST

A salmon trap (also known as a pound net) is a setup for catching salmon as they return to their spawning places in the gravel beds of shallow inland streams. Such traps were used in Washington and Oregon until they were outlawed—by Oregon in 1926 and by Washington in 1934—and in Alaska until they were banned in 1959. They were highly efficient arrangements for harvesting salmon, outlawed only because the operators of competing types of gear and sportsmen’s groups ultimately had more political clout…….I have often pondered the analogy between the salmon’s being caught in a trap and a human population’s being caught in the institutional arrangement we call big government…. To Read More…….