1997 marks the centennial of the National Forest System. This is America’s best example of centralized government planning and management, our glorious experiment in “sylvan socialism.” In the Federalist Papers, America’s founders urged us to consider each law and policy as an experiment to be evaluated and perhaps modified. The end of a century’s experiment […]

The U.S. Forest Service continues to throw money and timber away, but don’t expect the Republican-led Congress to call a halt to this long-running story of government waste. The GOP is brain-dead when it comes to sparing live trees. Last week , Louisiana-Pacific Corp. placed the winning bid of $155,190 for 1.8 million board feet […]

Fisheries Management Fisheries are complex environments in which fish are just a single inhabitant. Other species, climate change, habitat modification, fishermen, consumers, and bureaucrats all impact fisheries. Economics, as much as ecology, define fisheries. The success or failure of a fishery can hinge on small changes in the composition of local fishermen, in the policies […]

Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.   -Emma Lazarus Environmentalists have long held that environmental problems come down to one issue: population. All of our environmental woes, from species extinction to global warming, can […]

When the route to immortality is to become a government program, how can wasteful, dysfunctional bureaucracies be weeded out? Try a “predatory bureaucracy.” A predator is an organism that captures and extracts its sustenance from other animals. We can learn a great deal about the federal budget by, as a simple thought experiment, introducing a […]

Environmental activists, freedom lovers, and those preferring a less intrusive government share a common perception. They see the government agencies responsible for natural resource management as bureaucratic parasites. Rather than steward our resources, they systematically advocate programs that are environmentally costly, are financially wasteful, and increase the scope of the federal government at the expense […]

“Strange bedfellows make interesting children.” This observation from Don Snow, Arts and Literary Director of Gallatin Institute, applies to the recently released “Green Scissors” report. The report originated from a hitherto latent coalition of environmentalists and pro-market advocates. On the one side, we have Rep. Kasich (R-OH), a “Gingrich acolyte.” On the other is Ralph […]

By my count, my wife Ramona and I represent nine generations in American agriculture. With her competence and cheer, we ran 500 ewes and wintered horses on our home place in Montana’s Gallatin Valley. After a time we sold the sheep, and for several years I taught in the University of Washington’s business school where […]

Like a zombie in a second-rate horror movie, the Hyalite timber sale is once again rising from the grave. Reaction is predictable: already on the defensive, the Forest Service promises a “kinder, gentler” project, while environmentalists scramble for silver bullets, trying desperately to send this beast to its grave. Resurrection of the Hyalite sale guarantees […]

People agree strong government does much good. Nothing new here. But there is a change. Once it seemed that only the sophisticated, the cynical, and economists allied with the University of Chicago understood government’s potentials for mischief. For a generation, the proportion of analysts writing on the pathologies and pitfalls of government power has grown. […]