Summer in Montana is a time to celebrate–and to share with visitors. We have many and nearly all are environmentally sensitive. None visit us by accident or advertisement. Most fish, hike, ride, or bike. The vast majority of our guests recycle. So do we. But not everything. That distinction poses the paradox. Pacific Steel and Recycling […]
Read MoreWe are in the middle of FREE’s last summer conference, “Boom and Bust in America”. This is the last of our summer programs. It concludes twenty-two years of programs applying economics to contentious topics. All featured the potentials of creativity and hazards of command. Soon we will begin our more focused salon series, Yellowstone […]
Read More“Mr. Larry was a past president of the Sarah Scaife Foundation and also a former board of director for Grove City College and Federal Home Loan of Pittsburgh. His hobbies included fishing, target shooting…” -From the published obituary. I owe a great deal to Dick Larry. He was the president of a major foundation, a […]
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I enjoy summers in Montana immensely. Thanks to vastly improved technology – think internet, FedEx, better insulated homes and vehicles, food from everywhere all the time -and global warming, winters are great too. Further, in the Gallatin Valley civility, community, and culture remain intact and indeed flourish. Bozeman must be the mother lode of non-profits: […]
Read MoreWe Are Lucky to Live Here! Let’s welcome the 55+ to Gateway Village. Sunday morning I biked into Bozeman to meet a couple for brunch. During the 14-mile ride in, several lycra clad male riders easily and silently passed me. (I passed no one.) In town three walkers smiled and volunteered, “Aren’t we lucky to […]
Read MoreThis column is an exploratory essay and I welcome your suggestions. I’m thinking of creating the Greater Yellowstone Policy Salon Series, an adventure in intellectual and policy entrepreneurship. Let’s unpack this new idea and I hope influence change for the better. There is a huge potential for policy reform in nearly every arena of American […]
Read MoreMaui and Montana Ramona and I just returned from an academic meeting in Maui. We found new confirmation that economics is really a sub-set of behavioral ecology (or evolutionary biology if you prefer). Here’s an example. After an all night flight, we awoke at our ranch this morning with 3″ of snow and a large […]
Read MoreMilton Friedman is one of my all time favorite economists, Tom Schelling another. Both won Nobel prizes and each contributed greatly to my understanding of how the world works. I knew Milton and Rose longer but Tom and Alice much better. While we live geographically far apart and the Friedman’s are gone, the Schelling’s remain […]
Read MoreThis FREE Insight is a warm recommendation of a book by WWII veteran Warren R. Higgins, The Wednesday Pen. His daughter, Ris Higgins, is a Bozeman friend. She lovingly edited this volume and it was just published by Brown books of Dallas, Texas. This is a most unusual book. It’s a collection of letters, one […]
Read MoreI’m writing this on Groundhogs Day, February 2. Ramona and I are seven miles east of Ashton, Idaho near the Yellowstone Park border. YNP is an excellent place to explore parables of environmental stewardship so FREE’s work naturally features Yellowstone. Our July 15-19 conference, “Harmonizing Ecology, Prosperity, and Liberty”, will include a day in Yellowstone […]
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