Bozeman is nationally recognized for being first on many dimensions, best retirement town for active people, best ski town, exemplar of civic culture, and more. It’s also the founding epicenter of “Free Market Environmentalism” (FME). This disciplined, analytic approach to conservation and environmental management has captured the intellectual high ground. However, despite its success […]
Read MoreEach January, my colleagues and I design FREE’s summer seminars. We select and refine topics, then identify speakers, and finally invite participants. These tasks are easy when creating programs explicitly for federal judges. There are only a thousand and we know exactly who they are. All know us directly or have colleagues who have attended […]
Read MoreHere’s a sketch of America’s economic prospects. Essentially, we’re seeing the consequences of 50 plus years of near libertarian tax rates and socialist benefits. Federal taxes were 17.8 percent of GNP in 1960. By 2007 they had risen less than one percent to 18.5 percent. However, there was a great deal of fraud and abuse […]
Read MoreExactly five years ago I wrote a column “Let’s Resolve to Reward Our Wounded Warriors.” This appeal developed from discussions with Volney Steele. Vol is a retired physician who volunteered when Eagle Mount brought children to our place to fish. Volney proposed that people in Bozeman develop a fly-fishing program for severely injured American troops. He helped make the original […]
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The month between Thanksgiving and Christmas is an excellent time to reflect on and give thanks for one’s blessings. We were doing so with friends when conversation turned to the adoption of neglected children. We implicitly agreed that one important measure of a society is the care it provides for needy children. This reminded me […]
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In an earlier life I was an economic anthropologist and I still enjoy studying people with unusual views of the ideal society. For example, Ramona and I attended an early Earth First! rendezvous. It made the Sierra Club look moderate indeed. Earth First!’s experiment seems exhausted. Its environmental concerns have been trumped by more immediate […]
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Mont Pelerin Society (MPS) was founded in Switzerland in 1947 by Frederic Hayek, a young Milton Friedman, and 35 other scholars, mostly economists. They met to discuses the growth of governmental intrusion and the future of classical liberalism. MPS had a strong commitment to responsible liberty but not to any political party. “Its sole objective […]
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Reframing is a psychological term meaning that the reaction to any situation is found in the frame in which it is viewed. Reframing life’s rewards will be a requirement of satisfaction for those who mature in our changed economy. The future isn’t what it was. It’s likely you’ve heard people in their 50s and 60s […]
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There are three basic types of entrepreneurship, for-profit, intellectual, and social. Google exemplifies the first, The Copenhagen Consensus the second, and Warriors and Quiet Waters the third. All require a good organization and good management to be effective. Organizations are created to achieve some purpose. The motivation may be a good cause, for example healing […]
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FREE just completed a summer conference, co-sponsored with MSU, for federal judges—2011 marks the twentieth year of this program. Several asked how this series began. Here’s an overview and a prediction for Bozeman. Its attractions are an increasing strong magnet for healthy, successful people. The foundation of the judges program began in the 1980s. I […]
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