While joyful in anticipation, coming home for Christmas is often a mixed blessing. Folks arrive with their baggage of memories packed over some years and selectively sorted by time and experience elsewhere. Pleasing recollections color our expectations. Unless gone for a very long while, we expect our home territory to be much as when we […]
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Here’s a fundamental rule of political economy: Wealth buys safety, not merely comfort and convenience. This is a true, empirical, universal, testable, statistical generalization, a helpful one when formulating public policy. While we can find exceptions — rich folks do climb Everest and fly their own planes — such exceptions probe the rule. Generally, the […]
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I have just returned from a meeting of the Mont Pèlerin Society (MPS) in Guatemala. Prof. Friedrich Hayek, winner of the 1974 Nobel Prize in economics, established MPS in 1947, in the alpine setting of Mont Pèlerin, Switzerland. Milton Friedman was a cofounder. The totalitarianism surrounding World War II motivated the creation of MPS. It […]
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I’ve recently returned from the RAND Corporation’s Graduate School in Santa Monica. RAND was created after WWII to help the U.S. analyze Cold War policy. It is surely the world’s premier think tank. (See their web site, www.rand.org, for the full breadth of their research.) Among applicants to their Ph.D. program, the most common score […]
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Why are economists the last sane optimists and what can they teach church leaders about environmental stewardship? These questions grow in importance as religious organizations dedicate themselves to issues such as climate change and energy use. Last summer gas hit over $3.00 per gallon, cities anticipated electrical blackouts, and the country faced serious prospects of […]
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Those of us committed to Green causes often respond more strongly to symbolic values than to careful analysis. Recycling offers a clear example. The environmental value of recycling depends on time- and place-specific circumstances. It almost always makes both ecological and economic sense to recycle aluminum and other metals. Often this holds for paper, only […]
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MSU has recently made significant progress in advancing its research and reputation. In 1970, it had few nationally recognized programs and subsequently missed many opportunities to promote or retain excellence. A generation ago political intrusions on academic quality afflicted Montana Hall, but leadership, entrepreneurship, location, and technology now trump. Today MSU is far more alert […]
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The educational programs of the Foundation for Research on Economics and the Environment (FREE) have received substantial national attention, including from the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and 20/20. The Judicial Conference of the United States carefully evaluated the contributions of our work, for it knows American justice and progress rely on […]
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Tom France, of the National Wildlife Federation, organized a conference, “The Climate Challenge: Strategies for Montana’s Future.” FREE cosponsored last weekend’s Helena meeting. This effort was described as “a collaborative conference implementing a progressive, proactive approach, [to] address the growing global climate challenge.” It featured experts from agriculture, industry, economics, and conservation. Its goal was […]
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Americans seem hardwired to believe problems can be solved. This classic “can do” approach often works — but alas not always. Some afflictions are persistent but manageable; we handle gravity and crab grass via rebar or Ronstar. Other problems, some extremely serious, should only be acknowledged and confronted, not wished away via purported solutions. Success […]
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