Second Edition, Indiana University Press, 1998, John A. Baden, contributing author and editor (with Douglas S. Noonan). This is a new edition of a pioneering work on the origins, developments, and recent innovations in the debate on managing commonly-owned lands and resources. It includes both new and updated essays which focus on alternate institutional approaches […]
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The Christmas decorations adorning our streets and shops give multiple messages. All are intended to be cheerful but they cause some minor anguish by reminding us of the necessity of gifts. We all have friends and relatives for whom it’s hard to buy. What can I get someone who has everything or the ability to […]
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The recent budget deal and mid-term elections show why Republicans continue to take a beating. Despite their purported ideology of limited government, Republicans kowtow to special interests favoring crass exploitation of public resources. They are silent when profitable private acts have negative public consequences, for example former Senator Lauch Faircloth’s hog farms in North Carolina. […]
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It’s time for some good news about America. By historical standards, the vast majority of Americans are exceedingly well off. This is important because richer is healthier, safer – and more environmentally sensitive. We have greatly improved environmental quality since the first Earth Day. However, the easy problems have been solved. More complex issues of […]
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Island Press, June, 1997, John A. Baden, contributing author and editor (with Donald Snow). Contact FREE to purchase.
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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