“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 […]
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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 […]
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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. […]
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February 22, 1997 marks the centennial of the creation of the national forest system. We can learn a lot from America’s century-long romance with sylvan socialism. This Progressive Era experiment featured centralized planning by green Platonic despots; it has inspired America’s environmental legislation ever since. The Progressive Era reformers, in contrast to America’s Founding Fathers, […]
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The cowboy symbolizes the American West and universal manly virtues. For a few decades these rugged individualists ran roughshod over the wild expanse of the West, herding cattle, taming broncs, and working dawn to dusk. In myth, the cowboy still is the West at its best. But times they are a changing. The West isn’t […]
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The timber wolf is an icon of the changing West. It also offers a litmus test of the ability to think clearly. Emotional baggage is chained to the species like a # 4 Victor, the trapper’s tool of choice. Ranchers I’ve known for 30 years have come untrained, loudly sputtering at me for defending the […]
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Whether we’re trying to save species or specie, decisions are based on information and incentives. Regulations that generate poor incentives simply won’t work. Good intentions are not enough. Congress tried to protect endangered species via the Endangered Species Act (ESA) of 1973. Prior to 1973, landowners could freely use their land, even if endangered species […]
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Here is my gift to you for this Christmas season and the ones to follow. If you have friends and relatives for whom it’s hard to buy holiday gifts, you’ll find economic thinking helpful indeed. But you may wonder how economists, followers of the “dismal science,” can contribute to the holiday season? Surely not by […]
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“By establishing a nonprofit trust to manage the Presidio’s property, it gives us a blueprint for national parks that one day will be able to sustain themselves without government funds,” President Bill Clinton announced last month. He was in part referring to legislation he signed which turned over management of the Presidio National Park in […]
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The first lesson of international relations is that democracies don’t go to war with on another. In his 1994 State of the Union addresss, President Clinton said that no two democracies have ever warred with each other. The conventional wisdom is that world peace can be achieved through universal democracy. Unfortunately, this is not quite […]
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