In their new book, America 3.0: Rebooting American Prosperity in the 21st Century—Why America’s Greatest Days Are Yet to Come,1 James C. Bennett and Michael J. Lotus predict America’s future by looking deep into the past. They argue that the unique nuclear-family orientation inherited from the Anglo-Saxon tradition creates a culture that ultimately will reject the model […]

Introduction by John Baden, Chairman, FREE My friend and colleague, professor Jerry Johnson of Montana State University, just returned from two inspiring trips.  One was to Lake Iliamna, the largest lake in Alaska.  The other was the Greater Yellowstone Coalition’s (GYC) first 400-mile bike trip through the Greater Yellowstone area.  Jerry’s essay below focuses on the […]

We 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 […]

“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 […]

  A “middleman” buys cheap, sells dear, and does nothing to improve the product in the meantime. Middlemen are everywhere and probably have been since the very first exchanges started to improve the lives of primitive humans. Marco Polo and his family were middlemen. So is Ebay. Between them, in time and complexity, lie millions […]

  Do I owe something to the beggar on the street? If so, can I discharge that obligation by writing him a check? Does he have a claim against me? If so, can he make that claim by presenting me with a bill?   Is my obligation smaller if the beggar lives in another city? […]