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 […]
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Introduction by John Baden, Chairman, FREE In last week’s FREE Insight Mary Roloff wrote of her family farm and the culture in which it is embedded. “My grandfather … carried a gun to protect himself from those that would do him harm, take what didn’t belong to them, hurt his family, or to kill […]
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Introduction by John Baden, Chairman, FREE There are many dimensions along which Americans view their politics and society. Here is one with which I resonate. It is by Mary Roloff, one of the colleagues I most respect in some 50 years of university, foundation, and think-tank work. In this FREE Insight Mary writes of […]
Read More“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 […]
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I enjoy summers in Montana immensely. Thanks to vastly improved technology – think internet, FedEx, better insulated homes and vehicles, food from everywhere all the time -and global warming, winters are great too. Further, in the Gallatin Valley civility, community, and culture remain intact and indeed flourish. Bozeman must be the mother lode of non-profits: […]
Read MoreWe Are Lucky to Live Here! Let’s welcome the 55+ to Gateway Village. Sunday morning I biked into Bozeman to meet a couple for brunch. During the 14-mile ride in, several lycra clad male riders easily and silently passed me. (I passed no one.) In town three walkers smiled and volunteered, “Aren’t we lucky to […]
Read MoreThis column is an exploratory essay and I welcome your suggestions. I’m thinking of creating the Greater Yellowstone Policy Salon Series, an adventure in intellectual and policy entrepreneurship. Let’s unpack this new idea and I hope influence change for the better. There is a huge potential for policy reform in nearly every arena of American […]
Read MoreMaui and Montana Ramona and I just returned from an academic meeting in Maui. We found new confirmation that economics is really a sub-set of behavioral ecology (or evolutionary biology if you prefer). Here’s an example. After an all night flight, we awoke at our ranch this morning with 3″ of snow and a large […]
Read MoreIn the now classic The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (1965) the author Mancur Olson wrote: “(O)nly a separate and ‘selective’ incentive will stimulate a rational individual in a latent group to act in a group-oriented way”; that is, members of a large group will not act in the […]
Read MoreMilton Friedman is one of my all time favorite economists, Tom Schelling another. Both won Nobel prizes and each contributed greatly to my understanding of how the world works. I knew Milton and Rose longer but Tom and Alice much better. While we live geographically far apart and the Friedman’s are gone, the Schelling’s remain […]
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