Here’s a true, important, universal generalization: Across time and cultures, water normally flows uphill toward money. What are the implications for our area? Let’s first consider Yellowstone Park. The thermal features of Yellowstone are fed by aquifers that reach and recharge far beyond Park boundaries. Yellowstone would still be magnificent, but it would be much […]
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This year I can’t ski with Ramona for I was just liberated from a cast. Now while she skis, I sit in the Saddle Peak Lodge with my unactivated season pass and my PowerBook. I read and write. Occasionally I run across a great proposal. Here’s a winner being developed by Prof. Richard Wolff of […]
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Imagine a world without borders. Here, businesses are free to move people, products, and capital anywhere with minimal friction. Governmental interference has lessened and economic coordination improved. Critics of globalization and free trade would have us believe the result would be a giant race to the bottom. They expect firms to seek out localities with […]
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Next month I’m addressing 70 Forest Service Snow Rangers. I’m to contrast private ski areas around Big Sky with Bridger Bowl. The result illuminates fundamental transformations throughout the Intermountain West. I’ll discuss important cultural, economic, and environmental changes and identify conflicts. Yellowstone Club The Yellowstone Club is the second most exclusive community in Montana; only […]
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For the last two years I’ve had the pleasure of speaking to Bozeman High School’s philosophy classes. It’s an experience I thoroughly enjoy. This column is for them. What are we to make of the situation in which an Indian worker is paid 50 cents to assemble a shirt that sells for $25? Isn’t this […]
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Most who believe the end is nigh are mere curiosities, disappointment their shared reward. In contrast, Islamic terrorists know precisely when their world will end and they murder on their way out. Empathy doesn’t help me understand these terrorists. Economics and ethnology do. The explanation has less to do with money than with culture and […]
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I’m writing this column while Leonard Bernstein directs the Mormon Tabernacle Choir’s The Joy of Christmas on my iMac. This is remarkable on multiple dimensions: artistic, cultural, political, and technical. I’m happily amazed. Imagine, Lenny in Salt Lake, the only American city in which he is a gentile. This musical genius from New York, who […]
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Please don’t impose Tom Wolfe’s portrayal of licentious behavior at his fictive Dupont U on your children. His description of life at America’s top schools, I Am Charlotte Simmons, is captivating even when he describes appalling behavior. Trust me, college is not that hedonistic and undisciplined. Fortunately, neither are universities as monolithically “progressive” and politically […]
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Tom Wolfe’s latest novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, is infecting the zeitgeist. While few folks in the Gallatin Valley are likely to read the book, its theme is permeating our culture. Hence, it may ruin the holidays for parents of high school seniors and those whose freshmen are returning from college. Consider my review a […]
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America is the most successful and prosperous nation in history. Personal tragedies aside, our afflictions are trivial. But not all good things go together. With wealth well distributed among our friends, we face the problem of finding gifts for those who want for little. The parents of my generation suffered through the Great Depression and […]
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