Rural communities all over America are shrinking. Consolidation of farms and agribusinesses reduces the number of local jobs. Those residents who remain must bear ever more of the tax base. As individual tax burdens grow, the towns no longer can support their schools, hospitals, and other amenities. As amenities disappear, fewer young people return. The […]
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Many folks believe the government should provide insurance against natural disasters. Congress recently voted to extend the National Flood Insurance Program for another four years. The NFIP was established in 1968 to provided “affordable” insurance to people living in the most flood-prone areas. (In the West, federal flood insurance has primarily taken the form of […]
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For approximately 150 years Sears, Roebuck & Company was a retail giant. It made a fortune by selling quality products at low prices to middle- and lower-class Americans. Its innovative business strategies effectively drove its chief competitor, Montgomery Ward, from the market. The famous Sears catalog, for the first time, provided rural Americans access to […]
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In a recent High Country News column, Mark from Missoula lamented: “I’ve given up on one of the great American dreams — owning a home of my own.” He protests: “[I]t’s becoming impossible to find affordable housing in the West, even in the non-resort towns.” He’s wrong. Both his logic and data are flawed. Perhaps […]
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Let’s dispel a common myth. Critics deride capitalism and private property as simply a means for the rich to exploit the poor. Actually, the poor have the most to gain from secure property rights. In a system without private property rights, the rich have the resources to buy security, either by bribing government officials or […]
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My friends are not in Bozeman by accident. As they contemplated relocation, a key consideration was the quality of their children’s public schools. By any objective measure, ours are excellent. SAT scores at Bozeman High are well above the national average. Each year it produces a number of National Merit Scholars and sends several graduates […]
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Montana’s current governor, Republican Judy Martz, as well as four Republican gubernatorial candidates favor a return of cyanide leach mining. (One, Ken Miller, flippantly told an audience, “You had some cyanide for lunch” because there were almonds on their chicken.) I object to cyanide on ethical, economic, and ecological grounds. This process violates the most […]
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Lava Lake in the Madison Range just south of Bozeman is a favorite destination for participants in our summer programs for federal judges and law professors. Most years the lake trail is clogged with snow until early July. But that’s changing. Shorter, warmer winters and drier summers are here. Warmer spring temperatures cause our rivers […]
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Both the Jeffersonian Democrat and the libertarian have an interest in fostering a moral society. The late liberal Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan lamented in a 1993 essay: “[O]ver the past generation…we have been redefining deviancy so as to exempt much conduct previously stigmatized, and also quietly raising the ‘normal’ level in categories where behavior is […]
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Here’s a neat summer project: Let’s fix the snowmobile controversy in Yellowstone. It illustrates how a distorted market and bureaucratic pathologies constrain creative thinking. The solution lies in going outside the traditional business practices of the snowmobile renters and the vested interests of local, regional, and national political groups. West Yellowstone describes itself as the […]
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