Two Kinds of “Climate Deniers” One of the most serious accusations “progressives” make against a person’s intelligence and character is labeling someone a “climate denier”. A “denier” is a person who rejects the media’s prevailing view on global warming and now, climate change. The tribe of deniers is insecure. It’s mainly comprised of “clingers”, those […]
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Culture, Community, and Civility: Code of the (New) West Living here is a great blessing for Ramona and me. We greatly appreciate the wonderful natural, cultural, and prosperous environment of the Gallatin Valley. Even these stellar qualities are sometimes trumped by seeing people care for one another. Our community has culture of civility and caring–even […]
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Ramona and I have been here a long time. The old timers who saw us as newcomers in the 1960s and 70s are dead. For the others we are part of the landscape. We have seen huge changes in perceptions of the Bozeman area and the Gallatin Valley. When we arrived people outside our region seldom […]
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Few professors go to economics from anthropology, as did I. An anthropology background affects how one sees the world. It places far more emphasis on culture. Most decisions are based on information and incentives. Culture creates powerful incentives, ones often far more powerful than money. As Nobel Prize winning economist Doug North explained, culture constrains […]
Read MoreFREE is preparing for our August 25-29 seminar. We designed it for Article III federal judges and their clerks. This program will feature a field trip to Yellowstone Park. We will have presentations from the current Park Superintendent, a retired superintendent of Yellowstone, and natural scientists specializing in wildlands ecology. Ramona and I have been […]
Read MoreFREE fosters liberty, prosperity, and ecology by advocating reforms that recognize the importance of each. Our focus is the “romance” ring of the environmental arena; parks, wildlife, water, and wildlands. The focus holds in our academic and agricultural lives. Four decades ago we chose to live on a ranch near Gallatin Gateway. It is the […]
Read MoreRamona and I have returned from a memorable two weeks on a small cruise boat on Alaska’s Inside Passage. She takes a vacation trip to some exotic location nearly every year but I mainly travel on business. I had twice been to Alaska, both times in the winter. One was to the North Slope, the […]
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Ramona and I greatly enjoy our home. It began as a log structure built from timbers I cut in the early 1970s. They were milled a mere mile west of our home site. I like that. We added to our home over the decades. Fortunately, Bob Utzinger, former dean of MSU’s School of Arts and […]
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Minorities suffer abuses when their rights to property and person are violated. We examined historical situations involving Jews and Mormons in two recent FREE Insights (May 7 and 14). The underlying logic is clear: If people’s property is not given legal protection, then it is cheap and easy to violate their persons and strip their […]
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This is the second of two essays on the contributions of property rights to peace and prosperity. The first examined the horrific problems of the Jews. Most were caused, permitted, or exacerbated by failures to recognize their property rights. This week I consider the current grazing conflict in Nevada. I am joined by FREE research […]
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