From the fiscal to the familial, conservatives have the right answers. Several years ago, a business meeting took me to the home of an honest-to-God Wall Street billionaire, the first such member of that exotic caste I had ever personally encountered. The home was comfortable and well-appointed, but it was in most ways a domicile […]
Read MoreWhy Civil Rights Metaphors Are Inappropriate for Getting Off Oil Writing on the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” former green-jobs czar Van Jones invoked Dr. King to justify the environmental movement’s singular focus on stopping the Keystone XL pipeline: “There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs […]
Read MorePrivate enterprise does more for the national good than it gets credit for. Alexis de Tocqueville reported that “Americans of all ages, all conditions, all minds constantly unite. . . . Everywhere that, at the head of a new undertaking, you see the government in France and a great lord in England, count on […]
Read MoreUwe Reinhardt argued against the volunteer army at The New York Times economics blog the other day and I think his post is remarkable for reasons that have nothing to do with the military draft. But first things first. Uwe acknowledges that the weight of economic reasoning about conscription is traditionally thought to be […]
Read MoreEconomics began as a branch of moral philosophy. Its founders, including Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill, focused on social ethics. Economics gradually became more formal and mathematical. Physics became the ideal for economists to emulate, a systematic field divorced from moral content. Ever more abstract and divorced from the culture that guides and […]
Read MoreI find economics fun and useful. Fundamentally, it is not about money. Rather, economics is a mode of thinking focused on two things, information and incentives. Unless deliberately randomized, as in a fair lottery or coin flip, most decisions are based on information and incentives. It’s no accident that’s the way the world works. […]
Read MoreGallatin Writers is FREE’s sister organization, created twenty years ago. We wanted to help people allergic to economic thinking understand the ethical and ecological value of economic reasoning to achieving their goals. Here is a key: Respecting liberty and the contributions of prosperity is essential to a good society. Poverty is the worst polluter. Having come to economics […]
Read More“Krugman’s depiction is not the way real economists would describe any of this.” – John Goodman in today’s FREE Insight Individuals working in the world of ideas lack sanctified immunity to the consequences of inconsistency. Others monitor what they write and expose errors, especially those linked to ideology. Here libertarians, aka classical liberals, have a […]
Read MoreI welcome several changes in this New Year. And how fortunate we are to live here! On many cultural, commercial, and medical dimensions, life in and around Bozeman is ever better. Yesterday we had over 50 elk on our place. (Fortunately, our haystacks had been trucked off. Herds of elk eat and destroy them. […]
Read MoreEconomists’ Favorite Bible Verse – An intro to today’s FREE Insight from the Chairman If political economists were to pick a favorite Bible verse I suggest it would be Proverbs 4:7. King James Version reads: “Wisdom is the principal thing; therefore get wisdom: and with all thy getting get understanding.” Alas too many people neglect […]
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