Climate Change in Paradise I recently spoke to eighteen Article III federal judges. They gathered at Sage Lodge, Pray, Montana to join a colloquium organized by the Law and Economics Center (LEC) of George Mason University. This highly respected organization was founded in 1974 to bring economic understanding to the study of law. By 1999 […]
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Introduction to Prof. Jerry Johnson’s FREE Insight, John Baden “Yellowstone’s Predictable Political Problems: From Fires to Firings” Last week newspapers announced that Yellowstone Park Superintendent Dan Wenk was fired after 33 highly successful years with the Park Service. As MSU professor, Jerry Johnson explains in our next FREE Insights, political forces were the cause. […]
Read MoreA FREE Policy Salon* FREE supports three values: sustainable ecology, responsible liberty, and modest prosperity. Policy salons are one tool we use to explore and promote these values. The salons involve readings, brief presentations by knowledgeable individuals, and occasional recordings. The key element is discussion before, during and after a lengthy meal. Our most […]
Read MoreFREE began 2017 with a ten-day visit by Romanian economist Prof. Christian Nasulea and Ph. D. student Diana Spinu. They are classical liberals who work on environmental and information technology topics. They share our interest in explaining why “romance lands” attract creative, active individuals with high human capital. This migration of talented, successful individuals is […]
Read MoreIt’s snowing hard at our Gallatin Valley ranch at noon on May 17, 2017. I’m writing to correct today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article listing FREE as skeptical about climate change. No, we aren’t. The data is clear: Average temperatures in Montana have warmed up by 2-3 degrees Fahrenheit since the early 1900’s. Here is the back-story. […]
Read MoreWhat If Environmentalists Own Oil and Gas Lands? Introduction by John Baden In the 1980s I was one of three academic members of the National Petroleum Council. President Harry S. Truman created this federal advisory committee in 1946 to advise the executive branch on oil and gas topics. The other two academics from universities were […]
Read MoreTwo 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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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 MoreFor the better part of two decades, a small group of policy scholars and climate policy advocates have argued that the United Nations’ climate treaty efforts were doomed. Caps on emissions, and other efforts that make fossil fuels more expensive, would fail in world where competitive alternative fuels don’t exist, and where billions of people […]
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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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