Paul Ehrlich has had quite a career. He is the author of numerous books – The Population Bomb from 1968 was a bestseller – a Stanford University professor, and a scholar of biology, entomology, and demography. He has recently authored a new book and, according to at least one interview, it is just as pessimistic about theContinue reading “Paul Ehrlich, Part XIV: Will Centralized Control Save the World?”
Author Archives: admin
Climate goes back to court
In 2007, the U.S. Supreme Court declared greenhouse gases to be pollutants subject to regulation under the Clean Air Act. The Court’s decision in Massachusetts v. EPA triggered a series of far-reaching regulatory proposals from the Environmental Protection Agency designed to control greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles, utilities, and other sources. But this wasContinue reading “Climate goes back to court”
Parking made simple
Learning how to park takes a few weeks, but finding a place to park takes a lifetime.
Restore A Park, Save A Nation
Gregg Carr made a fortune with voicemail and the Internet before resigning from every one of his for-profit positions to become a philanthropist.
Flip-flops are forever
Flip-flops are some of the most basic footwear in the world, a fact that is easily documented by the tons of discarded sandals washed up onto the east coast of Africa from as far away as Japan, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, and elsewhere.
Why don’t Indian lands have secure property rights?
by Dominic Parker That’s the question Terry Anderson and I explore in our essay in today’s Defining Ideas. In short, Indians that live on reservations earn far less than Indians that live off reservations. What accounts for this disparity? The simple answer is a lack of secure property rights and rule of law on reservations.
Reflecting on Some Unsettled Problems of Irrigation
by Shawn Regan The American Economic Review has republished an article on “Some Unsettled Problems of Irrigation” by Katharine Coman for its 100th anniversary along with reflections on Coman’s article by contemporary economists. Among them is PERC’s Gary Libecap. His abstract: Katharine Coman’s “Some Unsettled Problems of Irrigation,” published in March 1911 in the firstContinue reading “Reflecting on Some Unsettled Problems of Irrigation”
Un-American Reservations
Until American Indians living on Reservations have secure property rights and a stable rule of law, they will remain isloated on islands of poverty in a sea of prosperity.
Barbed wire entrepreneurship
Economist, n. a scoundrel whose faulty vision sees things as they really are, not as they ought to be. —after Ambrose Bierce Joseph Glidden transformed the American Plains. In 1874, Glidden patented the first practical design for barbed wire. The invention dramatically reduced the costs of separating cattle from crops and thus the costs ofContinue reading “Barbed wire entrepreneurship”
Thinking beyond open space
Productive farm land near large urban centers is being protected as conservation easements include farming as a stipulation of the tax-reducing easements.