Mention of the American West usually evokes images of rough and tumble cowboys, ranchers, and outlaws. In contrast, The Not So Wild, Wild West casts America's frontier history in a new framework that emphasizes the creation of institutions, both formal and informal, that facilitated cooperation rather than conflict. Rather than describing the frontier as a place where heroes met villains, this book argues that everyday people helped carve out legal institutions that tamed the West. The authors emphasize that ownership of resources evolves as those resources become more valuable or as establishing property rights becomes less costly. Rules evolving at the local level will be more effective because local people have a greater stake in the outcome. This theory is brought to life in the colorful history of Indians, fur trappers, buffalo hunters, cattle drovers, homesteaders, and miners. The book concludes with a chapter that takes lessons from the American frontier and applies them to our modern "frontiers"―the environment, developing countries, and space exploration.

The Not So Wild, Wild West: Property Rights on the Frontier (Stanford Economics & Finance)

Business & Money

Terry L. Anderson

Peter J. Hill

Economics

Stanford Economics and Finance

It's been 32 years since Rachel Carson's Silent Spring launched the modern environmental movement. Over 70 percent of Americans now call themselves "environmentalists." And the movement has achieved some spectacular successes: The environment is, by most measures, cleaner and safer today than it has been at any time in the past five decades. And still the environmental movement employs a "crisis of the month" strategy to enroll members and attract funding for their cause. Why do environmentalists so rarely take credit for the dramatic improvements they helped make possible? The authors of Eco-Sanity argue compellingly that the environmental movement has become a victim of its own success. Having delivered the message of impending doom for decades, it knows no other strategy. The world has changed dramatically since the 1960s and the environmental movement has yet to discover its appropriate role in the new world. The authors of Eco-Sanity encourage the environmental movement to take credit for the successes it has achieved and to adopt tactics and strategies more appropriate to the realities it now faces. They present "rules for eco-sanity" and a common-sense agenda designed to ensure that the modern environmental movement will meet the challenges of the future with as much success as it did the challenges of the past.

Eco-Sanity: A Common Sense Guide To Environmentalism

Joseph L. Bast

Richard C. Rue

Madison Books

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Books by Peter J. Hill