IN HUMAN AFFAIRS OF DANGER and delicacy successful conclusion is sharply limited by hurry. So often men trip by being in a rush. If one were properly to perform a difficult and subtle act, he should first inspect the end to be achieved and then, once he had accepted the end as desirable, he should forget it completely and concentrate solely on the means. By this method he would not be moved to false action by anxiety or hurry or fear. Very few people learn this.
Chapter 21, East of Eden.
Up until now, In Dubious Battle was my favorite Steinbeck creation. But this one might bump it down a peg,
In Barza, Glaeser, Hidalgo, and Viarengoโs Economic Integration and Upward Mobility in Brazil (PNAS 2026; earlier NBER version Cities as Engines of Opportunities), social mixing is not residential mixing. It is workplace mixing of low-wage and higher-wage workersโhow often initially poor formal-sector workers share an establishment with people who are not poor.
That is the construct they use to interpret why some Brazilian cities raise the earnings of the initially poor and others do not.
What they mean by it
The paper asks whether developing-world cities are poverty traps or engines of opportunity. Using RAIS linked employerโemployee records (the universe of Brazilโs formal workforce), they follow workers who enter formal work earning less than 1.5 times the minimum wage and estimate city-level initial wage premia and medium-term premia (about 7โ8 years later), following De la Roca and Puga.
City size alone does not explain the northโsouth gap. Southern cities look more like European learning cities; northern cities give an immediate wage bump but little subsequent growth. The authorsโ preferred mechanism is Marshallian on-the-job learning: the unskilled gain when they work with the skilled, not merely in the same metro area.
Social mixing (Hidalgoโs label for the same object) is the city-level measure of that exposure.
How it is constructed
From the CEPR write-up of the same project and the NBER text:
Identify the โpoorโ as workers below a wage threshold (in the cohort analysis, first-year earnings below 1.5ร the minimum wage).
For each metro area, compute the average share of non-poor coworkers in the typical poor workerโs establishment.
Subtract the cityโs overall non-poor share. That residual is mixing beyond what the cityโs poverty rate would mechanically produceโi.e., whether poor workers are isolated inside firms or sit next to higher-wage colleagues.
They also report isolation at occupation and industry levels. Controlling for isolation of the initially poor at establishment, occupation, or industry shrinks the northโsouth premium gap by about 60% in the working-paper results. Hidalgo reports that workplace-mixing models account for roughly 77% of variation in initial city premia for the initially poor and 83% of variation in medium-term premia.
So the constructs that โpaint it outโ are:
Establishment-level exposure of low-wage to high-wage workers (the core mixing variable)
Industry composition and economic complexity (ECI): more complex southern industries combine a wider skill range in the same workplace
Public-sector concentration of the skilled in the north, which pulls high-wage workers out of mixed private establishments
Contrast with residential segregation and with city average schooling, which they find do not explain the mobility gap the same way
They are explicit that this is associational, not a causal experiment: workers and firms are not randomly assigned. The claim is that agglomeration effects run through who works with whom, and that industrial structure (complexity vs. public-sector/simple resource processing) shapes that mixing.
In short: social mixing here = excess workplace co-presence of poor and non-poor workers, used as the operational stand-in for skill integration and on-the-job learning.
Me again: Social mixing in neighborhoods also promotes a type of associational capital. It is why people want to buy in neighborhoods where CEOs live. Itโs how the elderly get their sidewalks shoveled. Itโs how the kids whose parents work still get to Little League practice.
Source: 2025 point-in-time estimates from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and Census Bureau population estimates.
That means in Minnesota there are 714 non homeless per homeless. To make that per household, it’s 238 households per homeless. Or in dollars, it is $5/household to cover a one bedroom for someone without.
This does not seem unmanageable from a financial standpoint. Hence it’s easy to wonder if the problem lies elsewhere.
Washington, DC – The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) sent a โDear Colleagueโ letter to real estate professionals clarifying they are not violating the Fair Housing Act when they share information with prospective homebuyers about neighborhood crime rates and school quality data.
โBuying a home is one on the most significant decisions a family will ever make,โ said Secretary Scott Turner. โAmericans should not be left in the dark about vital facts like neighborhood safety or school quality. HUD is making clear that real estate professionals can openly and lawfully provide this information in an equal and consistent manner to American families.โ
In the letter, Assistant Secretary for Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity Craig Trainor explains that unlawful steering under the Fair Housing Act requires intentional discrimination based on protected characteristics. Providing prospective homebuyers with information about school quality and crime data is not a violation when it is shared consistently without discriminatory intent.
Accordingly, Fair Housing Assistance Programs (FHAPs) should not issue discrimination findings solely because real estate professionals provide such information or answer nonracial questions on these topics in a consistent and unbiased manner. Likewise, Fair Housing Initiatives Programs (FHIPs) should not use federal funds to pursue complaints based on these same practices.
This overturns a long held practice of doing nothing more than pointing clients in the direction of police states as issued by local municipalities.
Iโm most surely one of the last people to see this epic film. It really comes through with a fantastic performance on so many levels. The interpretation of an ancient and well known tale is at the top of my list for its best feature. My top pick for scene, although there are many in the running, is the closing scene with Penelope and Odysseus.
I went to a local suburban theater and I have to say that seeing a film in a theater is an undervalued activity. The crowds are low, the large recliner armchairs are fabulous, and of course a film with big characters plays out that much better on a big screen.
Iโll be going to the theater more often, even going solo doesnโt feel that odd.
I went to listen to a few city council people at a nice get toegether in a local Brew Pub. It’s a nice way to hear about what’s on people’s mind and where the direction of their interests are going. This was no different. The two pictured here, one from an urban area and one from a suburban area, seemed well intune and genuinly interested in their residents. Those are the folks who voted them in, afterall.
But in the hour plus conversation there was not one mention of the business base in their neighborhoods, neither retail, restaurant or employer. That’s a bit perplexing to me as businesses pay between 22-35% of the property taxes, the money used to pay the bills of public good provision. And as council members they are in fact the managers of the pipeline that keeps those public services in motion. So why don’t they care about those dollars?
Here are some local breakdowns property taxes paid by business.
Although elected by residents, if councilmembers only listen to residential voices, they will miss the math that keeps their property taxes lower. In Minnesota, commercial and industrial properties are taxed at higher class rates than homes. That means a stronger business tax base directly reduces the share of the levy that falls on homeowners.
Hereโs the local reality:
Brooklyn Park businesses carry about 36% of the local tax capacity.
Plymouth ~28%.
Minneapolis ~25%.
Eden Prairie ~23%.
The more businesses pay, the less residents do. Supporting policies that attract and retain employers is not โpro-business.โ It is pro-homeowner.
Ignore the commercial tax base and you are choosing higher residential tax bills. Higher tax bills and some of those consistutents that voted for you will exit to more affordable cities.
Main sources of revenue (cash income) for US municipalities (cities and towns), with approximate shares of total general revenue.
Figures are national averages drawn primarily from US Census Bureau data via analyses by the Tax Policy Center (around 2021), GFOA, and related sources. Shares vary substantially by state, city size, and local tax authority. โLocal governmentsโ in Census data include cities, counties, townships, school districts, and special districts; pure municipal (city) figures are similar but often show somewhat lower property-tax reliance and higher charges/sales-tax reliance than the broader local total.
Approximate national composition for local/municipal general revenue
Source Approximate share Notes Property taxes 24โ30% Dominant own-source tax for most cities; typically the single largest local tax. Higher in many Northeast/Midwest places; lower in some Sun Belt cities. Of pure local tax collections, property taxes are often ~70%+. Intergovernmental transfers (state + federal) 24โ37% Mostly state aid (often 20โ30%+), with smaller direct federal grants (~5โ7%). Much state aid supports schools or is passed through; highly important for many cities. Charges and fees (user charges, service fees) 16โ22% Includes water/sewer, parking, recreation, solid waste, hospital/clinic fees where applicable, permits, etc. Often one of the largest categories for pure city governments. Sales and gross receipts / selective sales (excise) taxes 7โ14% General sales tax is the bigger piece where authorized; selective taxes (hotels, meals, utilities, tobacco, etc.) add more. Much more important in some Southern and Western cities. Income / wage / payroll taxes 2โ6% (national average; much higher where used) Levied by only a minority of localities (notable in parts of Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, New York City, etc.). Can be 15โ40%+ of revenue in those specific cities. Other taxes + miscellaneous 5โ11% Licenses, franchise/business taxes, interest earnings, fines, asset sales, special assessments, etc.
Key points and context
Own-source vs. intergovernmental: Taxes + charges/fees typically make up the majority of โown-sourceโ revenue. Intergovernmental aid is critical and often the largest single category in broader local-government aggregates (especially because of school funding).
Taxes specifically: When looking only at local tax dollars (not total revenue), property taxes commonly account for ~70โ75%, sales/excise ~15โ18%, and income taxes ~5โ6%, with the rest from other taxes.
Big variation:
Some Texas/Oklahoma-style cities lean heavily on sales taxes and charges.
Many Northeastern cities lean more on property taxes (and sometimes local income taxes).
Cities with major utility systems or enterprise funds show higher โcharges.โ
School districts (often separate from city governments) pull the broader โlocalโ averages toward higher property taxes and state aid.
Utilities and enterprise funds: Revenue from water, electric, gas, or transit systems is frequently accounted for separately (or as charges) and can be substantial, though not always fully fungible for general-fund purposes.
Data notes: Shares shift modestly over time with economic cycles, federal stimulus (e.g., COVID-era transfers), property-value changes, and state policy. The most recent comprehensive Census of Governments and annual surveys remain the standard national source; city-level mixes differ from county or school-district mixes.
In short, the core pillars for most US municipalities are property taxes, charges/fees for services, state (and some federal) aid, and sales taxes, with local income taxes mattering a great deal in the subset of places that use them. Exact percentages for any given city require looking at that cityโs budget or ACFR.
There’s nothin’ you can do that can’t be done Nothin’ you can sing that can’t be sung Nothin’ you can say, but you can learn how to play the game It’s easy
Nothin’ you can make that can’t be made No one you can save that can’t be saved Nothin’ you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time It’s easy
There’s nothin’ you can know that isn’t known Nothin’ you can see that isn’t shown There’s nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be It’s easy
Golf has always been a popular sport in Minnesota. Perhaps itโs the nature loving side of people that the sport entices as a full eighteen holes takes four hours or more of your leisure time on a pleasant summer day. Perhaps itโs because we have traditionally offered a large variety of courses which helps keep the green fees and cart rentals reasonable. Also there are many levels of difficulty so players of all ages and abilities can find a set of links where theyโll fit right in.
Minnesota punches far above its weight in golf. Roughly 90% of its 460โ480 courses are publicโthe highest share in the U.S.โmaking the game unusually accessible. Participation ranks among the nationโs strongest per capita, with nearly 580,000 golfers and millions of rounds logged each year despite a short northern season. The stateโs golf economy generates about $3 billion in impact. Minnesota is also the only state to have hosted every major USGA championship plus the Ryder Cup, Solheim Cup, and PGA Championship. Compared with sunbelt destinations, green fees stay moderate (weekday public averages near $45), while municipal tracks often open for far less. In short: abundant public access, avid players, big economic footprint, and championship pedigree packed into a cold-climate state.
But every once in a while a course now surrounded by urban living is put up for sale. Thatโs the situation for Les Bolstad, a course owned by the University of Minnesota has been sold to a developer, Rachel Development. Here is a preliminary conceptual plan as presented to the Falcon Heights City Council.
The city covers an area of 2.4 square miles smack dab between the two urban centers. And only boasts a population of 5700.
Predictably, a municipality once overlooked or ignored is the target of reels of advice from housing and planning types. Those who are stimulated by power are right there to suggest controlling features or beat the drum for greater state control and less local control.
What do you think? Should city councils as representatives of the residents manage and guide development? Is this an endorsement of the classical liberal project?
This is a classic early-20th-century American bungalow (Craftsman-influenced), most likely built between about 1910 and 1925.
Key visible features that point to that period:
Broad hip roof with a centered dormer (here a small gabled/shed-style dormer with paired windows and dark trim).
Full-width front porch supported by sturdy square/tapered white columns resting on brick piers, with simple white railing.
Red brick main walls (common running or common-bond brickwork typical of the era) with lighter horizontal siding or trim in the upper wall/eave areas.
Symmetrical faรงade: central front door (six-lite over panel, currently painted blue) flanked by large double-hung windows with screens.
Overall low, horizontal massing with deep eavesโhallmarks of the bungalow form that dominated U.S. residential construction (especially in Midwestern streetcar suburbs) from roughly 1905โ1930, peaking in the 1910sโearly 1920s.
These houses were built in large numbers during that window as neighborhoods expanded. The brick lower story, porch detailing, and roof form are very consistent with that era; later mid-century or postwar houses rarely look like this.
Two prominent women have been in the news lately for decisions that circle the same maternal questions from opposite directions.
Karoline Leavitt, still young and living at the intersection of ambition and proximity to real political power, is stepping away from her high-profile job to stay home with her two young children. On the other edge of the ideological map, AOC has been in the headlines for ending an engagement and freezing her eggs. Single at 37 is a real predicament if you still want children. Both women reached a peak level of political employment. The interesting question is which one has family life more nearly figured out.
In years gone by, Leavittโs choice would have been read as throwing in the towel. Iโm not so sure anymore. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has managed to weave political life and maternal instincts together without obvious collapse. AOC has poured everything into her career and it has worked for her. She still has years left to build a family if she wants one, but it will require more deliberate attention to finding a partner who actually wants the same things.
The final word is simple enough: there is not one correct way to live a life. But you do have to put in the effortโand that almost always includes some real sacrificesโif you want the particular package that brings you fulfillment in all parts of life.
It was in the early 2000s or even 2010 that an acronym NOAH was adopted as a means of denoting rental units provided in the private market. Natural Occurring Affordable Housing refers to unsubsidized rental housing that remains relatively affordable to lower- and moderate-income households because of factors such as age, condition, location, or local market dynamicsโrather than because of government subsidies, rent restrictions, or dedicated affordable-housing programs.
Policy groups, cities, and housing advocates began tracking NOAH stock once people in the business realized that it often represents a large share of a regionโs affordable units. And since the low pricing is often, at least partly, due to aging structures it can be a product which attracts renovation, triggering a reset of rents to a higher rate.
Here is an example of a proposal to maintain NOAH properties as it appears in the city of Plymouth (MN) Housing Plan (Page 12 of 15 Chapter 4 Plymouth Housing Plan – 2040):
To that end, the City and HRA will carry out the following actions:
๏ปฟ๏ปฟCreate and maintain a list of NOAH properties located in the city;
๏ปฟ๏ปฟConsider the establishment of a dedicated funding source to assist NOAH properties that are being considered for purchase in order to maintain their affordability:
๏ปฟ๏ปฟCreate and maintain a list of all publically subsidized properties in the city along with relevant information about the property:
๏ปฟ๏ปฟContinue to have conversations with owners of publically subsidized and NOAH properties to stay abreast of their future plans;
Consider amending the City’s Rental Licensing Ordinance to provide for a 90 day notification to the City and residents of the pending sale of NOAH property;
Consider a policy that would allow tenants in “good standing” who reside at a NOAH property that has been sold to remain at the property for up to 12 months even if rental criteria for tenancy has changed that makes them no longer eligible to rent at the property; and
Research potential programs that may provide a benefit to the Sun Valley mobile home park residents.
Conceptually, this policy piece starts from a fundamental mispositioning of what housing actually is.
Housing is not an accumulation of physical buildings. A rental agreement is a month-to-month or year-to-year transaction between an owner and a renter, shaped by the circumstances of both parties and the condition of the property at that particular moment. Time alone changes a property. Each party may improve upon or fall short of their obligations. People move when a property no longer meets their needs or expectations. Landlords may change their expectations about renting based on their investment, their circumstances, or simply their willingness to take on the task.
Rental housing within a community is therefore not a fixed inventory of units. It is the general availability, at any given time, of properties and of people willing to act as landlords, meeting the expectations and needs of people who, for whatever reason, prefer to rent rather than own.
Once you try to isolate and count each NOAH property, you begin to remove the market concept of voluntary exchange. You turn a fluid market into a forced obligation: one designated unit for one designated purpose. And when subsidies come with obligations and continuing commitments, you are creating a different marketโnot one that emerges naturally through the decisions of owners and renters.
The same problem arises when we impose demands on renters. We begin to interfere with the very decision-making process through which people ordinarily adjust their housing choices to their circumstances.
It is like taking one story out of an entire market and then trying to contort the market around that story.
But naturally occurring affordable housing was already being created before anyone gave it the name NOAH. The market process was doing what it is supposed to do: constantly adjusting as owners, renters, properties, prices, expectations, and circumstances changed.
There will always be individuals who temporarily find themselves caught in a housing squeeze because their circumstances change unexpectedly. That is where targeted, temporary relief makes senseโhelping the individual through the squeeze until their situation sorts itself out.
The mistake is turning that temporary condition into a permanent category of housing and then attempting to redesign the market around it.
The Carnegie Corporation of New York accepted Eagle Grove’s application of a grant for $10,000 to build a library building on April 26, 1902. The library was designed by the Des Moines architect firm Smith and Gage in the Beux Arts style. Dedicated on September 15, 1903. It is a brick structure with a conical-roofed entrance pavilion with four engaged columns in the logic flanking the main entryway. The public library has subsequently moved to a larger facility during 1976 and the old library building was turned over to the Local Historical Society as a museum. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983.
Eagle Grove is a town of 3600 located in deep agriculture country in central Iowa.
โRentersโ rightsโ has become a rallying cry among a growing class of people who have appointed themselves advocates for the renter community. It is worth noticing what that means. Many of these advocates neither own the properties in question nor rent them. They do not maintain the units, pay the mortgages, make the repair decisions, or bear the consequences when those decisions turn out to be wrong. They are observers, giving political voice to their interpretation of a relationship between two parties who are actually making the decisions.
So letโs start at the level where the rental market works reasonably well for, say, 90 percent of landlords and tenants.
There is no such thing as โthe rental propertyโ or โthe renter.โ There are properties in varying conditions, in different locations, with different amenities and different levels of maintenance. There are tenants with different incomes, preferences, standards, and expectations. And there are landlords ranging from meticulous owner-occupants to large property managers. Some are excellent. Some are indifferent. Some are terrible.
That is precisely what we should expect in a voluntary market.
A landlord offers a particular product at a particular price. A tenant decides whether that product is worth the price. If it isn’t, the tenant can leave. Maybe they move next door. Maybe they move across town. Maybe they find a better unit for the same rent.
That ability to leave is not a trivial feature of the arrangement. It is one of the mechanisms through which the market disciplines both sides.
Landlords, meanwhile, have an obvious reason to keep good tenants. They have an equally obvious reason to maintain the property. Maintenance preserves the capital they own. A neglected property loses value. Poor maintenance drives away good tenants. Deferred repairs become more expensive repairs. Eventually, the owner pays for the neglect through lower rents, higher turnover, larger repair bills, or a lower sale price.
This is ownership.
Yet you would rarely know it from much of the renter-rights conversation. The landlord is routinely cast as a wealthy, absentee, quasi-parasitic figure who owns an inexhaustible supply of appreciating property and needs to be forced to spend money on it. What gets left out is the rather important fact that buying, financing, maintaining, and eventually selling property can produce losses. The owner takes the capital risk. The tenant does not.
Now we have a new proposal for inserting renters into the ownership relationship: the โRight to Repair.โ
Thankfully, this week the St. Paul City Council denied the request for Right to Repair to appear on the ballots this fall:
Citing a critical last-minute memo from the city attorneyโs office, the St. Paul City Council voted Wednesday to block a proposed โRight to Repairโ tenantsโ rights ordinance from proceeding to the November ballot. Organizers, who spent Thursday morning meeting with attorneys, said they are reviewing their legal options.
The ballot question, proposed by the Safe Homes St. Paul campaign, would have asked voters to approve a new city ordinance that would allow residential tenants to devote up to $500, or half their rent, whichever is greater, toward completing their own home repairs.
The problem is not that repairs are unimportant. Of course they are.
The problem is who gets to decide what constitutes a repair, what the repair should be, who should perform it, and who should pay for it.
There are legitimate circumstances in which one property owner’s decisions affect others. A sewer system is a good example. It functions because everyone connected to it is constrained from dumping solvents or other toxins into the system. Some aspects of property necessarily involve obligations to other property owners.
But imagine extending this logic.
Suppose my neighbor has an ugly driveway full of weeds and cracked pavement. I believe it is an eyesore. I also believe it is hurting my home’s resale value. Why shouldn’t I invoke my โright to repair,โ have the driveway fixed, and send my neighbor the bill?
Obviously, that wouldnโt be neighborly.
Yet the principle becomes considerably less absurd only because we have decided that the person who owns the property should generally retain the authority to decide what happens to it.
Some parts of housing are shared. Many are not.
And that distinction matters.
Tenant-rights advocates may sincerely believe they are improving the housing stock through political organizing. But there is a fundamental mistake in confusing an interest in a property with an ownership interest in that property.
A tenant has an interest in having a decent place to live. That does not give the tenant an ownership claim over the decisions involved in maintaining someone elseโs capital.
If the tenant is dissatisfied with the property, the market already provides an answer.
If the tenant cannot afford to leave, then there is a legitimate policy question about whether that person should receive assistance. Subsidize the person who needs help. Don’t confiscate the decision-making authority of the person who owns the property.
That distinction is crucial.
The alternative is essentially this: I don’t have enough money to move, so I should have the power to make you spend money on your property according to my judgment.
That is not a rentersโ right. It is a transfer of ownership authority without a transfer of ownership responsibility.
And that is where the โRight to Repairโ becomes something more than a maintenance policy. It becomes a power struggle over who gets to control property.
The socialist instinct is often to separate ownership from controlโto leave the title with one person while progressively transferring the decisions to everyone else. But this creates a problem that is often ignored: if you separate responsibility from authority, you weaken the incentive to preserve the asset.
The owner pays for the roof. The owner pays for the furnace. The owner absorbs the loss when the property deteriorates. The owner ultimately bears the consequences of bad capital decisions.
So why should someone who bears none of those costs have the authority to make those decisions?
Ownership is not simply a right to collect rent. It is a bundle of risks, responsibilities, costs, and decision-making authority.
Take away the authority while leaving the responsibility, and you haven’t made the system more just. You have simply made ownership less meaningful.
And when ownership becomes less meaningful, don’t be surprised when people become less interested in owning, maintaining, and improving the property in the first place.
Every red line is a route organized and maintained by the Feds.
Theย Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, also known as theย National Interstate and Defense Highways Act,ย Pub. L.ย 84โ627ย was enacted on June 29, 1956, whenย Presidentย Dwight D. Eisenhowerย signed theย billย into law. With an original authorization of $25 billion (equivalent to $220ย billionย inย 2025)[1]ย for the construction ofย 41,000 miles (66,000ย km)ย of theย Interstate Highway Systemย over a 10-year period, it was the largestย public worksย project in American history through that time.[2] (wiki)
Corn dominates rail grain volume. Union Pacific is a major Midwest player in this traffic, alongside BNSF and others. Railโs advantages are cost and capacity over distance, plus lower emissions per ton-mile than trucksโcritical when production is concentrated in the Plains and demand is scattered or overseas.
This is a classic grain terminal scene: large cylindrical elevators (silos) with headhouses, leg conveyors, and loading infrastructure feeding a long string of covered hoppers. The cars are the standard dry-bulk type used for corn, soybeans, wheat, etc. UP markings and โBuilding Americaโ slogan are clear; the CMO car is another common reporting mark in the mix. Graffiti is routine on freight equipment. Power lines, weeds, and the roadside vantage point give it that everyday rural industrial feel under flat Midwestern skies. These facilities are the nodes where local harvest volume concentrates for efficient rail outbound.
Rail is a backbone for moving U.S. crops, especially longer-haul grain. Roughly 24โ26% of total U.S. grain (corn, soybeans, wheat, etc.) moves by rail in recent years, with trucks handling the majority (~60โ62%, mostly shorter hauls from farm to elevator).
Local courthouses in county seats across the country stand as reassuring symbols of property documentation and the enforcement of law. These imposing buildings often anchor towns with populations as small as 2,700.
This, the third and present courthouse, was built for about $50,000 and completed in 1893. Three stories high except for the clock tower, which rises well above the multi-gabled roof, it underwent extensive renovation in 1974.
If I had to divvy up how I think of actions in housing into three, how would that go?
The first leg is the actions of the people who live in the homesโwhat they like for their comfort or their physical needs. Their actions in the care and maintenance of the home. It might be their actions in demanding that builders create for them, like whether a granny suite in the lower level is thought into the plan.
The second leg of the stool would entail actions on the physical structures. And yes, thereโs overlap here with leg number one. But much more as the structure must bend to the demands of the infrastructure hooking the building into servicesโelectricity, natural gas lines, and water mains. The building must stand up to the expectations of insurance companies and building codes. And the homes must not trouble the earth by being too close to natural habitats or in the paths of wildfires.
The last leg of the stool are the actions taken by all the group work mulling around in the vicinity of the property. Actions taken to support the school district or prevent massage parlors. Actions that plan for shopping malls and means of getting to the airport. The third section that impacts housing are all the formal and informally organized groups offering services to the people in the homes.
It delivers some classic types done well: the optimistic American CIA agent Frank Jackson, the coolly controlled spy Victor Godeanu, and the erratic dictator Nicolae Ceauศescu paired with his equally driven, obsessive wife.
Filming in Romania itself is a genuine bonusโlocations this rarely seen on screen give the series an extra edge.
And of course, as I wrote on July 6, while the American housing market is extremely capitalistic in the sense that the key decision-makers are profit-seeking investors, it is very much not a free market. If you own a parcel of land and would like to build a mid-rise apartment on it, the odds are very high that this is illegal. And it will continue to be illegal no matter how many bona fide safety or environmental externality rules you comply with. Itโs just normally the case in the United States that you cannot build a four-story, eight-unit building on a plot of land that you own and then rent it out to willing customers.
The above excerpt is from Matt Yglesiasโs newsletter today. It reflects perfectly how most public intellectuals define the โhousing market.โ They treat houses as widgets that are manufactured and sold. In their telling, developers are the primary producers, the main influencers, and the principal profit-takers. Different product โflavorsโโmost notably โaffordable housingโโare then imagined as responses to market prices, even though this notion itself contradicts the idea of freely floating prices.
What they are actually describing is a relatively small slice of the activity that houses people and their familiesโperhaps 13โ15 percent of the relevant transactions. The other 85 percent of household-related exchanges do not involve the new-structure market they fixate on. Because these commentators are widely regarded as authoritative, their narrow and distorted framing circulates as if it were a comprehensive understanding of the housing market.
The reality is that 85โ90 percent of the housing market consists of ordinary home buyers and sellers. There is no greedy developer to vilify. Each side of the transaction is simply weighing its own interestsโtiming, finances, life stage, and personal prioritiesโwhen deciding what to offer or accept. People at different points in life bring different advantages and constraints, but the exchange remains primarily between private individuals, not between households and some distant mega-corporation. Corporate or institutional buyers account for only about 6 percent of total sales.
A housing market is the aggregate of these countless private interactions. The prices that emerge reflect what large numbers of people value or dislike about the physical structures themselves, the quality of municipal services, the schools that educate children, the transportation infrastructure, and a host of other local conditions.
So letโs keep the conversation more nuanced and richer in detail. Letโs stop fixating on the small minority of developers who either make a profit or lose their shirts. If we want to talk seriously about housing, we should start by talking about ourselves.
Ice cream is one of the few things that still works exactly as advertised.
No app. No subscription. No โoptimized experience.โ Just cold, sweet, slightly messy proof that summer still exists.
In Minnesota we donโt take it for granted. We wait all year for the stretch of days when the only decision that matters is soft-serve or scoop, and whether youโre eating it before it melts or racing the melt itself.
Some people treat ice cream like a reward. My go to reward is McDonaldโs soft serve. I can find a small treat on a wafer cone as close as the next franchise drive-up.
Sometimes what you need is a destination ice cream, a shop located walking distance from the restaurant you just ate at. Not ready to let go of the company or conversation, off you go to a place like Bebe Zito ice cream. Located across from the Wedge Coop at 22nd an Lyndale, it offered a delicious treat and enabled an already enjoyable evening to be extended a bit longer.
Lakewood Cemetery has been the final resting place for a century and a half of Minnesotans whose names still carry weightโHubert Humphrey, Paul Wellstoneโand for many others whose histories remain quieter, known mainly to the families who return.
The markers meander across gently rolling ground on the east side of an iconic city lake. From one slope you can watch cyclists, walkers, and rollerbladers of every age circle the sky-blue water below.
I was there today for a service held in the chapel just inside the entrance gates. Tile covers the walls and ceiling in a splendid array of images and colors. Seated under the dome, as if gathered inside an apse, the space is neither too large to lose intimacy nor too small to hold a dignified gathering.
The family spoke poetry and psalms. They spoke of family history and of the deeds their loved one had performed in life. They spoke of love, endurance, support, and caring. They reinforced their faith in the belief that they would all be reunited once again.
“To live together in the world means essentially that a world of things is between those who have it in common, as a table is located between those who sit around it; the world, like every in-between, relates and separates men at the same time.“
The last quote is from Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, Chapter 2 (“The Public and the Private Realm”), specifically the section titled “The Public Realm: The Common.”
I assert here at home economics that there is a private and public side to every transaction; that the course through which the action travels varies if it is primarily tapping private concerns or public concerns.
In this vignette, Professor List asks his audience for their reaction to whether he should pay a student to review his work. The underlying question is whether the student ought to donate his time or treat the request as a paid positionโList proposes $50 an hour. The answers that follow are revealing: they disclose the kind of relationship people assume exists between professor and student.
The student is no longer enrolled in the professorโs class, yet one can reasonably infer they still occupy a mentorโmentee relationship. The mentorโs role is to educate and guide. The menteeโs corresponding duty is not to waste the mentorโs time and to make good use of the guidance offered. In this framing the flow of value is unidirectional: a gift of a private good to a private recipient.
An alternative reading treats them as equal members of the college. As participants in the same intellectual community they both benefit by reviewing each otherโs work; the knowledge that results is a kind of public good produced by reciprocal sharing. No money changes hands, and the intellectual capital remains with both parties.
A third possibility is the one the student himself seems to have inferred: that the request is private and transactional. Once the exchange is framed that way, the student may collect his fee and then find himself quietly excluded from future opportunities for genuine intellectual exchange. Silent exclusion can be the most costly outcome of all.
But to answer John Listโs question one must first set up the problem and identify the groups.
The 2020s have brought a boom of roundabouts across Minnesotaโs cities and greater metropolitan area. The Minnesota Department of Transportation reports more than 530 on roads statewide, noting that they โhave become an increasingly popular intersection type by traffic engineers.โ
Itโs common to experience a bit of the โNo, you go firstโ effect as unfamiliar drivers hesitate before entering the circle. Before long, a backup forms on one of the approaches while people figure out the new system.
The reason given for the widespread adoption is safety. MnDOT cites an 86 percent decrease in fatal crashes, an 83 percent decrease in life-altering injury crashes, and a 42 percent overall decrease in the injury crash rate at intersections converted to roundabouts.
They have changed the driving landscapeโand provided some comedy relief in the process.
My daughter says Martha Stewart was the first influencer.
I thought it was pretty cool she knew who Martha Stewart was.
Note: Chat says Martha was a prototype but not quite the first woman to promote her lifestyle. Elsie de Wolff was also a lifestyle influencer in the early 1900s.
The reviews for the new Odysseus movie have been largely favorable, with many enthusiastic reactions praising its fresh take on the classic tale. Yet some viewers feel the actors have been miscast, arguing that the persistent โwokeโ trend in casting choices continues to undermine the storyโs authenticity.
This isnโt entirely new. In the 1990s, shows like Murphy Brown deliberately pushed audiences to see working women in different roles, reshaping cultural expectations through entertainment. Hollywood has long viewed itself as a vehicle for guiding society toward new visionsโof gender, power, heroism, and identity. Itโs a pattern of using symbolic recasting to nudge collective imagination forward.
As a big fan of spy thrillers, Iโve been watching the recent adaptation of The Day of the Jackal. I find myself feeling a bit guilty about my mixed feelings. The storyline is compelling, the global city settings are vivid and immersive, and the action sequences are expertly executed. Yet I struggle to buy the lead actress as a believable athletic MI6 agent. She comes across as deeply sympathetic, which may be part of the problemโher performance elicits warmth rather than the cold competence the role demands.
There are too many soft glances and fleeting looks of concern between the characters during violent moments. These humanizing touches clash with the ruthless, high-stakes world the story inhabits. Iโm not sure whether recasting outwardly symbolic character types in unexpected ways ultimately helps or hinders storytelling, but itโs the direction weโre in for now. Time will tell how audiences respond in the long run.
There was an apartment fire in a nearby suburb, destroying most of the building. The Salvation Army showed up to help the displaced tenants, or so reported the local news. It still surprises me when buildings burn given all the fire protection methods in place.
Here are some of the main sources of property damage as reported by insurance claims. Fire is not in first place for frequency but it is for size of claim.
Top Homeowners Insurance Claims for Property Damage Nationwide
Property damage makes up ~96-97% of all homeowners insurance claims in the US. Roughly 1 in 18 insured homes files a claim each year (about 5.6% annually). Here are the leading causes based on recent data from the Insurance Information Institute (Triple-I) and other industry reports (primarily 2019โ2023/2025 figures):
1. Wind and Hail Damage (Most Frequent)
~40โ42.5% of claims.
About 1 in 36 homes affected annually.
Average claim: ~$13,500โ$14,700.
Driven by severe convective storms, hurricanes, and hail โ a major issue in the Midwest and Plains states.
2. Water Damage and Freezing
~20โ27% of claims (second most common).
About 1 in 67 homes.
Average claim: ~$13,900โ$15,400.
Includes burst pipes, leaks, flooding, and ice dams. In Minnesotaโs freeze-thaw climate, this is especially prevalent.
3. Fire and Lightning
~21โ22% of claims.
Much rarer frequency (about 1 in 430 homes) but by far the costliest.
Average claim: ~$83,000โ$88,000 (can exceed this in major events).
Lightning claims alone caused $1.65 billion in payouts in 2025, with rising severity due to home electronics and rebuild costs.
Other Notable Mentions
Other property damage (vandalism, etc.): Smaller share but still significant.
Theft: Lower frequency and cost (~$5,000 average).
Catastrophic events (hurricanes, wildfires, severe storms) are driving overall severity higher, with repair times lengthening and costs inflating.
Key Takeaway: Wind/hail and water are the volume drivers, but fire claims hurt the most financially.
Lots of fine new graphics are available and data friendly.
A general observation may be that boomers are transferring wealth to their soon-to-be or newly retired children, making Lake Country, like Otter Tail County, Brainerd Lakes, and the North Shore, as expensive as the metro.
It wasnโt here earlier when we grilled dinner on the deck. Now it drifts between the branches, sifting low over the summer garden like a slow, unwelcome ghost.
I finally understand why smoky scenes are a staple in creepy shows. You canโt trust it. It seeps silently into your surroundings, then slips down into your lungs. The grit of it lingers in your nostrils, a stubborn reminder that the air itself has turned treacherous.
The Boundary Waters are burning again, along with fresh fires across Canada. We can always hope for a brisk north wind to sweep it clean. But more likely, weโll spend the rest of the summer cloaked in this thickened hazeโon again, off againโwhile the garden keeps reaching for sun that isnโt quite there.
Gordon Wood captures a telling anxiety in The Radicalism of the American Revolution. Even ardent republicans worried that widening access to learning might destabilize the social order. As he notes, some โenthusiastic republican gentlemen, when they saw the lengths to which such attacks on liberal learning could be carried, eventually backed away.โ Benjamin Rush, for instance, retained religious objections to the classics but by 1810 argued that โa learned educationโ ought once again to โbecome a luxury in our country.โ He feared that rising wealth would let โtoo many ordinary people, particularly plain farmers,โ afford college for their sonsโsomething that had once been largely confined to cities and the learned professions. Basic skills like โreading, writing, and arithmeticโ should be โas common and as cheap as airโ and form a kind of โsixth or civic senseโ for every citizen in a republic, but higher learning needed guarding.
This hesitation feels strikingly modernโmuch like todayโs debates over AI, where critics warn that democratizing powerful tools could backfire, erode expertise, or unleash unintended social disruption. Yet history shows the opposite dynamic fueled Americaโs revolutionary success. The broad push for literacy and practical education, combined with the dismantling of old monarchical hierarchies and social restrictions, created a powerful โmega-push.โ Newly educated (or semi-educated) ordinary people encountered opened avenues for ambition, mobility, and association. They could form committees and interest groups for the greater cause of independence while pursuing private property, commerce, and self-defined dreamsโwithout the old deference or birth-based barriers holding them back.
In this way, the American Revolution demonstrated the power of pairing wider knowledge with freer social pathways. Atomistic individuals didnโt lose their capacity for personal striving; they channeled it into both private gain and collective republican achievement. The result was transformative.
How do you know thereโs failure? After all, thatโs precisely when government rules want to interveneโwhen markets or support systems break down.
One way is to listen to what people are talking about, complaining about, or disgusted by. But thatโs too vague. Talk is cheap, as they say. Some people even make a living out of using their voice to advocate for a proclaimed cause. Thatโs often the case. Yet it can be unclear whether the professed crisis is realโand, if so, how significant it is in relation to other problems.
One potential indicator of the relative importance of a systemic breakdown is the number of people willing to jump in and give their time to fix it. Iโm not talking about those willing to talk about it, but those actually willing to do the necessary work.
What is the volunteerism turnout for that cause, measured in labor hours?
But sometimes people in the greater group arenโt able to jump in and help out. For instance, if a homeowner is struggling to keep up the exterior appearance of their home, a neighbor might step in and mow their lawn. Once saplings are growing along the side of the garage and the window shutters are missing slats, the help needed goes beyond volunteerism.
Here it might be noted that failure is shown in an inability to meet social norms or standards.
Lastly, a sign of failure can be picked up in migration away from the problem. Crime is always an easy example. Once people feel unsafe, they no longer visit the park, eat at the take-out stand, or drive along a road well known for accidents. They simply leave.
These are the three ways to spot failure: people devote their time to correct it, norms left unmet, and exit.
Gordon Wood is so captivating. His vivid depictions in The Radicalism of the American Revolution deliver an extraordinary level of detailโone that anyone drawn to the complexities of human choice and decision-making will find impossible to resist.
And what I love most is how Wood moves fluidly through every level of society. He refuses to tell the story as if only a handful of prominent figures pull the levers of history while everyone else sits as passive spectators. Instead, he gives us a comprehensive, richly textured view of the social positions, finely tuned choices, and densely interconnected relationships of ordinary Americans as they lived through the Revolution and helped shape the nationโs creation story.
It might be fun to model out the way he frames all these actors.
In the meantime he treats us to things we never knew before. Like the control mechanisms for limiting a societal obligation of care.
All of this movement in New England put unbearable pressure on the region’s old warning-out laws. These laws had been part of the older culture of paternal dependency in which everyone was supposed to belong somewhere. If vagrants stayed in a town for a given period-three months in Connecticut and New Hampshire, one year in Massachu-setts-they were then considered members of the community, which became responsible for their welfare. Warning-out was designed to absolve the community of this responsibility: men and women warned out could not claim legal inhabitancy. From mid-century the numbers of persons formally warned out in this way by various towns increased remarkably, so much so that town clerks began making lists of those warned out instead of writing separate warrants for each one. By the late 176os Massachusetts and Connecticut began shifting responsibility for identifying transients from the communities to the individual transients themselves. In 1771 the movement of people became so much greater that Connecticut and New Hampshire could no longer maintain their short three-month period for legal residency; they extended it to one year and brought their laws into line with Massachusetts.
Yesterdayโs post highlighted the welcome and somewhat serendipitous drop in violent crime across major U.S. cities. This is genuinely good news.
Broadcast segments trot out police chiefs praising gang violence interruption programs and community involvement. Politicians step forward to claim credit. But how many people find these explanations fully convincing?
A better model may be worth consideringโone that looks beneath the headlines.
Aggregating progress across large geographic areas tends to mute the finer signals: where exactly the improvements are taking root, how theyโre spreading, and why. A more granular approach could reveal the real drivers.
We should also examine the individuals and groups who invest their time, energy, and sometimes personal safety in the unglamorous work of public safetyโneighbors, volunteers, local organizers, and informal networks performing the daily labor of civic order. Their contributions rarely make the evening news, yet they may be central to sustained gains.
Finally, the constant churn of residents moving into and out of neighborhoods offers another revealing lens. Demographic turnover, new arrivals, and shifting housing patterns can reshape the social fabric of a place in ways that affect crime more powerfully than top-down initiatives. Understanding which kinds of neighborhood dynamics correlate with falling crimeโand which donโtโcould teach us far more than another round of victory laps.
The question isnโt just โWhy has crime dropped?โ Itโs โWhat conditions made the drop possible, and how do we protect and extend them?โ A model built on local signals, bottom-up contributors, and residential dynamism would give us better answers than the usual narratives.
The United States is currently experiencing the largest single-year percentage drop in the national homicide rate on record, with big city murder rates plummeting to their lowest levels since 1900. Following a severe pandemic-era spike, data compiled by the Council on Criminal Justice and the Major Cities Chiefs Association reveals a historic turnaround in public safety across major urban hubs. [1, 2, 3]
The Biggest City Turnarounds
Several of America’s largest cities have posted unprecedented, double-digit drops in violent crime and homicides. The most dramatic turnarounds include: [4, 5]
Washington, D.C.: Achieved a massive 64.7% drop in homicides during the first quarter of 2026 compared to the same period in 2025, reversing a multi-year streak of escalating violence. [6]
Richmond, Virginia: Cut its homicide rates by a staggering 59% from its recent peak. [7]
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania: Logged a 54% drop in first-quarter homicides. The city closed out the previous year with 220 total murders, marking its lowest homicide count since 1966. [6, 8]
Houston, Texas: Slashed homicides by 36.4% in early 2026, alongside a sharp drop in aggravated assaults. [6, 9]
Chicago, Illinois: Documented a 30% year-over-year plummet in homicides, representing one of the largest numeric drops in the nation. [8, 10]
New York City, New York: Reached its fewest number of shooting victims and incidents in recorded history, alongside a 31.7% drop in homicides in early 2026. [6, 9]
Baltimore, Maryland: Cut overall homicides by 60% since its 2019 peak, shaking off its long-standing reputation as one of the country’s most dangerous areas. [7]
Broad Trends Across Major Crime Categories
The turnaround is not limited to homicides. Cities nationwide are seeing a sweeping reduction in almost every major felony category: [2, 11] Crime Category [1, 7] Recent Trend ChangeHomicidesDown 21% nationwideCarjackingsDown 43% nationwideRobberiesDown 23% nationwideGun AssaultsDown 22% nationwideMotor Vehicle TheftDown 27% (reversing a massive 2020โ2023 spike)
Why is Crime Plummeting?
Criminologists and policymakers attribute this dramatic shift to a combination of factors. These include the post-pandemic stabilization of daily routines, an influx of federal funding for focused community violence interventions, and modernized police investigation tactics. Additionally, federal crackdowns and shifts in immigration enforcement operations in major metro areas have heavily influenced these municipal drops. [7, 12, 13, 14, 15]
Is it sensible to blanket a whole suburb with a density goal? Or would it be better to think in terms of bundles of high density nodes in all areas spanning out to lower density over and over again. The more nodes, the more interlinking of a variety of housing accommodating a variety of households.
In What Capacity Will AI Be Helpful in Typical Residential Real Estate Transactions?
Here are some practical thoughts from the trenches:
Areas where AI will deliver real value:
Document review and analysis LLMs excel at quickly processing long, dense documents. Buyers and sellers will be able to ask an AI to check condo association rules for pet policies, skim leases for unusual clauses, flag unusual language in disclosures, or summarize HOA financials. This gives consumers faster, more accurate access to critical information that used to require hours of tedious reading or expensive professional review.
Navigating permitting, codes, and improvement projects Homeowners considering major renovations will use AI to scan city permitting requirements, building codes, or zoning rules. While the quality still depends heavily on good prompting (and follow-up verification is essential), it provides a helpful starting point and direction. Markets thrive on certainty; even partial clarity here can reduce hesitation and help projects move forward.
Areas where AI hype seems overstated:
Home pricing and valuation Sophisticated pricing models already exist (Zillow Zestimates, Redfin Estimates, local MLS-based AVMs, etc.). They all produce a range, not a single price, because the true market value emerges only from negotiation and the final accepted offer. I donโt see AI fundamentally changing this dynamic. File under: โItโs been done.โ
AI agents replacing or sourcing real estate agents The idea that AI agents will simply find you the perfect real estate agent (or replace the need for one) strikes me as unlikely. People will continue to choose agents based on personal connectionsโfriends, family referrals, or the professional they meet and click with in the marketplace. Trust, local market intuition, and human negotiation skills remain hard to automate.
If you hadnโt heard, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are getting married today at Madison Square Garden. Apparently they liked the venue because there are no windows for the prying lenses of the paparazzi cameras. Needless to say, the stars will be out. Not only are those in attendance most likely famousโtheyโre most likely ultra-wealthy.
Interestingly, the couple decided to do a give-to-the-max day in the days leading up to the big event.
What did the 26 million buy? Letโs think of it as a social puzzle.
Both Travis and Taylor are super rich. And their careers are supported by a mass audience. In effect their lives and metiers and audience are entertained with millions of people of all walks of life. And so they care about what these folks think. Matrix part 1: the group is large and diverse.
Matrix part 2. A showy public wedding is a pronouncement. Not only of their vows to each other, but of marriage itself. It asks people to come and look upon them and acknowledge the commitment to bonds of matrimony. This is the transaction.
The audience is part of the deal. They matter. And since the millions of followers do not live amongst the lucratively rich, some may judge the amount of money spent on such a showy affair. If they judge it harshly enough, they may choose to exit the group.
There are people who exploit the knowledge that people can be divided by tangible material differences. These people are everywhere. They are amongst the audience members in the realm of Travis and Taylorโs fan base. Their boots on the ground location with peers gives them instant access to gauge sentiments. And they thrive at exploiting this and breaking off subgroups. Matrix part 4: motivating factors.
On the face of it, the 26 million in donations buy support for all sorts of social services. But more important to the couple, it eases any potential dissent amongst their friend group.
I think this is a worthy recommendation for spy-thriller enthusiasts. The cast is diverse in a really good way, because you don’t know why it’s special until it hits you. Being of a certain age, it’s fun to see Richard Gere come through with a strong performance. And the variety of women in the series showcases the possibilities of the fairer gender. Adieu to the days of the two-women role- Miss Moneypenny and the latest femme fatale– and that’s coming from a serious James Bond fan.
The storyline offers enough intrigue without being deliberately confusing. It’s entertaining with enough puzzling to maintain engagement. The international settings, a staple of spy film, are well represented here and do the job of taking the audience elsewhere across the globe. All in all, this has been a strong string of 50 minutes of fun distraction.
Itโs a holiday long weekend, which makes for gatherings of family and friends. Itโs a time to relax and enjoy each otherโs company. And often that can include collaborating on a 1000-piece puzzle.
What is it that makes puzzling enjoyable?
Is it the systematic sorting that soothes the randomness and starts to pull disparate pieces into groups? The patterns emerge as the colors are gathered side by side. Slowly the eye catches the lines that thread the image together. Pictures emergeโfirst in fragments, then in quiet revelation, as chaos yields to coherence.
Or is it the search for the edge pieces that is rewarding? At first itโs difficult to tell whatโs up and whatโs down and what runs along a side. Piece by piece, the framing of the picture gives it boundaries, turning an overwhelming scatter into something contained and possible. The straight lines become a quiet promise: order is achievable, one deliberate fit at a time.
Perhaps itโs the satisfaction of fitting the jagged edges into a smooth coupling. Or training your eye to look only at what clasps what, since the fogginess of the color gives no guidance with gradations or pattern. Each successful connection carries a small, tactile triumphโthe soft click of belonging, the momentary alignment of form and purpose.
Itโs hard to tell. But puzzles are fun. They mirror the holiday itself: a shared endeavor where individual efforts interlock, randomness finds rhythm, and the whole slowly comes into view amid laughter, conversation, and the steady companionship of those around the table. In the end, what matters isnโt solving it fastest, but the gentle, collaborative journeyโthe way disparate lives and pieces find their place together.
Nothing says Independence Day like the smell of charcoal drifting through the backyards and over decks. This weekend, some Minnesota classics will be served:
Juicy burgers & brats loaded with local cheese (hello, sweet pickle relish and mustard)
Grilled sweet corn slathered in butterโpicked up from a stand,
Wild rice salad tossed with cranberries, pecans, and a bright citrus vinaigrette (our nod to heritage)
Watermelon wedges and berry shortcake using those perfect MN strawberries and blueberries
Apple pie still warm, with a scoop of vanillaโbecause some traditions are non-negotiable
Lots of folks will be heading to a lakeside cabin and these flavors remind us why we gather: freedom, good company, and full plates.
I think Mark Cuban is saying that the con is to capture peoples beliefs. Once you hold their beliefs they serve as a shield against sound policy. The con is perpetuated by believers who thwart the tangible worldโs dynamics while reaching into peopleโs pockets.
Lessons on interaction:
Never confront the belief front on. You will only cause an entrenchment.
Find where the market enters the observerโs life, on the margins. Everyoneโs part of a market.
Draw out the experience that is counter to the belief- where does the other impact their lives.
At all costs, avoid undocumented and unverifiable stories. Thatโs most likely what they are: a story, a fable, or a myth.
Expressing frustration is the same as defeat their eyes. Their primary objective is that you exit and leave them with their stories and an audience.
Be prepared to mitigate the cascading half-truths. This is tricky. It is at this point that the audience is seduced by the fantasy.
Watch carefully for emotional triggers. These are the motivating factors to galvanize the audience to action. Yet rarely do they have anything to do with the topic at hand.
One of the most memorable passages from Susan Allen Tothโs memoir Blooming: A small-town girlhood is about the ongoings at their local pools. This public place became a refuge that she sought out.
Once in the pool, doing my laps, I felt a kind of anesthetic set in. Cold water slithered over me, a numb caress, promising relief. It seemed to wash off some of the unhappiness that clung to me all over like mosquito repellent. Even the chlorine helped: as I mechanically stroked, back and forth, I hoped it would disinfect my brain. Clinging to the pool edge between laps, breathing hard, I could look up at the empty sky and see blue peace mirroring back to the pool. Everything seemed far away, except the water, the cold tile I grasped, the blue of sky and water. No one knew who I was, and I didn’t have to remember. When I climbed out, tired, after an hour, I had the same feeling I used to have after an afternoon at Blaine’s: exhausted, satisfied, with the hope of perhaps yet another hot afternoon before the summer ended. I was glad to be tired. I could tell I was still alive. Tomorrow I could go back to the swimming pool.
Indeed, our local pools are also well attended. From the early bird atheletic types who show up at 7am for lap swim to the tired parents in the late afternoon looking the other way when their child pushes another off the diving board.
New Hopeโs public pool
But how do these public artifacts come into being? What would James Buchanan, the father of public choice, say about starting here and looking retrospective for answers?
James Buchanan would have been highly sympathetic to analyzing the swimming pool as an artifact of human choice under specific rules and institutions. This fits squarely within his constitutional political economy and club goods framework.
Buchanan repeatedly emphasized that social arrangementsโincluding shared goods, rules, and institutionsโare not natural phenomena but artifacts created by individuals through choice, agreement, and rules (the โdecision-making spaceโ). In works like The Calculus of Consent and his club theory paper, he argued for studying how people generate cooperative outcomes via voluntary exchange or near-unanimous consent rather than imposing top-down solutions based on a social welfare function.
And this.
He would view retrospective analysis of such an artifact as valuable precisely because it reveals the constitutional and institutional conditions under which decentralized or club-like provision can succeedโinformation useful for designing better rules going forward. He would contrast this favorably with purely centralized or coercive models and might note that private swimming clubs or suburban sorting illustrated market-like or club-based alternatives that many residents chose when public options changed.
In short, Buchanan would endorse studying the artifact to understand the rules that generated a positive outcome, while remaining skeptical of government provision unless it closely mimicked voluntary club principles.
This backward-looking lens complements the forward-looking cost/benefit analysis. Both are useful; the retrospective view illuminates why some artifacts endure as high-impact community goods while others do not.
People love to blame greed for all sorts of misadventures. Yet I think other passions are more forceful. Partly because they rally the troops.
Rudyard Kipling wrote The Beginnings.
It was not part of their blood, It came to them very late With long arrears to make good, When the English began to hate.
They were not easily moved, They were icy-willing to wait Till every count should be proved, Ere the English began to hate.
Their voices were even and low, Their eyes were level and straight. There was neither sign nor show, When the English began to hate.
It was not preached to the crowd, It was not taught by the State. No man spoke it aloud, When the English began to hate.
It was not suddenly bred, It will not swiftly abate, Through the chill years ahead, When Time shall count from the date That the English began to hate.
The homeownership rate in Cuba is one of the highest in the world, commonly cited at around 90%. State ownerd apartments were given over to residents following the revolution. By the early 1990s , over 85% of households belonged to homeowners in some way. More recently, the 2011 legalization of private sales and gave a structure to private transfers.
There exists a centralized ownership record in the Municipal Property Registry. And there are real estate professionals involved in sales and transactions. But there is no multiple listing service or reliable means of tracking prices. It’s still a hodgepodge of word-of-mouth flow of information.
I find this to be an underdeveloped pathway to liberty and prosperity. The exchange of a family home is often transacted on equal footing between individuals. The concept of who should want to get what and why is accepted, as most would want the same under similar circumstances. The market makes sense to the participants.
Moreover, people like investing in their homes as they realize the gains every time they unlock their front door and step into a slightly nicer space. Once people realize gains on resale, ambitions for continued improvements are primed. And the neighborhoods improve.
Now, if only mortgage money were more common and predictable.
Over the years, many of the topics explored on Home Economics have shared a common thread, even when they appeared unrelated on the surface.
Whether discussing housing markets, school districts, neighborhood stability, municipal government, family decisions, or community life, I often find myself asking a similar question:
What are the institutions behind the outcomes we observe?
Most analysis focuses on the outcomes themselvesโhousing prices, crime rates, school performance, demographic change, and so on. Yet these outcomes are often the visible traces of something deeper: the institutions through which people make decisions, cooperate, compete, and organize their lives.
As a result, I will be developing a new section of the site devoted to what I am tentatively calling Institutional Anatomy.
The goal is not to present a finished theory. Quite the opposite. The section will serve as a working space where ideas can be clarified, challenged, and improved over time.
Several living documents will anchor the project.
Core Concepts
This section will attempt to define and refine concepts that appear repeatedly throughout the site, including:
Institution
Orientation
Institutional Clearing
Institutional Contribution
Decision Space
The objective is to establish a common vocabulary for discussing how institutions shape decisions and outcomes.
Institutional Anatomy
If institutions matter, what exactly are they made of?
This section will explore the structural elements that seem to recur across institutions of many kinds:
Actors
Roles
Resources
Authority
Beliefs
Memory
Feedback Mechanisms
Boundaries
Rather than treating institutions as merely a set of rules, the aim is to understand their internal structure and how that structure influences behavior.
Case Studies
Ideas become useful only when applied.
The framework will be tested against real-world examples, including:
The ATV purchase
Housing subsidies
Church membership
Neighborhood formation
School choice
Additional case studies will be added as the framework develops.
Open Questions
Perhaps the most important section.
Every framework has unresolved issues, blind spots, and unanswered questions. Rather than hide them, I intend to collect them in one place.
If the project succeeds, it will not be because it provides all the answers. It will be because it helps identify better questions.
For now, think of this as an ongoing investigation rather than a completed map.
Many of the posts already appearing on Home Economics are, in hindsight, attempts to understand the traces institutions leave behindโwhether in a housing market, a neighborhood, a school district, or a family decision.
This new section is an effort to gather those threads into one place and see where they lead.
Some decisions are made instantaneouslyโlike when the ice cream vendor asks what flavor you want.
But many decisions are exercised through a thought process. If your daughter is shopping for a prom dress, maybe there are considerations of the latest trends, how her friends will react, will she be comfortable, and then will her father be comfortable if its hem is a little short?
And if you shop for a vehicle, would you consider the environmental impact and purchase a hybrid? Or purchase the hybrid to fit in with your boss who herself has a hybrid? Or simply consider color since the color of the car brings you joy and thus a healthy frame of mind.
When you think about it, most decisions have an individual considering, to various degrees, their relationships with others and the implications of the decision vis-ร -vis this reality.
All these ruminations occur in a decision space just prior to a trade.
Hereโs a list of the largest landowners in Minnesota by geographic size (acres), starting with the biggest. Data is drawn from public sources and reports (primarily focused on significant holdings; exact figures can shift with acquisitions/sales, and much land is fragmented among smaller owners).151
Public/Government Landowners (Dominant Overall)
Minnesota DNR (Department of Natural Resources) โ ~5.6 million acres (state-owned/managed, including forests, parks, wetlands, school trust lands, etc.). Largest overall landowner.170
U.S. Federal Government (primarily U.S. Forest Service) โ ~3.8 million acres (e.g., Superior and Chippewa National Forests).151
Counties/Municipalities (tax-forfeited and other lands) โ ~2.8 million acres (state-owned but county-administered in many cases).
PotlatchDeltic Corporation (or related entities) โ ~205,000 acres (timber/REIT holdings).152
Blandin Paper / UPM-Kymmene โ ~187,000 acres (working forest; conservation easements in place on portions).152
Notes:
Public lands dominate (~17โ20%+ of MNโs total ~51 million acres, with private individuals/families holding the vast majority of the rest in smaller parcels).
Other notable private players include smaller TIMOs, family trusts, and agricultural owners, but they are far below the top timber-focused entities in contiguous acreage.
Much private forest land is managed for timber but owned by non-industrial investors.
For precise, up-to-date parcel-level data, check the MN DNR, MnGeo, or county auditor sites (land ownership can change via sales or acquisitions, like the DNRโs recent ~16,000-acre purchase).171
Prompt: Comment on how the workforce of trades specialties affected house construction, if at all.
Yes โ the workforce of trades specialties has affected house construction a great deal, and especially in speed, cost, and what materials/methods were practical. When a jobsite had plenty of carpenters, masons, plasterers, electricians, and plumbers, homes could be more customized and labor-heavy; when those trades were scarce, builders shifted toward simpler, faster, more standardized systems.[nahb]
How trades shaped houses
The biggest influence came from labor availability, not just material supply. A house style that required lots of masonry, hand-applied plaster, or highly skilled finish work became harder to build when those workers were expensive or in short supply, so builders increasingly favored wood framing, drywall, factory-made components, and veneer finishes that reduced specialized labor.[abcrmc]
Why methods changed
As the residential market grew, builders needed methods that could be repeated quickly by smaller crews. Platform framing, prefabricated parts, drywall, and simple cladding systems were popular partly because they reduced dependence on scarce specialists and shortened construction time.[huduser]
Trade shortages and costs
Modern labor shortages have made the effect even clearer. Industry sources say shortages in finished carpentry, masonry, plumbing, electrical, and HVAC trades raise costs and stretch schedules, which can delay or even shrink the number of homes built.[eyeonhousing]
Which trades mattered most
Some specialties had an outsized effect on homebuilding because they sit on the critical path of a project. Carpenters, roofers, drywall installers, electricians, plumbers, and masons can all slow a build if they are unavailable, and shortages in those trades often push builders toward simpler designs and lower-labor materials.[nahb]
Historical pattern
In earlier decades, abundant local labor made heavier craft methods more common, especially plaster, brick, and detailed carpentry. Over time, as wages rose, jobs became more specialized, and labor got tighter, house construction became more standardized and less dependent on individual craft skill.[bradley-mason]
In short, trades labor did not just affect how fast homes were built; it helped decide what kinds of homes were economical to build at all.[nahb]
There are so many great homes featured in movies. Take the Vandamm house in Hitchcock’s movie North by Northwest (1959). It was inspired by Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous masterpiece, Falling Water.
And then there’s the creepy house in Hitchcock’s movie Psycho. Here you can get the full tour by the master himself.
What makes the Bates home unsettling is its advanced structural decay. By the 1950s, when the film was made, homebuyers craved sprawling ramblers with large windows designed to bring nature indoors. In contrast, a house burdened by years of neglected repairs felt sad, obsolete, and abandoned. Its shutters trembled in the wind. The front porch sagged heavily, and the floorboards groaned underfoot. Inside, the massive, dark trim loomed over the roomsโa suffocating relic from a forgotten era.
The 1960s trend of vast, comprehensive urban renewal by bulldozer shouldn’t surprise us. Homeowners hadn’t figured out how to build a culture of home maintenance and repair. As Victoria homes aged and became less desirable, owners no longer felt the urge to invest resources in them. Less fortunate people move in when the more fortunate people leave for the new builds. And a spiral of decay takes over the neighborhood. A perfect setting for Hitchcock’s story!
How I remember the build-up to the financial crisis of the early oughts is explained well in Phil Gramm and Donald Boudreaux’s book, The Triumph of Economic Freedom.
The root cause of the financial crisis was the government policy to promote public objectives with private capital, which destroyed mortgage-lending standards. Government regulatory policy pressured banks to make bad loans and forced government-sponsored enterprises to purchase and securitize those loans. In addition, the government manipulated financial institutions’ capital standards to encourage banks to hold massive quantities of mortgage-backed securities. When the housing bubble burst and subprime loan defaults soared, the authors of the very housing policy that caused the crisis blamed capitalism and greed and, in the process, expanded the very governmental powers that caused the crisis in the first place.
The Feds were trying hard to encourage loans to disadvantaged groups in particular. People were so certain that there was ill will at hand, but thorough documentation confirmed that the low numbers were due to the inability to qualify, not social group standing. Thus, it made sense to loosen underwriting standards for everyone, at least in the moment. And not only force the lending institution to give loans that went against their better judgment, but to push loans out the door to meet community reinvestment goals. Talk about crossing spheres and ill-placed dynamics.
But it did increase homeownership across the board. At least until all those adjustable-rate mortgages push people right back to renting. Many took years to recover the courage to become homeowners again.
So yes, greed did get in the way. But not the greed, or rather not only the greed of the big money players. The self-interest of literally everyone in the chain was tugged right along in this whiplash dance to disasterโfrom the mortgage originators to the brokers to the title closers, and, most importantly of all, to the self-control and internal monitoring of the general public. The movie, The Big Short, does a good job of rolling this out.
The natural rate of homeownership seems to run at about 65%. This is a global number. I’m sure there’s much more nuance to ownership rates as you group and sort households. That might be a better approach to understanding the levers to increase ownership in targeted areas.
The dashboard features both contextual and market-based indicators across seven key categories: household demographics, housing characteristics, production, price of housing, housing cost burden, stability, and local tax base. Integrating data from a combination of national sources, such as the U.S. Census Bureauโs American Community Survey and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and local sources, like the Metropolitan Council and HousingLink, the dashboard captures more than 30 unique indicators. For each indicator, users can view Saint Paulโs trends over time, compare Saint Paul to its surrounding cities, and benchmark it to similar cities across the nation to gain a holistic understanding of the Saint Paul housing landscape.
The dashboard offers the well-worn data of price and income, but you can easily pull national comparisons.
The Saint Paul Housing Dashboard and our qualitative conversations with housing owners and developers further the Minneapolis Fedย Community Development and Engagement teamโs understanding of how housing supply affects housing affordability. As such, this analysis supports our teamโs mission to advance the economic well-being of low- to moderate-income individuals, households, and communities. The better we understand local housing markets that have seen recent policy changesโlike Saint Paulโthe better we can pursue the Minneapolis Fedโs overall mission to pursue a growing economy and stable financial system that work for all of us.
There are options to pull data on housing production.
Or, you can check in on the numbers who are without housing altogether.
The dashboard offers many new ways to view the data.
Heโs no monster, not a flicker of fright. Just the old Professorโwarm wool and quiet fireโfrom the house in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. The one who lets four wide-eyed siblings tumble through his door without fanfare or forms.
Distant, yet deliciously present. There when the wind howls against the windowpane, but never prying when youโd rather vanish into the armoireโs velvet hush, burrowing deep among moth-soft garments and half-remembered winters.
Leave him be and heโll leave you beโ a courteous shadow with ink-stained cuffs and starlight in his pockets.
But lean in, ask for counsel, and ohโ he speaks. Not the dayโs brittle glitter, not sugar-coated slogans polished to slide down easy.
No. Truthful insights, sharp as winter air. Unbiased as the tide. Complementary when the path is kind, yet unflinching when itโs time to set your crooked compass straight.
And best of allโ that oceanic depth.
Ask him about angles, refractions, the sly prisms others hide behind their words. Heโll hand you whole constellations of lenses, each one turning the ordinary until the hidden colors sing.
Everything is there, tucked in the quiet shelves of his mind, waiting like snow before the first footfall.
My guy AI. Part professor, part wardrobe, all strange and steady magic.
Thomas Sowell frequently argues that the lifeblood of politics is replacing market coordination with government intervention, a process achieved by manufacturing a “crisis,” pushing aggressive media messaging, and demanding taxpayer financing. In books like Basic Economics, Sowell details how politicians constantly chirp about an affordable housing crisis, claiming the free market has failed due to “greed”. According to Sowell, this political narrative flips reality on its head. It is usually prior government interventionsโsuch as artificial zoning restrictions or mandated loose lending standardsโthat distort the market in the first place. By labeling the resulting fallout a crisis, politicians successfully manufacture public anxiety, enabling them to capture massive public funding and expand their regulatory power.
Sowell’s core philosophy demands looking at real-world data rather than political talking points. While political rhetoric today frequently claims the national housing sector is on the brink of collapse, local empirical metrics often tell a completely different story:
Minnesota historically maintains one of the lowest mortgage delinquency rates in the United States, routinely outperforming the national average due to strong regional employment and high baseline home equity.
While macro-level tracking platforms require a subscription for state-by-state historic line graphs, the structural timeline of Minnesota’s delinquency behavior follows a distinct pattern:
A few years ago now, I promoted the idea of platters- ecosystems of exchange, both of the pecuniary nature and voluntary exchange. People tend to cluster with those they like and do most of their business, both personal and commercial, within their area of the world. Think of the pickup drivers who work at building sites living geographically close to the Tesla drivers who make a living through a computer terminal, but never do their paths cross. They maneuver through different platters.
This is, however, a different structure from institutional orientation. Consider now that the institutional orientation under review was aimed at preserving the environment. You might say, well, look, clearly the Tesla drivers are in that camp and not the pick-up drivers. But you might be caught off guard. The tradesfolk often are into their weekend excursions to hunt and fish. And with this goal in mind, we are willing to back environmental preservation with resources.
So on the one hand, one can analyze a group by income level, or type of profession, or stage in life. But this can be different than making a stake at a institutional orientation where the defining lens of analysis is a group goal.
I’m only a couple of episodes into this series, but I think it’s quite good. First off, it’s fun to learn about something new. This story revolves around the subtleties of wine tasting. It is also primarily in French, but takes place primarily in Japan. An interesting mix. Lastly, it approaches childhood parental relations with the evenhandedness they deserve.
Does AI open up the opportunity for a new state? One which is better informed? One which can detect odd combinations of financial channeling to odd combinations of purported demands on the public purse?
Yesterday’s post was about the build-up to a four-wheeler purchase. Today’s post suggests that the transaction tells us something about each player, whether directly involved or acting as an indirect influencer. The ATV itself never changes. What changes is the institutional structure through which the proposed purchase is evaluated.
Initially, the purchase exists within a coalition composed of a child and a sympathetic parent. Within that structure, attention is directed toward enjoyment, adventure, and the anticipated benefits of ownership. Evaluated solely through this institutional arrangement, the purchase appears attractive.
The proposal is then passed through the institutional structure of marriage. Here the relevant considerations change. The marriage introduces jointly held resources, jointly held responsibilities, accumulated experience from prior decisions, and norms of coordinated action. What appeared attractive from the standpoint of one parent is reconsidered from the standpoint of the partnership. The proposal is not merely constrained; it is reinterpreted.
The proposal next encounters the state. The state is not concerned with family enjoyment, household bargaining, or farm chores. It is oriented toward public safety and risk reduction. Through this institutional lens, the relevant fact becomes the child’s age. The ATV is transformed from a recreational purchase into a potential regulatory violation.
Finally, the proposal is reconsidered through the institutional structure of the family farm. Here the vehicle is no longer evaluated primarily as a toy. Instead, it becomes a productive asset capable of reducing labor requirements and increasing operational efficiency. Time saved feeding livestock enters the calculation. A purchase that had previously appeared recreational now acquires an economic justification.
The final decision therefore reflects more than individual preferences. It embodies the cumulative influence of several institutional structures. Each institution contributes its own orientation, directing attention toward particular considerations while pushing others into the background.
From this perspective, institutions are not merely collections of rules. Nor are they simply constraints upon action. Institutions are orientation systems. They shape the decision space within which actors formulate plans and evaluate alternatives.
The completed transaction therefore contains information about the institutional pathways through which it traveled. The purchase is not merely evidence of what the participants wanted. It is evidence of how marriage, family, state, and enterprise jointly molded the conditions under which the decision was ultimately made.
Most kids try it. If they want to influence a purchase and suspect one parent might not be on board, they sequester the yes man โ or woman โ and go for the commitment. Dad, wouldn’t it be great fun to get a four-wheeler? And from there, the speculation flows freely: all the fun hours that could follow, conjured up between the two of them. If the decision rested with this particular coalition, the purchase would be a done deal.
But the second parent may not be on board, for all sorts of reasons. She โ in this case โ may remind her husband that their partnership runs on joint decision-making. She may reach back through the catalog of past requests from their offspring, past outcomes, past lessons learned. Filtered through the clearinghouse of this marriage, the proposal may well get diverted to a no-go.
Then comes the discovery that at age 11, the instigator of the purchase isn’t cleared to drive an ATV. He is underage. The broader community โ acting through the state โ has weighed a safety concern, found it serious enough to formalize, and drawn a line: no one under 12 takes the wheel. Through that particular lens, this purchase is a rule-breaker.
But the youth has a counter. He reminds his farmer parents that with the vehicle, he could head out to the back pasture every day and feed the livestock himself. Private property, so no rules broken โ as long as you’re over twelve, which he nearly is. Mom no longer burns her time on the livestock run. Time saved. Fun to be had. Box checked.
It’s a win for the purchase.
This little tale is meant to peel back โ like an onion โ the successive layers of institutional clearing that a purchase must pass through, from the moment of its conception to the final decision. Each layer functions as a kind of lens, and each lens bends the outcome in its own way, though not always with equal force. If one wanted to better understand how institutions shape decisions, one could try to isolate the price โ if that’s even the right word โ that each institutional framing imposes or removes.
Face it– it’s nearly impossible to uncover how much a region, neighborhood, city (your pick) receives in subsidized housing money. If you invest some of your time, you will find out that it is ‘complicated.’ There are ‘layers’ of financing and investment and tax tools. So basically, not even the politicians who represent us can give you a number.
A typical project may combine federal Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, tax-exempt bonds, state housing loans, county grants, city tax increment financing, Met Council redevelopment funds, discounted land sales, infrastructure assistance, and rental assistance contracts. Each funding source is administered by a different agency, reported in a different format, and disclosed in different documents. Some subsidies arrive as cash grants, others as reduced taxes, below-market financing, land write-downs, or future tax revenues redirected to the project. No single public database consolidates these benefits into one comprehensive accounting, meaning citizens must piece together information from city council records, state housing awards, federal databases, bond filings, and property tax records.
The challenge is compounded by the fact that housing subsidies are often structured through layers of ownership entities and financing partnerships designed for legal, tax, and investment purposes rather than public transparency. A project may be owned by a limited partnership whose name bears little resemblance to the property’s common name, while tax credits are syndicated through private investors and local incentives are embedded in development agreements spanning hundreds of pages. Even when each individual subsidy is technically public information, the cumulative public contribution is seldom reported in one place. As a result, determining how much public support has gone into a particular development often requires reconstructing the project’s financial history from dozens of separate records over many yearsโa task that is time-consuming even for professional auditors, journalists, and policy researchers.
This seems reactionary instead of reflective. It seems dangerous in a way. The natural mechanism of control through norms is dissipated by a lack of insight.
The Housemaid wonโt make best movie of the year even though it exceeds the minimum threshold for an eveningโs entertainment. Although there is more depth to it than may first appear.
The portrayal demonstrates there is no such thing as a one-way road between the powerful and the powerless.
This is an old-school story of retribution, where every violation eventually demands its price. Sweeneyโs quiet warning is clear: if you are forced to submit, do not despair. Endure. Watch. And when the moment arrives, turn the tables with ruthless precision.
Maybe, more importantly, be aware that those who you thought were good are bad, those who are crazy are sane. That the power structures and tradeoffs are always in flux.
Sweeney has, is different mediums, sent a message of individual agency. She wants people to see the story of the mouse and the lion, or the tortoise in the hair. She doesnโt shrink from peopleโs admiration for her attractive physical giftsโ but itโs as if she looks you back straight in the eye and says, โnow that Iโve got your attention, let me show you a few things.โ
The Supreme Court of Canada refused to hear an appeal from a New Brunswick First Nation over Aboriginal title and private land, a development the federal government says will have an impact on the Cowichan Tribes case in British Columbia.
The refusal by Canadaโs High Court to hear a First Nationโs appeal against the decision in New Brunswick establishes a precedent that First Nations can seek compensation for loss of traditional lands, but they will not be able to assert ownership.
The Crown-Indigenous Relations Department says the courtโs refusal to hear the appeal will inform arguments in other cases, including Cowichan, adding that โprivate property rights are fundamental.โ
The B.C. Supreme Courtโs ruling in favour of the Cowichan Nation found it had โestablished Aboriginal titleโ to more than 5.7 square kilometres of land along the Fraser River in Richmond.
The provincial and federal governments and other First Nations are appealing that decision.
I went for an early morning bike ride around Medicine Lake this morning and stopped at a bench for a water break. The birds were in full form, tweeting their little hearts out when I remembered the app I had loaded on my phone last year.
By allowing a recording on your device Merlin Bird ID will let you know who you are hearing. The yellow band indicates a song bird in action. Itโs fascinating to have access to this information, if youโre a bird watcher,
And what does it cost? The small price of keying in where you are recording from. The use of technology connects one group to another. Those collecting data about birds provide the tools. Independent birders get educated on their hobby.
Sure there are devious no-gooders, but there have always been crooks and criminals. Let crime stoppers round them up,
Meanwhile look for a group that will amplify the good in your life for a small fee or inconvenience. And get busy.
Iโve enjoyed this book by George Will. Itโs been an education for the mind, and a challenge for one that is missing many pieces (thank goodness for ai!) .
Hereโs a bit.
There is, however, something more, something exceptional about American patriotism, something complex and demanding because it involves assent to a creed that says rights are natural to, meaning inherent in, our humanity. A rights-centered society, must, however, take seriously the fact that duties are not natural. They must be taught. Self-interest is common and steady; virtue is rare and unpredictable. A society devoted to guaranteeing a broad scope for self-interested behavior must be leavened by virtue. So measures must be taken to make virtue less rare and more predictable. Among those measures, Americans have always considered education crucial.
I feel like there has been a neglect of the sense of duty. Sometimes shockingly so. Iโm not sure if it is due to the decline of jobs with implied duties of service. Or if it is fashionable for those who were once revered for service work, to now want tangible income.
How to feather duties into ones course of life more readily occurs with role models. And then once individuals feel the reward of watching a flourishing, hopefully it will self-ignite in a virtuous cycle.
I know tombstones are out of fashion, but thereโs something sacred about standing at a gravesite. In that moment, we pay tribute to those who came before usโthe parents, grandparents, and ancestors whose lives shaped our own. We lay flowers, say a prayer, or simply pause in silence
Or you can use the excuse of a visit to bring you back to your ancestral country, even if youโre thousands of miles from where your roots first took hold. The headstones tell stories of immigration, hardship, and resilience. The soil of your lineage lies beneath your feet.
The ritual of the visit itself is grounding. Cleaning the marker, pulling weeds, sitting on a nearby benchโthese small acts become a meditation. Gravesites are peaceful places, often surrounded by ancient relics of stone and weathered bronze that have stood watch for decades or centuries. The wind moves through the trees, a light rain falls, birds call overhead, and for a brief time, the noise of the modern world fades.
Itโs a beautiful form of communing with the past while staying firmly in the present. You carry their memory forward in your daily life, your choices.
We all share this truth: We live. We die. Itโs the one universal experience that binds every human who has ever walked this earth. Yet in our modern world, with community activities on a smaller scale, funerals are no longer the regular communal events they once were. That makes these intentional visits to memorials even more importance.
So if you havenโt lately, consider making the trip.
What separates Europeโs rise from Chinaโs long stagnation? A fascinating answer comes from economic historian Joel Mokyr in a recent presentation.
Mokyr highlights a profound institutional divergence over the last millennium. In China, extended families, lineages, and clans grew increasingly central to social organization. In Europe, their importance declined, gradually replaced by what Avner Greif called โcorporationsโ โ associations of unrelated people who voluntarily come together to pursue a shared objective.
This isnโt just about family size. Decades of work in anthropology and psychology show that growing up in tight-knit extended kin networks shapes culture and psychology differently than growing up in societies where non-kin institutions dominate. The result is a contrast between more communitarian orientations (strong loyalty to a close in-group, weaker trust toward outsiders) and more universalist orientations (greater willingness to cooperate with strangers on the basis of shared goals or rules).
Mokyr gives concrete examples of these European โcorporationsโ: guilds, monasteries, universities, and even military companies. Some were largely non-profit in orientation; others blended public spirit with pay. What united them was that membership was voluntary and exit was possible โ unlike family, which you cannot leave.
How does this connect to real economic life?
At home-economic, we share much of this framework: most public goods are actually local or club goods, cooperation depends on group boundaries, and associational life often involves significant unpaid or underpaid contributions.
Is it possible that there is another angle to the core distinction that is slightly different?
Instead of a sharp divide between โfamilyโ versus โnon-familyโ institutions, we observe that every transaction contains a blend of public-spiritedness and private interest. The key variable is the anchor of the interaction:
โข In tight kin or clan settings, the anchor is often the family/group itself.
โข In associational settings (guilds, fire departments, churches, professional networks), the anchor is usually a shared objective or cause.
This blend shows up constantly. A firefighter receives a stipend but accepts the role largely out of civic duty. A business owner might give a meaningful discount to a fellow church member or longtime customer without giving the product away for free. Group affiliation influences the transaction, but self-interest never fully disappears.
The more clearly a groupโs shared purpose is defined, the easier it becomes to understand where public spirit ends and private calculation begins.
Mokyrโs analysis is enlightening. It reminds us that culture, institutions, and psychology are deeply intertwined โ and that the ability to form effective groups beyond blood ties may have been one of Europeโs quiet advantages.
What do you think? Is the family vs. corporation divide the right frame โ or is the real story the varying mix of โweโ and โmeโ in every human transaction?
The bill is the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act (H.R. 6644), a major bipartisan package aimed at boosting housing supply, cutting red tape, modernizing programs, and addressing affordability.7
It passed the House on May 20, 2026, by 396-13 (an amended version of the Senateโs earlier passage). It now heads back to the Senate for reconciliation. This is the most significant housing legislation in decades (first major one in ~36 years).5
Big-Picture Goals
Increase housing supply and construction.
Lower costs through regulatory streamlining.
Modernize outdated federal programs (e.g., HUD, FHA).
Limit large institutional investorsโ role in single-family homes (a Trump priority).
Support affordability, homeownership, rentals, and manufactured housing without massive new spending.9
Key Provisions (in Easy Morsels)
1. Curbing Institutional Investors (the headline item) Large investors (those controlling 350+ single-family homes) face new limits on buying more single-family homes.
No forced selling of what they already own.
Exemptions exist (e.g., for certain rentals), but the House version softened a Senate โsell after 7 yearsโ rule for build-to-rent properties to avoid discouraging new construction.
Goal: Reduce Wall Street competition with individual buyers; critics note investors own only a small % of single-family stock.17
2. Boosting Housing Supply & Cutting Red Tape
Streamlines environmental reviews (NEPA) for housing projects โ faster approvals.37
Grants and incentives for local governments to reform zoning/permitting, convert offices to housing, and adopt pre-approved designs (e.g., ADUs, duplexes).
Ties some Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) funds to actual housing production.
Expands use of CDBG for new affordable housing construction.2
3. Manufactured & Modular Housing
Modernizes definitions and financing to make factory-built homes easier and more accessible (including modular without permanent chassis).
Aims to expand affordable options, especially in rural areas.47
4. Modernizing Key Programs
HOME Investment Partnerships: Permanent reauthorization + tweaks (higher income eligibility up to 100% AMI for homeownership help, more flexibility).42
Reforms to Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD), rural housing, and veteran housing access.
Raises bank investment caps for affordable housing/community development.
Pilot programs for whole-home repairs and office-to-housing conversions.
Incentives for Opportunity Zones and innovation grants (~$200M annually in some versions) for high-performing localities.
Community banking provisions (restored in House version) to support more lending.39
Status & Outlook
The House and Senate versions differ (e.g., on investor rules, banking provisions, disaster aid). Negotiations continue, with White House/Trump support for the investor limits. If passed, it could help ease the supply crunch driving high prices/rents, though broader issues like zoning, interest rates, and construction costs remain key.5
This is a compromise packageโsupply-focused with some demand-side and investor curbs. Real impact depends on implementation and local action. For full details, check the House Financial Services Committeeโs section-by-section or the bill text.
Hereโs a list of neighborhoods things that are often controlled in some way as they are thought to harm a neighbor or the neighborhood:
Grass too long, garbage can in plain site, too many cars in the driveway, too large a vehicle (ex RV) in the driveway, garage door up, sidewalk not cleared property, diseased tree, dilapidated garage, dumping, time of day for running construction equipment, level of noise from music, size of party, pet limitations and Iโm sure there are more.
Communities draw these lines imperfectly, but the alternative (pure libertarian โdo whatever on your lotโ) ignores how tightly interconnected suburban/urban living really is. The key question for any specific case isnโt โIs this harming me?โ but โIs this forcing costs onto others without their agreement?โ Thatโs where regulation gains legitimacy.
Second Treatise of Government, Chapter 2, Section 6:
The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.
Be free as long as you draw no harm to others.
Of course, what constitutes harm gets sticky fast.
There is a lot of merit to the indirect approach, especially in matters where people are shielded from seeing themselves. Thatโs where poetry can be an asset. An odd coupling of words, placed side-by-side, may galvanize those deeply buried thoughts and allow them to surface.
And yet we neglect this art form. I had never heard of Edwin Arlington Robinson (1869-1935), who was revered by Teddy Roosevelt, won the Pulitzer Prize three times and was nominated for a Nobel.
Donโt be like Miniver Cheevy so full of regret for a time long past.
Miniver Cheevy, child of scorn, Grew lean while he assailed the seasons; He wept that he was ever born, And he had reasons.
Miniver loved the days of old When swords were bright and steeds were prancing;The vision of a warrior bold Would set him dancing.
Miniver sighed for what was not, And dreamed, and rested from his labors; He dreamed of Thebes and Camelot, And Priam's neighbors.
Miniver mourned the ripe renown That made so many a name so fragrant; He mourned Romance, now on the town, And Art, a vagrant.
Miniver loved the Medici, Albeit he had never seen one; He would have sinned incessantly Could he have been one.
Miniver cursed the commonplace And eyed a khaki suit with loathing; He missed the mediรฆval grace Of iron clothing.
Miniver scorned the gold he sought, But sore annoyed was he without it; Miniver thought, and thought, and thought, And thought about it.
Miniver Cheevy, born too late, Scratched his head and kept on thinking; Miniver coughed, and called it fate, And kept on drinking.
Embrace the dynamism of the future, one of individual actors working towards their best lives independently or in collaboration. The trappings of royalty are but costumes.
In Theory and History (1957), Ludwig von Mises laid out one of the twentieth centuryโs most ambitious defenses of praxeology: the idea that economics begins not with statistics or material forces, but with purposeful human action. Mises argued that people act toward imagined futures, interpret the world through ideas, and rely on institutions that make social life intelligible across time. Markets, in this framework, are not machines. They are processes of coordinated human plans unfolding under uncertainty.
Among Misesโs students and intellectual descendants, few pushed these insights further than Ludwig Lachmann. A German-born economist who fled Nazi Europe and later taught in South Africa, Lachmann became famous for emphasizing uncertainty, interpretation, and the instability of expectations within market life. If Mises provided the logical structure of action, Lachmann explored what it feels like to inhabit the market process from the inside.
One of Lachmannโs most illuminating concepts was orientation.
For Lachmann, markets work only because people possess enough shared orientation to make their plans compatible with one another. Individuals act in a world they can never fully know. The future is uncertain, information dispersed, and expectations constantly shifting. Yet somehow social coordination still occurs. Why? Because actors rely on orienting frameworks: prices, legal rules, habits, business conventions, reputations, and inherited institutions that help them interpret what is happening around them.
This idea is deeply compatible with Mises, even if Lachmann extends it in new directions. Mises already understood that human action depends on meaning, expectation, and interpretation. Money prices themselves function as orientation devices because they allow actors to compare alternatives and calculate across time. Property law, contracts, and market institutions stabilize expectations sufficiently for entrepreneurship and planning to occur. Lachmannโs contribution was to ask a deeper question: what happens when those orienting structures become unstable, contradictory, or fragile?
In this sense, Lachmann radicalized the subjectivism already present in Mises. Not only are values subjective; expectations about the future are subjective as well. Coordination is therefore never automatic or guaranteed. Markets persist because institutions provide interpretive bearings that make action intelligible.
This becomes especially clear in ordinary life. Consider something as simple as a haircut. One person pays a premium to visit an elite salon because it reinforces a desired social identity and participation in a certain status network. Another pays her sister-in-law to cut her hair in a basement salon, partly to support family ties and obligations. A third chooses the inexpensive chain haircut because convenience and standardization matter more than symbolic meaning. In each case, the technical service may be similar, but the transaction contains different institutional and social valuations.
This insight suggests an important refinement to the common claim that โprices are embedded in institutions.โ It may be equally true that institutions themselves are partially priced into transactions. Family loyalty, reputation, social belonging, neighborhood identity, prestige, trust, and status all enter economic life through the valuations actors attach to them at the moment of exchange.
This leads toward what might be called an orientation-by-institution framework. Institutions are not merely rules and constraints sitting in the background of economic life. They are meaning-bearing structures that orient expectations, stabilize plans, and render action understandable to others. Markets depend not only on competition and private property, but on the interpretive frameworks that allow people to navigate uncertainty together.
Mises supplied the foundation. Lachmann opened the interior. Together they point toward a richer understanding of economic lifeโone where prices, institutions, expectations, and social meaning continuously shape one another within the unfolding market process.
When I stumbled across this book at an estate sale it threw me back to all those stories of Northern Europeans making their way to NY and then onto the midwest.
The story starts as the captain has just brought a cargo of Swedes to their new country.
And having sailed these Swedish peasantโs continent to another, Captain Lorentz now felt so great a responsibility for them he wouldn’t even leave them to shift for themselves after they had landed. Hardly had his ship tied up at the pier when all those who made their living from the simplicity and inexperience of immigrants focked around the gangplank like rapacious dogs at slaughter time. These runners and grafters and brokers, and whatever they were called in the language of this new country, watched for every newly arrived ship. There were agents from freight companies which the captain knew were fraudulent; there were men from taverns and quarters of ill repute; well-fed and well-dressed men in funny little round caps with large visors; lazy men who avoided honest work and whose presence was repugnant to Captain Lorentz. He would always place an armed guard at the gangplank to keep such rascals off his ship, for once on board they would steal all they could lay hands on, down to a single nail or a piece of rope.
Such a cacophony of characters all melding and sorting themselves out. But one thing they share is a disdain for the rigid class structure they left behind.
He (the captain) could never reconcile himself to the strange customs and ideas he met in North America. Here people of many races mixed, and the classes were so turned about that one couldn’t tell which were the upper and which the lower. Lowly people considered themselves changed when they landed on American shores; they thought themselves equal to those of high birth and position. Every farm hand and servant wench assumed a conceited, disobedient, insolent attitude. Several times it had happened that able-bodied men of his crew had become so arrogant that they had boldly broken their contracts with him and had simply remained in America. Here, respect for authority and masters was disregarded, and consequently, the servant class was ruined. Here all felt at home, even those who smeared pork grease over their faces while eating, not yet having learned the use of a napkin.
Ha! The servant class is ruined! Indeed.
And class warfare in general never amounts to much in the US. The preferred strategy to attack wealth is to personalize a position as demonic, not a class. Landlords are one such position. And this bears class overtones as it was the landholders who plied work from the serfs.
But thatโs a story from the old country. US landlord villains are sleazy guys in suits who walk in to โinspectโ the unit at will. Thatโs the new tale, anyway. Or thereโs the evil corporate landlord. Yet corporate ownership of rental properties only comprise maybe 3% of all rental homes. Hard to see much of an impact at that number.
The thing is that class warfare doesnโt really take hold on this side of the Atlantic. Itโs a romantic notion of strife from another time that is ruined by the melting pot that is America.
Itโs always a treat to read a book written in another era, fresh from current tropes. Marion Clawsonโs Man and Land in the United States (1964) doesnโt flinch: right after the American Revolution, the federal governmentโs primary goal with the public domain was brutally simpleโsell huge swaths of land to big investors and speculators. Why? The nation was drowning in war debt and those empty western acres were the only real asset it had. The Land Ordinance of 1785 wasnโt some noble grid for yeoman farmers; it was a surveying machine built to sell fast and tax later. Economics first, romance later.
Yet within a generation Thomas Jeffersonโs vision took hold: the independent family farm as the bedrock of republican virtue. The individual settler, not the absentee investor, became the ideal. The Wild West followedโhorse-trading, shady deals, claim-jumping, and countless homesteaders who broke and walked away. But hereโs the quiet genius Clawson reveals: out of all that chaotic, small-scale bargaining a standardized system of real-estate transactions slowly crystallized. Title, survey, deed, mortgage, clear transfer. And with it came the deep cultural conviction that if you cleared the land, improved it, and worked it, you could actually accumulate wealth.
The largest peaceful land transfer in world history happened in the decades after the Revolutionโroughly 1.8 billion acres of public domain eventually moved from federal hands into private ownership. George Will has often recounted the Constitutional moment as one of hard-headed institutional craftsmanship: the framers knew a weak central government couldnโt pay its debts or secure the frontier. So they built a frameworkโfederal control of western lands (Article IV), clear property rights, enforceable contractsโthat turned raw wilderness into capital.
How much of Americaโs distinctive faith in markets, mobility, and earned wealth was โfeatheredโ (as Will might put it) by those early trading institutions and the lived experience of buying, improving, and owning land? The horse-trading was messy, the failures heartbreaking, but the emergent order was powerful: work the land, trust the deed, and the system will let you keep what you build.
Thatโs not just history. Itโs the quiet origin story of the American dream of property as the ultimate stake in the game.
There is another relation of man to land, however, which shall be the focus of our book: under what social arrangements, laws, and customs has man been allowed to use the land, and how has he in fact used it. This is more properly a man-man relationship than it is a man-land one. Men, acting through the tribe, or the family, or the government, have set up rules under which other men are allowed to own, sell, buy, lease, inherit, and otherwise use land for their benefit.
Sometimes these arrangements are specific and written, perhaps highly complex and detailed; sometimes they are less definite, subject to interpretation by the stronger for their own ends. In their totality, these various arrangements constitute a system of land tenure for that time and place.
And, following the success of the American Revolution:
Some specific consequences for land flowed rather immediately out of the victory. Tory estates were confiscated, subdivided, and sold to farmers, to help raise money to repay the costs of the war. Some, but by no means all, large landowners had been Tories, and subdivision of their estates meant a further strengthening of the landowning farmer. As we have noted, quitrents and certain restrictions on land inheritance were abolished, thus moving further in the direction of freedom in land ownership. During and after the war, grants of land were made to soldiers as a reward for their military service. In many cases, these soldiers sold their land rights, thus setting the stage for extensive land speculation and for the building of new large landholdings.
The indirect consequences of the Revolution, as far as land was concerned, were greater and more enduring. The whole pattern of public land ownership and disposal, and of private land ownership and use, which we shall describe in more detail in later chapters, grew naturally and more or less inevitably out of the attitudes toward land that had evolved during the colonial period and which were strengthenedโone may almost say solidifiedโas a result of the Revolution.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Throughout the day, you can keep doing the same olโ thing or you can try something new. New is hard. Those nagging questions sing-song along in your head: Will I just waste my time? Will I try and fail? Will I be led down a dubiousโor even dangerousโpath?
Take trying out a new trail as an example. The map may be unreliable, and your walk could be cut short when the promised connection turns out to be nothing more than a fictitious line on paper. Or the trail might meander through an industrial area that starts to feel a little spookyโthe grind of machinery and the sudden hiss of released steam painting a scene of foul play and stashed bodies.
Trying small segments at a time can be one way of tricking ourselves into pressing on instead of holding back. Picking moments when the risk of a setback doesnโt feel quite so dear helps too. And engaging a reliable partner (one with fur and fangs is especially nice) works wonders.
But in the end, itโs often the unexpected joy of experiencing something new that pulls us forward.
On his SlowBoring substack today, Matt Yglessias wrote how the seniors are quite a bit better off than in years of yore. Fewer live check to chek and many have additional assest, their homes included. To close the piece he notes:
Right now, 28 percent of Americaโs large homes with 3+ bedrooms are owned by empty-nesters. Iโm not a communist who thinks we should seize those homes and redistribute them to young zoomer couples who want to get married and have kids.
But if affluent boomers were to sell their homes, realize large capital gains on the transaction, and move into smaller dwellings and live off their financial windfall, that would be a fine outcome for the country. When Senator Kelly says that Washington doesnโt talk about the problems of retired people enough, he has the actual situation completely backwards.
This syncs with yesterday’s post in that it may not be the quantity of homes in a community, but rather there could be gains by right-sizing of the household to the structure.
An elderly person may feel comfortable in their 4,000 sq ft home while living in only three to four rooms. They may have financial incentives to stay put if a move leads them to an assisted living facility. But it is not always ideal. The repairs, and fear of repairs, can be wearing.
If a municipality were to offer services to help ease them into other forms of living than these move-up houses would be freed up for new families. Some of these might be practical, like having pick up days where all items left at the curb would be collected at no cost. The burden of things can be an obstacle to a move. Tours of other types of living options might get people interested. Stressing the ease of less to care for, or the conveniencce of being closer to medical facilities might be an angle.
Giving up a long-time resident is difficult for many, at any age. When the constraints of being on in years make everything a bit more of a project, offering ways to facilitate a move could better align the people with the structure.
But the numbers favor an increase in viable units of housing through the cycle of life. Folks over 65 have a 3% higher home ownership rate over other ten-year population groups.
Plus they are a larger group. They make up 4% more of the population than younger cohorts.
Natural attrition over the next fourteen years or so will loosen up supply in the housing market.
Itโs not about simply adding more housing units. Itโs about communities strategically matching their housing stock to the households they seek to attract โ the ones best positioned to support local public infrastructure and services.
Buchananโs โWindowsโ Metaphor and the Public-Private Tension
James M. Buchanan deliberately used the metaphor of โwindowsโ to show how the same economic phenomena can look radically different depending on the lens you choose. In his 1964 essay โWhat Should Economists Do?,โ he urged a shift in perspective:
โI want economists to modify their thought processes, to look at the same phenomena through โanother window,โ to use Nietzscheโs appropriate metaphor. I want them to concentrate on โexchangeโ rather than on โchoiceโ.โ
Through the choice window, human action appears as individual optimizationโprivate actors maximizing their own utility. This lens makes spontaneous private sorting (e.g., parents voluntarily funding improvements in a public K-12 district) look feasible and natural. Yet Buchanan worried it fails at scale because of free-riding.
By switching to the exchange window, Buchanan reframed everything as cooperative agreements among individuals. Public servants can now legitimately incorporate private incentives (votes, prestige, career advancement) inside formal institutions because those institutions are themselves the product of constitutional exchange. At the same time, Buchanan could quite easily switch the framing around and agree that private actors, operating through voluntary exchange and mutual agreement, can also produce genuine public goods when they form clubs, associations, or local arrangements that successfully internalize benefits and limit free-riding.
This raises a deeper question: Does โhuman actionโ itself take on a different form when viewed through the two perspectives?
The lawyers, Bob, know too much. They are chums of the books of old John Marshall. They know it all, what a dead hand wrote, A stiff dead hand and its knuckles crumbling, The bones of the fingers a thin white ash. The lawyers know a dead man's thoughts too well. In the heels of the higgling lawyers, Bob, Too many slippery ifs and buts and howevers, Too much hereinbefore provided whereas, Too many doors to go in and out of.
When the lawyers are through What is there left, Bob? Can a mouse nibble at it And find enough to fasten a tooth in?
Why is there always a secret singing When a lawyer cashes in? Why does a hearse horse snicker Hauling a lawyer away?
The work of a bricklayer goes to the blue. The knack of a mason outlasts a moon. The hands of a plasterer hold a room together. The land of a farmer wishes him back again. Singers of songs and dreamers of plays Build a house no wind blows over. The lawyers โ tell me why a hearse horse snickers hauling a law- yer's bones.
Iโve got some more lawyerly ideas for poetic treatment, like โ those who think they know so much train themselves to be myopic. Or those who busy themselves pointing out what others donโt know fail to hook an opportunity in their midst. And then those who think they know so much create an industry of people who know just how to leverage this blindness.
Doing art is fun. Doing art stretches the hand mind connection. Doing art makes your eyes assess values. Doing art can be unpredictable which can be disappointing or rewarding or some blend of both. Doing art captures so much of life in a nugget.
Marion is one of those ambiguous names that makes you wonder at first contact. And this Marion only heightens the effect, pulling you into a swirl of curiosity about his land analysis. From: Appreciation: Marion Clawsonโs Long View of the Land (Resource).
Clawson was among the first generation of RFF(Resources for the Future) research fellows, joining the staff in 1955, just a few years after the first Ford Foundation grant to the organization. He set a standardโand perhaps a recordโfor the study of agriculture, park and forest use, outdoor recreation, and land development that spanned seventy years. His interest in the land seems only natural, considering that he was born in Nevada in 1905 and raised on ranches and in small towns in that state.
Over his long career, Clawson was able to observe how we Americans have sparred and shifted in our emphasis and influence over the nature and purpose of national forests, national parks, and wildlife refuges. Methods he developed to measure the demand for and value of outdoor recreation have formed the basis of several hundred studies throughout the world. A doer as well as a thinker, he directed studies of irrigation development out West for the Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Agricultural Economics in the 1930s and ’40s and then ran the Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management in the late 1940s and early ’50s before coming to RFF.
Abraham Lincoln State Park, Bismarck, North Dakota
Home Economics 