Two great economists died this month.
Anna Schwartz, co-author with Milton Friedman of the classic A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960, passed away last Thursday, at age 96. For reasons known only to a few Swedes, she did not receive the Nobel along with her more famous research partner.
Elinor Ostrom, on the other hand, who died about two weeks earlier, at age 78, did manage to nab a Nobel.
While Mrs. Schwartz may not have received the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, she had received the more popular honor of being dubbed “the high priestess of monetarism.” She knew more about the history of banking and finance than just about anyone. Tellingly, her intellectual odyssey didn’t stop when she reached retirement age.
In recent years, she attacked the politically popular notion that bailouts are a good idea during economic downturns. She also came out against the reappointment of Ben Bernanke as Fed chairman, and argued that government was the main instigator of the 2008 financial bust.
She knew how to make waves.
Elinor Ostrom focused her work not on finance but on the problems associated with managing common-use resources. She found that government regulations tended to mismanage resources, while individuals and communities better negotiated creative and effective solutions to problems that previous economists deemed insoluble without government.
Like Anna Schwartz, she was much more than an armchair theorist. She didn’t merely draw equations on a blackboard and pontificate on how necessary it is for “government” to “fix it.” The evidence — which they collected — is in, government most often is the problem that must itself be fixed.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
Mr. Clay’s lack of a more perfect early education, however it may be regretted generally, teaches at least one profitable lesson; it teaches that in this country, one can scarcely be so poor, but that, if he will, he can acquire sufficient education to get through the world respectably.
Galileo was no idiot. Only an idiot could believe that science requires martyrdom — that may be necessary in religion, but in time a scientific result will establish itself.
The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.