Those needing air to breathe? Well, according to the modern philosophers they can enter the market, buy up offset rights and retire them. Thus is fulfilled Robert Ingersoll's forecast a century ago that if some corporation could bottle the air it would, and then would charge us to breathe (rpt. in Roger Greeley, 1983).
My NDP sponsors, never very reliable, lost power in 1976. As I was leaving B.C. for Riverside, a committee of the Alaska State Legislature asked me to analyze and propose new ways to raise revenue from hydrocarbon leases on State lands, including Prudhoe Bay. State officials were aware of their need to meet the wiles of oil industry experts in gulling and exploiting unsophisticated natives.
Good friend Gregg Erickson had paved my entry into this contract. He and I had met while we were both at RFF, and we had found each other simpatico -- not like some. My remit from the Committee was mainly pecuniary, but nothing stopped me from seeking advice and support from local environmentalists. They were friendly but wary of economists --with good reason, as we have seen. They were scattered and outgunned, though, so my report gave them little more than token obeisance. They warned me about oil spill dangers -- I should have listened better, as we all were to learn.
Luckily for me, one Tom Kelly, a big-mouth red-baiting columnist in the Anchorage Times, attacked me and my report as "Marxist". Why lucky? Cherchez la femme! The Editor and Publisher of the Times, Robert Atwood, was my new wife's cousin, and he gave me space to answer. On top of that, the wife of conservative Senator Ted Stephens, nee Ann Cherington, was my Reed College classmate from 1948, when I was trying to explain free markets to the majority of hyped-up campus Marxists. So I had fun demolishing Kelly, and more people read this exchange than ever saw my official Report. This was also when Gov. Jay Hammond was selling the social dividend idea to voters: the stars were aligned my way that year!
A California phase 1, 1976-78
Stymied in B.C., I moved to Jerry Brown's California in 1976. Dave Barrett, Premier of B.C. when I left, was openly jealous of Brown: "What makes him think that HE's a reformer?!" That kind of narcissism had helped Barrett lose the 1976 election, forcing me to move.
At first I thought I was entering heaven (when will I ever learn?). Jerry had proclaimed this to be the new "Age of Limits". He invited me to serve on a Committee on Water Law Reform, and testify on how to economize on water without pain, by having the State collect charges to rein in the major wastrels and polluters , and in an economic way, using the price system, and raising revenue for the State. (Today they call it "Tax bads, not goods".) Veteran Assemblyman Al Rodda kept introducing LVT bills and invited me to testify at one (my implacable heckler was Senator George Deukmejian, a future Governor). Old friend and property tax reformer Ron Welch headed assessments in the State bureaucracy. Bob Pascal, best in the nation, was in charge of assessing mineral and hydrocarbon deposits. Single taxer Dr. Irene Hickman, who had groomed Ted Gwartney, was still raising havoc in Sacto County. Keith and Polly Roberts were organizing and agitating and making top contacts in the Bay Area. Carl Pope, rising star in the Sierra Club, was friendly and supportive. "Small is Beautiful" and E.F. Schumacher were the rage.
The "Clean Air Now" campaign was strong in my new home of Riverside, and I was welcomed aboard, and appointed to the City Utility Board (water and power), as a token, at least, in steering the City into "greener" generating techniques. I was made Chair of Economics and given a budget and authority to invite Amory Lovins ("soft path" technology; "negawatts for megawatts") to lecture all around the University. Robert Maynard Hutchins was still at The Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions on his hill in Santa Barbara thinking deep thoughts along our lines and patronizing a center for appropriate technology, which even outlasted him briefly.
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