Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Garry Wills Noted, Along with More Ostrem

Garry Wills adds further voice to the anti-Obama phenomena. As usual, his sense of history provides much-needed perspective. Read it (and perhaps weep!). “The New American Hysteria”.

I wrote the following before the previous post:
On the award of the Nobel Prize for Economics today, I note that one of the co-recipients was a political scientist. Here’s a quick synopsis of her work from Marginal Revolution blog, “Elinor Ostrom and the well-governed commons”. Here’s Tyler Cowen’s take, also from Marginal Revolution, “What this Nobel prize means”. Finally, Robert Shiller’s comments in the NYT bear mentioning in their brief piece on the award.

The more that I think about this award, and learn what this lady has done, the more impressed I have become. She's working on one of the most vexing, and often ideologically charged issues: the commons. The management of the global commons, in my opinion, is the most important issue facing humans today. By this I mean primarily global climate change and pollution.