Pot and Pains
For a time I thought I might be in line for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. It was the late 1980s, and a Reagan nominee — one Douglas Ginsberg, a district court judge — had just flamed out after the...
View ArticleValue Subtracted
If there is a test case for the proposition that corporate property regimes lead to the improvement of a commons, then it is food. More specifically, it is the traditional foods of a particular...
View ArticleDrug ads sell a problem, not a solution
It is an old saying in the advertising trade that you sell the problem, not the solution. That helps explain why the media today are awash with images of disease. Erectile dysfunction, depression,...
View ArticleDDT: Echoes of Iraq
We were on the farm in April, my wife’s parents’ rice farm in the Philippines, and our son got sick. At first we thought it was the heat. But as afternoon became evening he got worse and worse....
View ArticleDisease-Led Recovery
If you doubt that economics has become a hermetic form of math that is disconnected from the world it purports to explain, then I suggest you read the cover story in the September 25th Business Week....
View ArticleThe Strange “Economics” of Breast Milk
OnTheCommons.org December 1, 2006 By Jonathan Rowe You probably heard about the woman who was kicked off a Delta flight recently for breast feeding her daughter. She was in a window seat, next to her...
View ArticleWho Decides Who’s Sick?
Back when, Ralph Nader used to ask college audiences, “Who defines what a problem is in America today?” Who decides that tired hair, say, is a problem of epochal proportions, while the decimation of...
View ArticleWalking Cities and Commons-Based Health Policies
When I lived in New York City I walked everywhere, and all the time. It wasn’t just because driving there is insane and I didn’t have a car anyway. The city calls you forth. In decent weather you can...
View ArticleThe Health Care Crisis Few of Us Recognize
A few weeks ago, researchers reported that drug use had increased “dramatically” among children in the U.S. These researchers weren’t talking about illicit drugs, but rather prescription medications...
View ArticlePot and Pains
For a time I thought I might be in line for a seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. It was the late 1980s, and a Reagan nominee — one Douglas Ginsberg, a district court judge — had just flamed out after the...
View ArticleThe Health Care Crisis Few of Us Recognize
A few weeks ago, researchers reported that drug use had increased “dramatically” among children in the U.S. These researchers weren’t talking about illicit drugs, but rather prescription medications...
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