Editor note: The wealth of free-market capitalism creates a robust civil society, where nonprofits and foundations can support the causes of their choosing, many of which might not be viable otherwise. The problem is where philanthropy goes political against the free society and human betterment. Jane Shaw Stroup at her blog Jane Takes on History takes a look at good money going in negative directions, even violating original intent.
You’ve probably heard that Henry Ford II resigned from the board of the Ford Foundation because it had veered far away from its donor’s intent. In his 1976 resignation letter, Ford (grandson of Henry Ford Sr.) wrote:
…In effect, the foundation is a creature of capitalism—a statement that, I’m sure, would be shocking to many professional staff people in the field of philanthropy.
“Vanderbilt forest management set the stage for the U.S. Forest Service and the way it manages timber. Whether that was good remains in doubt.”
It makes a good story. In the late 1800s demand for wood was insatiable—for houses, for ships, for railroad ties. Americans were logging trees all over the country, then moving on to another forest, leaving ugly cutover land behind them. President Theodore Roosevelt expressed fear of a “timber famine.” Trees are being destroyed, he said, “far more rapidly than they are being replaced.” [1] Peak Trees? Peak Forestry? The same was being said for petroleum and other resources.
George Vanderbilt (grandson of “robber baron” Cornelius Vanderbilt) came to the rescue. Vanderbilt’s mansion near Asheville, North Carolina, was built on forest land, much of it already logged. Vanderbilt hired a young man, Gifford Pinchot, to manage about 125,000 acres around the Biltmore estate, with the goals of making money while restoring and protecting the forest.…
Ed. Note: Jane Shaw Stroup blogs at two websites: Jane Takes On History and Liberty and Ecology Blog. The post below can be accessed here.
Each year, the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) has a dinner in Washington, D.C., honoring the economist Julian Simon, who died in 1998. Simon was a rare optimist in the fields of population and natural resources. He disagreed with most environmentalists of his day (especially in the 1980s through 1990s). They feared passionately that growing population would overwhelm agriculture and industry and that the world would run out of natural resources such as oil and minerals.
Instead, Simon thought that more births are a good thing and was sure that resources would not disappear. His upbeat views were widely disparaged.
Ecologist Garrett Hardin called him “Dr.…