Welcome back to Fraser Insight, the Fraser Institute’s U.S. newsletter.

This issue of Insight is highlighted by news related to our economic freedom portfolio of research. Our In Focus section, which always showcases in-depth research and analysis, features the 2021 Economic Freedom of the World report (the U.S. is ranked sixth), plus two new additions to Fraser Institute’s Essential Scholars series: one focused on political scientist James Buchanan and one focused on the UCLA approach to economics.

Our In Print section highlights timely commentaries, op-eds and blogs. This issue features pieces about our Economic Freedom of North America report (EFNA) and recent EFNA Network conference, food self-sufficiency, climate change, the dangers of scientism, and several other public policy topics.

Finally, the In Context section offers information about and links to the Fraser Institute’s new podcast—“Danielle Smith’s Fraser Forum”—which offers in-depth interviews on free enterprise and individual liberty.

We encourage you to share Fraser Insight with friends and colleagues by inviting them to sign up for Insight here. Visit our website, which serves as a storehouse for cogent commentary and in-depth analysis—all from a free-market perspective. Follow us on Twitter. Join us on Facebook. And check out the In Touch section for more contact info.

Dozens of members and partners of the EFNA Network representing 24 organizations, 17 states and territories, and three countries participated in the Institute’s annual EFNA Network Conference in Dallas—the first in-person gathering of the network since 2019.

Now that Americans are loudly complaining about rising prices at the pump, the Biden administration, rather than admitting the folly of its original policies and introducing more balanced energy policies, is back-peddling by encouraging foreign producers to increase oil production.

Most people in advanced economies have no idea that the romanticized ideal of regional self-sufficiency remains a real threat to food security. Politicians of all stripes have sadly succumbed to an ideological canard that will cost us dearly.

In their efforts to spare economic pain today with double-barreled fiscal and monetary stimulus, governments and central bankers are running the risk of much more severe pain down the road.

Richard Nixon’s closing of the gold window in 1971 was a momentous decision that unleashed inflation and disadvantaged wage earners. Right-wingers who want economic growth and left-wingers who want more balanced income gains should both support reforms that tie the hands of central bankers and limit their ability to debase the currency.

Although advocacy of aggressive climate-change policies is often wrapped in the mantle of science, mainstream economists who follow the scientific literature have shown that the popular 1.5°C policy target will generate costs that far exceed the benefits.

Data from 158 state and provincial jurisdictions in the U.S., Canada, Argentina, Australia, Germany, India and Mexico strongly suggest that the optimum population size for fast-growing subnational economies is around 9.5 million people.

Government scientists are no different than the rest of us—bankers, construction workers, professional athletes, school teachers, auto mechanics and everybody else. They sometimes make mistakes and they sometimes lie. It’s unsophisticated and unscientific to pretend otherwise, or to rely on government scientists—or anyone else—as an unquestionable source of truth.

The U.S. ranks sixth in the latest Economic Freedom of the World report. Hong Kong again ranks 1st, followed by Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Georgia, the United States, Ireland, Lithuania, Australia and Denmark. The report’s authors are quick to point out that this year’s report is based on 2019 data, and they warn that China’s heavy hand will lower Hong Kong’s ranking in future years. The report measures economic freedom—the ability of individuals to make their own economic decisions—by analyzing the policies and institutions of 165 countries and territories. Indicators include regulation, freedom to trade internationally, size of government, property rights, government spending and taxation. The rankings of other countries of note include Canada (14th), Japan (18th), Germany (22nd), Italy (47th), France (53rd), Mexico (75th), Russia (100th), India (108th) and China (116th).

The UCLA tradition carries on in the work of dozens of economists who earned their PhDs at UCLA during its golden years. The most important economists at UCLA during the 1970s were Armen Alchian, Harold Demsetz, Sam Peltzman, Benjamin Klein, Robert Clower, Axel Leijonhufvud, Jack Hirshleifer, William Allen, and George Hilton. But because their work spread beyond UCLA, the tradition lives on in the work of scores of economists who had no formal connection with UCLA.

Many of the works on James Buchanan’s extensive list of publications stemmed from a single insight from early in his career: because neither the state nor society is a singular and sentient creature, a great deal of analytical and policy confusion is spawned by treating them as such. Collections of individuals cannot be fused or aggregated together into a super-individual about whom economists and political philosophers can usefully theorize in the same ways that they theorize about actual flesh-and-blood individuals. This “aggregative thinking” lumps together a great many individuals into large categories such as “the nation” or “the government” and then treats each of these categories as if it is a unitary thinking, choosing, and acting individual. From the very start, nearly all of Buchanan’s lifetime work was devoted to replacing this approach with the individualistic one, which came to be called “public choice theory”—a way of understanding economics and political science that insists that choices are made, and costs and benefits are experienced, only by individuals.

The Fraser Institute is jumping on the podcast bandwagon with “Danielle Smith’s Fraser Forum”—a fresh concept committed to serving as a platform for in-depth interviews on free enterprise and individual liberty. Recent episodes have focused on educational choice, daycare, health care, COVID-19 and climate change. Smith has served in elective office on the Calgary board of education and as a member of the Legislative Assembly in Alberta. A longtime advocate for personal property rights, she held key roles at both the Alberta Property Rights Initiative and the Canadian Property Rights Research Institute. Before entering the realm of politics and policy advocacy, Smith had extensive experience in the media, working as a radio talk show host, guest commentator on public policy television programs and newspaper columnist. Listen to the show at fraserinstitute.org/fraser-forum, or subscribe at Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google and wherever podcasts are offered.