In the past, I’ve called myself a forester, an economist, and a policy analyst. But sometimes it seems I am really mainly a writer. If that is my primary occupation, then 2009 was a great year.
At the beginning of the year, I wrote Gridlock, an 82,000-word book that is just now being published. Once that was done, I wrote three policy papers for Cato: How Urban Planners Caused the Housing Bubble (11,000 words), The Myth of the Compact City: Why Compact Development Is Not the Way to Reduce Carbon Dioxide Emission (11,000 words), and Getting What You Paid For; Paying for What You Get: Proposals for the Next Transportation Reauthorization (9,000 words). I also wrote two Cato briefing papers: one on high-speed rail (4,000 words) and one on transportation reauthorization (6,000 words).
In addition, I wrote an 11,000-word report on high-speed rail that was published (with slight variations) by fourteen state think tanks. A 3,000-word summary of this report was also published by several think tanks.
On top of that, I wrote at least a dozen op eds on high-speed rail and a variety of other subjects. These were published by papers ranging from USA Today to the Costco Connection. Plus I had an article or two in Liberty magazine and some other journals.
That’s something approaching 150,000 words. That doesn’t even count posts on this and a few other blogs, which (at an average of 400 words per post) may total to another 100,000 words.
Of course, I am not primarily a writer, so word counts are an superficial measure of my productivity. The real measure is: what policy changes took place as a result of my work? The answer, of course, is not many, because policy change takes a long time.
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When I feel discouraged, I remember where I was 20 years ago, at the beginning of 1990. I had spent fifteen years opposing money-losing timber sales on federal forest lands. When I started in 1975, the Forest Service sold 11 billion board feet of timber a year, and the Bureau of Land Management about 1 billion. In 1989, the Forest Service had sold nearly 11 billion board feet and the BLM more than a billion. It sounds pretty discouraging.
At the beginning of 1990, no one knew that in just three or four years, Forest Service timber sales would drop by more than two thirds, never to recover. BLM sales also fell. Many people blamed the spotted owl, but that bird was only found on a handful of forests. As I described in this 1994 article, reality was far more complicated: such things as the original 1970 Earth Day and the decentralizing effects of email on the Forest Service played a significant role in changing the agency.
What I didn’t say in the article was that, in 1988, Island Press published my book, Reforming the Forest Service, which showed that problems with the agency were not due to bad people, but bad budgetary incentives. Many agency officials later told me they experienced an epiphany as they read it. “As I read it, I got angrier and angrier at you,” one told me, “and then it hit me: just last week, I had approved a timber sale for the very reasons stated in the book.”
I certainly did not single-handedly reform the Forest Service, and the reforms that took place were not all to my liking. But I do think my policy work in the 1970s and ’80s contributed to the dramatic changes in the ’90s.
So, as we enter the 2010s, lovers of freedom, opponents of government waste, and other antiplanners can take heart: Central planning may look like it is popular today, but it is likely to suffer severe reversals in the near future. I can hope that my work will contribute to those reversals.
Have a happy new year and a productive 2010.
Any chance of writing becoming available on the kindle or the nook?
prk166,
Best-Laid Plans is available in a Kindle version, and Gridlock should be as well later this month. Both are available in PDF format from Cato’s web site.
It has been very satisfying seeing the increasing attention your work gets. I’m a big promoter of it myself. Congratulations on your growing success.
Congratulations on an impressive quantity and quality of work, Randal. I appreciate having you as another opinion to balance others I read.
Tad Winiecki said: Congratulations on an impressive quantity and quality of work, Randal. I appreciate having you as another opinion to balance others I read.
THWM: Since when has O’Toole(or Cox, Cato, Reason, etc.) been about balance?
King Shlomo wrote some wise proverbs – here are some which may be relevant for some of the contributors to this blog (I will not judge if they are or are not relevant for anyone because I don’t know you well enough and Jesus told us not to judge):
“Plans fail for lack of counsel, but with many advisers they succeed.” Prov. 15:22
“A fool finds no pleasure in understanding, but delights in airing his own opinions.” Prov. 18:2
“The first to present his case seems right, til another comes forward and questions him.” Prov. 18:17 (NIV)
I like to hear or read news and opinions from different sources to learn more of the truth. I think it is commendable that Fox network provides partial balance of political opinions from comedian Glenn Beck with different opinions from Wanda Sykes. When I said, “I appreciate having you as another opinion to balance others I read.” I didn’t mean that Randal presented or intended to present balanced opinions. I meant that I didn’t really receive balanced opinions from any of my sources – I needed several different opposing opinions to learn more of the truth. On any particular issue all the sources may be correct; or they may all be incorrect or some be partially correct or some may be correct and others incorrect. If they all agree I don’t learn as much as when some of them disagree.
As a scientist I found that when an experiment disagreed with a theory it was an opportunity to make a new discovery. The theory or the experiment or both could be improved.
Well done sir.
And yes, as they say, the wheels of justice grind slowly, but exceedingly fine.
@Tad: Wise words.
You most likely know that learning only occurs when you discover that you wrong about something. If you are always right, you never learn anything new.
AP (and Mike), if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America since 1945 by George Nash. The first chapter alone should strengthen your resolve when you feel discouraged.
This recommendation should not in any way signal agreement with the opinions of the Antiplanner. Consider this a momentary bout of humanity, like the Christmas truce in the trenches of WWI.
I’m in agreeement with Tad Winiecki. I’m a big US HSR supporter, but I like to read what the libertarians have to say too.
Tad Winiecki said: When I said, “I appreciate having you as another opinion to balance others I read.†I didn’t mean that Randal presented or intended to present balanced opinions.
THWM: Thank you Tad for clearing that up.
Nahum 2:4 “The chariots shall rage in the streets, they shall justle one against another in the broad ways: they shall seem like torches, they shall run like the lightnings.”