He and his wife, Holly, own Quivira Vineyards, a wine estate in Sonoma County, California, where they make their home. J. Joe Ricketts Elected to AEI Board Edward B. Rust, Jr., chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American Enterprise Institute, has announced that J. Joe Ricketts was elected to the board at its December 8 meeting. He was named chairman and chief executive officer of the company in 1981, and became co-chief executive officer in March 1999. Ricketts was among the first to enter the discount brokerage market when, in 1975, he founded First Omaha Securities, a predecessor to Ameritrade. Property and Freedom Richard Pipes, the Frank B. Baird, Jr., Professor of History Emeritus at Harvard University, delivered the fourth of AEI s 1999-2000 Bradley Lectures on December 13.
Edited excerpts follow.
When I was working on Russia under the Old Regime , which covers about a thousand years of history, I became curious about why Russia, which is in many ways a European country, had never really developed civil society or institutions that protect human rights. I became aware that the big difference between Russian history and Western history is the very late appearance of private property in Russia, in contrast to its very early appearance in Western Europe. I wove that theme into subsequent works, but after fifteen books on Russia, I decided to look at the historical relationship in other countries between the institution of private property and freedom. The subject of private property is grossly neglected in Western literature, or at least it was until quite recently. My argument is that private property is a necessary but insufficient condition of freedom.