LAI KeyNotes: December 2011

Our Society's History and Future.

As we near the Year End and enter 2012, we all ponder and assess things past and things yet to be.

For Lambda Alpha, we enter our 82nd Year as a Society. While not long in the annals of time, it gives cause to pause and to consider whether we continue to meet
the demands of relevance, given the sometimes hectic,
often fickle and frenetic pace of lives in the 21st Century.

As is the demand on your Society's President (we are charged, on the passage
of the torch), I have been reading the Richard T. Ely's autobiography "The Ground Under our Feet", written in observance of the establishment of the American Economics Association. Ely, schooled somewhat in Germany before taking up his teaching standard first at the John Hopkins University, helped establish that organization in 1885. As Secretary, he participated in the formulation of the goals and ideals that benefited his later work to establish Lambda Alpha, in 1930. In 1885, economics in general was stuck in the doctrinaire philosophy of 'laissez faire', where the idea of any need for the intervention by government in market affairs had been eschewed by strong currents of belief in self determination.
Even John Stuart Mills, writing in the late 1800's in support of a greater need to
be more flexible, principled, international and analytic in the approach and study
of economic forces, was not fully precedent as to how far the pendulum would swing in the next one hundred years or so.

Ely experienced forty-five years of academic, practice and development of economic theory through the American Economics Association, including enduring the passage of the Great War. He foresaw, experienced and
supplied the rational for an honourary Land Economics Society comprised
of industry leaders that could cross-pollinate with each other in local and international settings and add humanitarianism to the agenda. And he chose
the stewardship of land as the resource based focus to encourage that communication and support for education, applied research and social interaction. He saw in the Society a vehicle for social leadership and self selection from the widest spectrum of educated professionals.

In 2012, we will continue to experiment with free trade, the maintenance of
the Euro Zone as a trading block and the inter-dependence of our respective economies on one another. The Mayan Calendar foretells yet more change
for the year ahead. Change is the continuum and Lambda Alpha needs to embrace it, get ahead of its currents and lead our membership with identified values. This is what we do. Our Society continues to grow in Chapters with expanding opportunities to dialogue, fuss, predict, pinpoint and assess
matters, large and small.

Lambda Alpha remains relevant, topical and with an Agenda of much to do.
The formula of creditable professionals meeting in open forums with a common focus, capable of talented testing of each other’s visions and efforts, remains more relevant than ever. The Society needs your energy to make it so.

On behalf of the Executive Committee, have a healthy and safe transition into
the New Year.

Ian Lord, LAI President