John Baden, long-time friend and colleague of Richard L. Stroup, wrote a eulogy to Rick, who died November 18. (For more about John, look here.)
![Richard Stroup](https://www.libertyandecology.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/Screen-Shot-2022-02-24-at-11.33.34-AM-e1646417305316-231x300.png)
“Rick was one of the first professors I met at Montana State University. Generous with his time and counsel, he greatly influenced my career. And it was a treat to teach with Rick. Here is the beginning of a fifty-year friendship with a fine scholar.
“I met Rick in 1969 while teaching economic anthropology at Indiana University in Bloomington Indiana. Mine was a visiting appointment because IU awarded my PhD. Thus, I needed a new university position. Rick helped me accomplish that goal at MSU.
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“Rick’s dissertation topic at the University of Washington was the effect of air pollution on environmental quality. Mine was the economics of the Hutterites. They are a Christian communist society whose founders came to America from Central Europe in 1870. A century later, they had grown to 120 colonies with a dozen in my favorite state, Montana.
“Given Rick’s strong free market philosophy, he became intrigued with the Hutterite saga of success. How could a communist society possibly work? Rick found that a fine political economy question.”