Randy T. Simmons is Senior Fellow at the Property and Environment Research Center, Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute, Professor of Economics at Utah State University (USU), and Co-Founder, President and Director of Research of Strata. His Independent books include Beyond Politics: the Roots of Government Failure, Aquanomics: Water Markets and the Environment  (with B. Delworth Gardner), and the forthcoming Political Ecology: Environmental Myths and Government Failure (with Ryan Yonk and Ken Sim), and he is co-editor with Terry Anderson of The Political Economy of Customs and Culture. Dr. Simmons received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Oregon. He has been Policy Analyst in the Office of Policy Analysis at the U.S. Department of the Interior; Mayor of Providence, Utah; and a member of the Board of Directors of the Utah League of Cities and Towns and the Utah Governor’s Privatization Commission.