The federal government owns more than half the land in the state, as it does across much of the West. It used to be routine for ranchers to get permits to graze cattle or cut timber or work mines — a way to make a living from the land.We all agree that natural beauty is important, and the environment represents a kind of national treasure. But the culture of the West is also a kind of national treasure. The people might be self-sufficient, as once they were when they could own the land they worked.
Then came increasing environmental regulations, and the federal land became more for owls and sage grouse than for local people trying to feed their families, said Soper, 39, who lives 100 miles up the road in Bend.
To me this is a story much like the Yazoo land scandal, except that instead of selling the land to a corporation the government is refusing to sell to anyone. That policy ends up making citizens less free than they would be if they could own their own means of production, including the land on which they graze. While some national parks and refuges are a great idea, the West is vast -- vast enough that the government could do everything we'd want them to do without owning half or more of the land in these states.
The effect of government ownership of most of the land in your state is to reduce a large part of the citizenry from free landholders to tenet farmers subject to the whim of their landlords. It is to reduce the scope of human liberty substantially. Property ownership is one of the rights the Revolution was fought to protect -- indeed, for the many Founders who were politically aligned with John Locke, it was first among those rights. These policies put the liberty that comes with ownership out of reach, and along the way are crushing out of existence a traditional American culture of great nobility.
6 comments:
This is a result of confirmation bias extended over 100 years, where one side has real power and the other has "rights" that they hope are guaranteed by the Constitution.
Civil servants sometimes get things right, sometimes wrong, as compared to individual landowners. Over time, as they enforce their will in response to when individuals got things wrong, they will come to have jurisdiction in more and more circumstances. Eventually, they will become convinced that they are always right - not that they would ever say such a thing.
The ratchet only works in one direction. Even if the civil servants started out ridiculously, horribly wrong 90% of the time, they would keep uncovering places where you got it wrong and they were right. Sometimes this would be legitimate, as when some yahoo did something stupid with his land which had a downstream effect on other citizens. Other times, it would be mere technical violations, such as describing a backfire as arson, even though any sane person would see through that.
Eventually, it has no relation to reality at all, only to words on a page, interpreted by the government to mean whatever the hell it wants. Because the civil servants have gradually become removed from reality as well, they believe the words on the page are reality.
Rinse. Repeat. Orwell.
It's like they want to create cities full of concentration camps, but know that people can always go into the rural villages for food. Well, they have a plan for that, and an intention even.
The effect of government ownership of most of the land in your state is to reduce a large part of the citizenry from free landholders to tenet farmers subject to the whim of their landlords. It is to reduce the scope of human liberty substantially.
Sorry, but I just don't buy this argument for the following reasons:
1. In non-western states, fedgov owns an average of 4% of the land. This includes land on which military bases and government buildings are located.
4% is just not enough land to, as you put it, "...reduce a large part of the citizenry from free landholders to tenet farmers subject to the whim of their landlords. It is to reduce the scope of human liberty substantially.". It just isn't.
2. Out West, where most of the government owned land is located, a large part of that land is arid, mountainous, remote, and/or poorly suited for individual ownership. Alaska, Nevada, Utah are great examples of this.
Your position presupposes that there are large numbers of people who would buy this land in a heartbeat, were it up for sale. But that's just not the case. Just because people might be free to buy this land if it were up for sale doesn't mean they would *wish* to (or that they could afford it).
Grazing in particular requires far larger parcels of land than most ranchers could ever afford. Heck - I hear tell some of these folks won't even pay their grazing fees (yet we are supposed to believe they have enough money to buy the land outright??? - if that's true, I think even less of them for not paying the grazing fees!)
This is one of those issues that's tailor-made of playing on the emotions of voters, but I think the history and the facts ought to matter here. It's not an accident that federal land ownership is so concentrated in the West and Alaska.
Here's a great resource:
https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42346.pdf
It's also worth noting that in my home state of Maryland (and also out West) much forested land was despoiled by rich landowners who were the only ones who could afford to buy large amounts of land.
It has taken decades for that damage to be healed. Similar issues occurred out West - one of the primary reasons for the creation of the BLM was overgrazing and the resulting damage to the land (this hurt farmers as well as wild critters).
It's important to understand the history before assuming too much about a situation. My family came from out West and many of my Dad's folks are still there, living in arid regions of the country.
When you write about these issues Grim, you often seem to me to be imagining some benign end state where contented, rational, happy people all manage to co-exist and cause no problems. But history doesn't look like that at all - and the history of this issue in particular is instructive and would provide much needed balance.
"4% is just not enough land to, as you put it, "...reduce a large part of the citizenry from free landholders to tenet farmers subject to the whim of their landlords. It is to reduce the scope of human liberty substantially.". It just isn't."
That's true. That's why I said -- in the very sentence you quoted -- "government ownership of most of the land in your state." I'm not talking about states where the government owns a small amount of land, but about states in which government actually owns the majority of land.
"Out West, where most of the government owned land is located, a large part of that land is arid, mountainous, remote, and/or poorly suited for individual ownership. Alaska, Nevada, Utah are great examples of this."
Not every form of use is about farming. Ranching can be done on somewhat arid land. Mining can be done where there are useful minerals, oil, or gas. These methods are fine in areas that are remote or arid.
I'm not suggesting that the government should own no land, or that we shouldn't use National Parks or Forests/Wildernesses to protect areas of beauty. I think we should certainly conserve some areas just to be wild, too.
Still, when you deny ownership of the majority of the land, you are in an important way reducing the field of human liberty. Property rights are important to human liberty.
"When you write about these issues Grim, you often seem to me to be imagining some benign end state where contented, rational, happy people all manage to co-exist and cause no problems."
I think most people are decent and will work out their problems together, it's true. I see government as necessary for those ares where that does not occur. I also see the use of government as a vehicle for bad people to oppress others as being just as much of a problem as an absence of government can allow it.
At the moment, I think excess government is the bigger problem. That's not advocacy of anarchy, but it is an advocacy for stricter limits and smaller, less powerful government.
Still, when you deny ownership of the majority of the land, you are in an important way reducing the field of human liberty. Property rights are important to human liberty.
I divide it by intent. When evil people have land and power, bad stuff happens. When good people have land and power, less bad stuff happens. So the question is one of intent and of the nature of the particular humans with ownership, not what an idealistic person would do in an idealistic situation.
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