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(I'll play your game you rogue)

12/8/2010 8:16:02 AM

freedom to have a car without seatbelts

12/8/2010 8:36:30 AM

National parks and forests?

12/8/2010 9:00:59 AM

No, the wouldn't ban them . . . they just wouldn't fund them.

12/8/2010 9:04:00 AM

but they would probably cease to exist though, right? I'm guessing they would be auctioned off to the highest bidders since a small government shouldn't own public land. Would the same be true for memorials in DC?

12/8/2010 9:12:03 AM

the original parks and most park land is donated to the state by wealthy groups and individuals. I doubt they'd disapear even if they got defunded (which i doubt anyone would bother trying seeing as how the park service is such a tiny piece of the budget.)

12/8/2010 9:44:50 AM

Quote :

"but they would probably cease to exist though, right? I'm guessing they would be auctioned off to the highest bidders since a small government shouldn't own public land. Would the same be true for memorials in DC?"

Not true. The government has private sector competitors which exist for the purpose of buying at risk land and protecting it from development. The only reason all this land usually gets donated to the government is because the private charity cannot afford the taxes to hold it themselves. If government were in fact smaller, then taxes would not be as big a problem and such private organizations could afford to keep the land themselves.

[Edited on December 8, 2010 at 10:59 AM. Reason : .,.]

12/8/2010 10:57:59 AM

^Well I think its safe to assume that the land would go to the highest bidder, since that would be the only fair way to divy up the land to private owners. I think its also safe to assume that if wealth could be extracted from the land in the form of mineral, water, development or timber then some other institution with deeper pockets would easily jump in front of land conservancies. I think that leaves very few parks that could be saved.




^^some park land was donated, but I'm pretty sure not any where close to a majority of public federal lands were donated, in some cases imminent domain was even used to acquire certain parts of parks.

[Edited on December 8, 2010 at 11:10 AM. Reason : .]

12/8/2010 10:59:57 AM

The majority of public lands were never in private hands. The government has had title to it since the nations founding. But, this was most often not for a lack of trying: no private entity was willing to own it for any purpose because the land in question, while beautiful, was no where near lines of trade with civilization, rendering it useless. Most of this land would still today be valueless if not for the roads the government paid to build. Even then, the land is only useful at a tourist attraction.

So, if we replayed history without government ownership of this land, it would either still be inaccessible, and therefore undeveloped for any purpose even tourism, or held by the Sierra Club which built roads so people could come see the beauty and pay park admission fees. Remember, the nation existed for well over a hundred years before anyone ever heard of a national park.

[Edited on December 8, 2010 at 11:11 AM. Reason : .,.]

12/8/2010 11:08:27 AM

Quote :

"Even then, the land is only useful at a tourist attraction. "

not even close to true

Quote :

"So, if we replayed history without government ownership of this land, it would either still be inaccessible, and therefore undeveloped for any purpose even tourism, or held by the Sierra Club which built roads so people could come see the beauty and pay park admission fees. "

My guess is it would be held by big ag as range, timber or farmland or by mining companies extracting whatever they could get out of it.

you're right though, its a damn shame we can't replay history

12/8/2010 11:14:00 AM

Quote :

"no private entity was willing to own it for any purpose because the land in question, while beautiful, was no where near lines of trade with civilization, rendering it useless."

You do realize that all land everywhere was no where near lines of trade with civilization until some private entitiy bought/claimed it...right?

12/8/2010 11:16:51 AM

^stop lying. No one ever made a dime in timber.

12/8/2010 11:18:13 AM

Keep in mind, the nation existed for well over a hundred years before anyone ever heard of a national park. And yet, the land did not fall to agriculture, timber, or mining, all for the exact reason I said: without transportation, land is useless. Useless land is cheap land. Cheap land that is beautiful, it seems to me, should find itself in the hands of environmental groups eager to protect it. As such, when transportation arrives well into the 20th century, we as a people are already ready, willing, and able to pay $1 an acre to do nothing with it. That we ultimately let people in that pay admission, money that is used to later buy even more land to charge admission, is just a bonus.

Lumex, you have that backwards. Transportation is expensive. It does not come just because someone owns the land. People did not want to pay the taxes, so no one owned land without transportation.

[Edited on December 8, 2010 at 11:24 AM. Reason : .,.]

12/8/2010 11:22:27 AM

That's because the land was owned by the People of the United States and held in the collective interest by the government and not by private entities. It took acts of Congress to open up tracts of land for settlement. The lack of access to transportation didn't stop Oklahoma settlers from lining up at the border in 1889 waiting for that precise moment allowed by law in which they could flood into Oklahoma and stake land claims.

The lack of access to transportation didn't stop Oregon settlers from heading west, didn't stop homesteaders in Kansas. The only thing that slowed the expansion of the United States citizenry into unspoiled land was governmental refusal to do a carte blanche enclosure. It was also through enclosure that the United States managed to pay off debts and fund other projects.

The land was never sitting there ownerless rife for the taking.

Do libertarians understand the concept of the commons?

[Edited on December 8, 2010 at 11:36 AM. Reason : .]

12/8/2010 11:29:06 AM

^^ for those hundred years before national parks the population of america was also less than 100 million people. America grew bigger in number and she grew out to distant lands.

Quote :

"Cheap land that is beautiful, it seems to me, should find itself in the hands of environmental groups eager to protect it."

or in the hands of an entrepenuer ready to extract as much wealth as he/she can from it.

Quote :

"able to pay $1 an acre "

Who are you buying this land from? The Indians?

[Edited on December 8, 2010 at 11:33 AM. Reason : .]

12/8/2010 11:32:32 AM

^^ Not true. For almost a century all the land owned by the Federal Government could be had at a statutory minimum price. For some periods of time and some regions, land owned by the Federal Government could be had at a price of zero, all you had to do was use the land for any purpose. And, yet, after a century of trying to get rid of it, the Federal Government still owned 1/4th of the country.

But I fear we are getting distracted by tangents. the fact is, even with the government securing a huge share of the natural world, the Sierra Club and World Wildlife Fund still exist with the historically stated goal of buying land to NOT develop it. That these organization exist and raise money in a world where the government does most of the conservation is proof they would both exist and do even more in a world where the government does not divert societies conservation efforts into lobbying.

Quote :

"or in the hands of an entrepenuer ready to extract as much wealth as he/she can from it. "

Wealth which could be maximized by #1 building a road to the site and charging admission or #2 by selling the land to eager conservationists.

[Edited on December 8, 2010 at 11:45 AM. Reason : .,.]

12/8/2010 11:37:24 AM

Quote :

"^ Not true. For almost a century all the land owned by the Federal Government could be had at a statutory minimum price. For some periods of time and some regions, land owned by the Federal Government could be had at a price of zero, all you had to do was use the land for any purpose. And, yet, after a century of trying to get rid of it, the Federal Government still owned 1/4th of the country. "

With the Preemption Act of 1841 on through to the Federal Land Polic Act of 1976 enclosure of public lands was laregely limited to homesteading activities.

Quote :

"But I fear we are getting distracted by tangents. the fact is, even with the government securing a huge share of the natural world, the Sierra Club and World Wildlife Fund still exist with the historically stated goal of buying land to NOT develop it. That these organization exist and raise money in a world where the government does most of the conservation is proof they would both exist and do even more in a world where the government does not divert societies conservation efforts into lobbying"

It's not a tangent. The commons aren't a tangent. You just don't get to wave a magic wand and pretend as if thousands of years of land ownership and stewardship laws ceased to exist all to fit some libertarian fantasy dialogue.

Quote :

"Wealth which could be maximized by #1 building a road to the site and charging admission or #2 by selling the land to eager conservationists. "

all of which wasn't permissible under the laws governing the enclosure of public lands or the concept didn't exist at the time.

[Edited on December 8, 2010 at 11:47 AM. Reason : .]

12/8/2010 11:44:23 AM

====================================================================
The latest federal park, the Flight 93 Memorial, is 2,200 acres, cost $58 million, and required the use of eminent domain to seize property from landowners that didn't want to sell.
====================================================================

12/8/2010 11:48:50 AM

^^ By activity, not by statute. It was still the law of the land for any land to be put to public auction with request. This is how the great northern railroad managed to buy all the land around its proposed route and innumerable lumber companies to buy up the whole of the northeast.

^ Understand, I am not arguing that every acre within a public park today would still be lock up for preservation. Of course not. Why does it take 2000 acres to build a memorial? I am arguing that "but they would probably cease to exist though, right?" was wrong. We have conservation organization as it is, and certainly they (namely us) would put our conservation efforts where they would do the most good, securing whatever it is we find most worthy of conservation.


[Edited on December 8, 2010 at 11:56 AM. Reason : .,.]

12/8/2010 11:50:12 AM

Quote :

"Wealth which could be maximized by #1 building a road to the site and charging admission or #2 by selling the land to eager conservationists."

In some cases this is possibly true. But one must admit in many other locations profit could likely be maximized by selling to a timber or mining company.

Quote :

"the Sierra Club and World Wildlife Fund still exist with the historically stated goal of buying land to NOT develop it. That these organization exist and raise money in a world where the government does most of the conservation is proof they would both exist and do even more in a world where the government does not divert societies conservation efforts into lobbying. "

You are right that this is really the crux of the issue. You seem to think that the sierra club and other similar groups would be able to raise enough money to be competitive with timber, mining, and development interests, I just don't see that happening.

12/8/2010 11:52:15 AM

Quote :

"^ By activity, not by statute. It was still the law of the land for any land to be put to public auction with request. This is how the great northern railroad managed to buy all the land around its proposed route and innumerable lumber companies to buy up the whole of the northeast."

What you are experiencing right now is cognitive dissonance.

Quote :

"In some cases this is possibly true. But one must admit in many other locations profit could likely be maximized by selling to a timber or mining company."

precisely this. Hell, even being national park land doesn't protect the lands from timber interest.

[Edited on December 8, 2010 at 11:53 AM. Reason : .]

12/8/2010 11:52:25 AM

LoneSnark, this is what happens when you don't qualify your statements. You essentially made the following ridiculous implications:
-Nobody has ever wanted land that didn't have a road to it
-Parks exist because no one wanted to develop the land, ever
-The Sierra Club competes financially with private companies to buy land

12/8/2010 11:55:47 AM

Quote :

"In some cases this is possibly true. But one must admit in many other locations profit could likely be maximized by selling to a timber or mining company."

This part of my story was mostly an explanation for why the national parks we have are the ones we have. For 100 years all of it was for sale, either to homesteaders or the highest bidder, and yet we ended the 19th century will huge swaths of remote mountainous wilderness still in the hands of the owner of last resort. It was because it is difficult to find a profitable use of remote mountainous wilderness. Well, if the government had not existed, all this land would have still ended the 19th century in the hands of the owner of last resort, whoever that is.

So there are two stories I am telling. The first story is the "remoteness breeds wilderness" story, which only means that at some point all land was cheap, not that it would stay that way. It takes time to build roads, and while land may be worthless because it requires building a hundred miles of road to get to it, the land between here and the nearest road has a different economic story, so it is only a matter of time before that hundred miles of road needed becomes only one mile. As that happens, the price will rise. Conservationists are able to get ahead of this issue by buying the land while the road is 100 miles away and refusing to sell it when the road is 1 mile away, as has been the story of the 20th century. The WWF made the news by selling 50 acres of (now urban) woodland and using the proceeds from that sale to purchase a thousand acres of woodland from a lumber company. In this instance, it was not the conservationist fund-raisers bidding for land against the lumber company, it was urban real-estate developers bidding against the lumber company.

All that private conservation requires is a desire among the population to support conservation. So, I guess, the real question is, do you support conservation? Are you willing to donate to such causes or visit and pay the admission fees of such causes? If so, then resources will flow towards such conservation. As the public supports them more, they will bid for and lock up more land.

Quote :

"You seem to think that the sierra club and other similar groups would be able to raise enough money to be competitive with timber, mining, and development interests, I just don't see that happening."

It happens today. Such organizations continue to buy land today, often buying directly from those wanting to develop it. This is because land must compete with other land for development. If I want to build a factory, i can build it anywhere I find flat land with road access. But conservationists don't want any land, they want a critical waterway or land with unique flora or fauna, road access be damned.

12/8/2010 12:48:55 PM

12/8/2010 12:59:59 PM

Quote :

" Conservationists are able to get ahead of this issue by buying the land while the road is 100 miles away and refusing to sell it when the road is 1 mile away"

This might work if conservationists in the past had perfect foresight and could have gotten far enough ahead, But today in America we are past that, atleast in being able to purchase land with the kind of acreage we enjoy in our national parks. The only areas where this might still be viable would be the world’s rainforest. Of course, all kinds of rainforest conservancies do exist, but they have only really preserved a very small percentage of the forests.

Even assuming you could go back in time with the foresight that was needed you would still need to raise some fairly large funds to achieve anything close to our current park system, but I think you would suffer from the same problems that rainforest conservationists suffer from today, a lack of support, which you mentioned was all that was needed for private conservation to succeed.

I think that a majority of people “support” conservation, just like they “support” a lot of things. They think it’s a good idea but don’t necessarily make it a priority because they are balancing it with so many other things that are more immediate and actual priorities to their day to day living (atleast I know I’m guilty of this). Conservation doesn’t become a priority until the road is only a few miles away from the land that should have been preserved! By then it is too late to compete with the other interests, while a portion may still be preserved, I doubt it would be of the meaningful size we find in America’s great parks. It’s what I think will happen to rainforests without governments protecting larger portions of them (although I’m pretty sure they have already done this to an extent).

In summary:
“Cause you don’t know what ya' got . . , Til it’s gone”





[Edited on December 8, 2010 at 4:30 PM. Reason : oh major choke]

12/8/2010 4:29:23 PM

-EPA
-CDC
-food safety regulations
-puppies
-US Department of Education
-publicly support health insurance for poor kids
-anti-segregation laws
-pragmatism

12/8/2010 4:43:26 PM

Quote :

"But today in America we are past that"

Not true. I suggest you take a flight over North Carolina. There are cities, farms, and hundreds of miles of wilderness. I flew a cesna to Wilmington and at one point everyone in the plane realized that from where we were, none of us could spot any evidence of human civilization. As Americans tend to stick to the occupied areas of the country, we easily forget that if we stopped following the road and instead traveled a straight line, we would soon find ourselves in some farmers field and then ultimately lost in the woods. The statistics show this out:

Quote :

"For Alaska, the 600,000 persons are mostly located in urban areas, and consume only a few hundred square miles of land. Most of the 591,000 square miles of Alaska are wilderness area, owned by the federal and state governments and native tribes. For the other 49 states which have about 300 million persons on about 3 million square miles of land, I offer two sets of statistics: developed 7% cropland 18% pasture and range 36% managed forest 12% natural forest, desert, wetlands, etc. 27% so we can say that about 27 percent of the 49 states are wildlands, with about a quarter of this protected as official designated wilderness areas. pasture and range can have wildland attributes depending on the intensity of domesticated animal grazing relative to wild animal use. http://www.answerbag.com/q_view/376898#ixzz17YjTl1Wn"

So, if this first hit on google is correct, of today's wildlands in the lower 49 states, only a quarter is that way because of the government. The rest is either still beyond use by human civilization, and thus dirt cheap, or locked up by existing private entities.

12/8/2010 4:58:39 PM

But very few of those private entities are going to allow recreation on their land

and the point still stands that a conservation group is unlikely to be able to raise enough funds to form a park that is as meaningful in size as those preserved by the government

12/8/2010 5:15:13 PM

Quote :

"But very few of those private entities are going to allow recreation on their land"

Why not? If they allow recreation and charge a fee for use, that is more money they can use to protect that land and buy even more land.

Quote :

"and the point still stands that a conservation group is unlikely to be able to raise enough funds to form a park that is as meaningful in size as those preserved by the government"

If you move the goal-posts all the way to there, yes, you are quite right. I can only concede that our world without government ownership of parks would indeed be different. But, try to keep in mind, that is not where the goal-posts started at; they started at your assertion that undeveloped parks "would probably cease to exist, right?"

But, now that you have given up the controversial position, try another one. For well over a century, the U.S. government did all it could to develop as much of the country as it could. It gave little to no attention to natural preservation. Why? It was politics. As nutsmackr said, even being national park land in the 20th century doesn't protect the land from timber interests. If political winds blow that way, the way they did for well over a century, then all the national park lands may find themselves under intense mining, grazing, and timber pressures. Even worse, because extraction companies take far less care with land they don't own.

If I cared deeply about conservation, I would much rather have smaller parks that were owned and wholly controlled by die hard conservationists, rather than larger parks owned and wholly controlled by Congress, which is just one resource shock away from stripping such lands bare if it would contain rising gasoline (or timber, mineral, etc) prices.

[Edited on December 8, 2010 at 11:06 PM. Reason : .,.]

12/8/2010 11:02:24 PM

For all of those thinking that conservation groups can stop private entities just with funds and without government assistance, there have been many instances when money (or power) would have or did win.

- Hetch Hetchy Dam in Yosemite after the park was established
- Logging in in the Smokies as conservationists were gathering funds to pay for the land
- Damming the Grand Canyon
- Logging the Redwoods
- Mining in Canyonlands
- Urban development in the Everglades

If you look at the history of many parks, many were only saved because conservation groups could purchase the land AND got the government involved before private ventures purchased them instead. You also have to consider to properly protect an ecosystem or habitat, you have to consider affects outside of just that tract of land; something that cannot be controlled without owning the land or government assistance.

Quote :

"Keep in mind, the nation existed for well over a hundred years before anyone ever heard of a national park. And yet, the land did not fall to agriculture, timber, or mining, all for the exact reason I said: without transportation, land is useless. Useless land is cheap land. "

Look at a map where most larger parks, as well as the first ones, are. They are out west, where there just wasn't the development or settlement until the conservation movement started to gain support as the west was being settled.

You are right about the land being useless without transportation. One of the big reasons why National Parks got the traction and support they did was because railroads used them as vacation destinations. It also helped that railroad had deep pockets then, and they got the government's assistance to protect the land. Glacier, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, Yosemite all were along main railroad lines.





This is all coming from someone who thinks like a libertarian but supports the parks

12/8/2010 11:28:03 PM

Quote :

"If you move the goal-posts all the way to there, yes, you are quite right. I can only concede that our world without government ownership of parks would indeed be different"

I didn't move shit. My original assertion was that national parks and forests would cease to exist because the land would be auctioned off to the highest bidder. They would cease to exist as we know them today!! Thank you for admitting you are wrong.

Quote :

"As nutsmackr said, even being national park land in the 20th century doesn't protect the land from timber interests. If political winds blow that way, the way they did for well over a century, then all the national park lands may find themselves under intense mining, grazing, and timber pressures. Even worse, because extraction companies take far less care with land they don't own. "

Logging is only allowed in National Forests, which was one of the original intentions of them anyways. While I don't agree with every logging operation in the forests and I do believe that there is room for improvement in forest service techniques, the fact is the restriction are much higher on public lands and the logging is more closely monitored than they are on private land.

Quote :

"I would much rather have smaller parks that were owned and wholly controlled by die hard conservationists"

I would support these parks too, but they wouldn't even come close to providing what our national parks do from a recreation and wildlife habitat standpoint.

12/9/2010 8:43:18 AM

Quote :

"Conservationists are able to get ahead of this issue by buying the land while the road is 100 miles away and refusing to sell it when the road is 1 mile away"

I don't care what you saw in your Cessna. The vast majority of unprotected wilderness in this country is within earshot of a road or other developed land.

The fact that you quoted the percentage of the unprotected wilderness in the USA shows that you think that difference between unprotected and protected wilderness is arbitrary. Thats ridiculous.

12/9/2010 9:37:47 AM

Quote :

"which is just one resource shock away from stripping such lands bare if it would contain rising gasoline (or timber, mineral, etc) prices. "

That will never happen. The legislative and public hurdles they would have to clear in order to do so are so very large that there is no foreseeable way for that to happen, short of world wide carnage.

12/9/2010 11:35:01 AM

Quote :

"That will never happen. The legislative and public hurdles they would have to clear in order to do so are so very large that there is no foreseeable way for that to happen, short of world wide carnage."

Really? And here I thought all it took was 51% in Congress and a Presidential Signature. There is no constitutional restriction on what the government can do with government owned land.

12/10/2010 8:10:36 AM

Government is a slow lumbering machine something like completely eroding protections for public lands would take time and people would stop it. getting 51% is tough enough already

12/10/2010 6:54:53 PM

No doubt lots of wilderness would remain.

Redwoods would almost certainly be extinct pretty quickly though.

Also, while private conservation groups might be able to buy land, could they afford to protect it without government assistance? From those who would want to poach the land or do illegal logging?

12/10/2010 11:02:55 PM

It's easy to brag about your party not banning things when your candidates never get elected into a position where they are able to.

12/10/2010 11:35:40 PM

Quote :

"From those who would want to poach the land or do illegal logging?"

Such is trespassing, call the local police. Oddly enough, merely calling the police is something the government has trouble doing. In many communities, Federally managed land means just that, free firewood.

^ Then how about a different brag. None of our candidates are willing to promise to ban something just to get elected.

[Edited on December 11, 2010 at 1:38 AM. Reason : .,.]

12/11/2010 1:37:37 AM

Quote :

"It's easy to brag about your party not banning things when your candidates never get elected into a position where they are able to."

I, for one, am happy that Bev Perdue is downsizing the government.

12/11/2010 9:47:54 PM