When Uncle Sam Owns the Land

Cato Institute ^ | November 8, 2003 | Richard W. Rahn

[farmfriend]

Rights, farms, environment ping.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.

[farmfriend]

Natural Process

This book proposes a free-market environmental management system designed to deliver a product that is superior to government oversight, at lower cost. It provides examples illustrating how the system might work and proposes an implementing legal strategy. Though environmental in origin, the principles this book describes are applicable toward privatizing nearly any form of government regulation.

This book examines where we are going and what to do about it from the perspective of an amateur ecologist developing habitat restoration processes as a hobby. By profession, the author is a medical device engineer, representing neither of the polar opposites of the environmental debate. The combination of multinational regulatory, industrial, and "hands-on" experience is sadly lacking in policy development all too often dominated by lawyers, activists, or other interest groups. The goal is to introduce a system design, capable of reversing the growing reach of regulatory government and motivating the human and ecological benefits through the responsible expression of individual liberty.

[riverrunner]

The Feds are some of the worse neigbors to have. They are the big bully on the block and are not afraid to use their power to put down anything they do not like.

[E.G.C.]

BTTT!!!!!

[AdamSelene235]

The Occupied Territories

[appalachian_dweller]

bump for later review...nice graphic, got a link?

[Alberta's Child]

Describing government-owned lands as "occupied territory" is misleading. Most of the lands in the U.S. that are owned by the government were not seized or purchased from private owners for the purpose of "environmental protection" -- they have been owned by the government for years because they are largely worthless to private interests and cannot provide the revenue needed to sustain any public road and utility access.

This is why most agricultural land uses are heavily subsidized by the government -- without Uncle Sam, these folks would be out of business.

[MineralMan]

Try this:

http://www.nwi.org/

BTW, when you see a graphic here on FR and want a link to the site, right click the graphic and click Properties in the pop-up window (assuming Internet Exploder). Then you can copy and paste the link into your browser, backspacing, if needed, to get to the site, rather than the graphic.

[appalachian_dweller]

Kewl. Thanks!

[MineralMan]

"Kewl. Thanks!"

My pleasure. Hope it helps you.

[joesnuffy]

if your neighbor keeps hazardous materials on the edge of his property, such as dead trees and brush

Dead trees and brush are "hazardous materials?" Who knew? And here I thought they were owl and other critter's habitat......judging by the fact that they live there....

[Onelifetogive]

This is why most agricultural land uses are heavily subsidized by the government -- without Uncle Sam, these folks would be out of business.

WTF??? Unless government "helps" grow food, no one could stay in business growing food??? That makes ABSOLUTELY NO SENSE? Who would put the food producers out of business? Other food producers???

[TigersEye]

bumped and bookmarked

[sergeantdave]

No, Alberta -

There are vast resources on government land - wood, natural gas, minerals, etc. The private businesses, at the least the part that hasn't paid the crooked politicians to keep this land off the market, would love to tap this land.

[Alberta's Child]

Who would put the food producers out of business? Other food producers?

Sort of. Many U.S. agricultural products are protected from foreign competitors by our system of subsidizing farmers.

But the real issue is that many food producers in the U.S. would be put out of business by nothing. The U.S. currently produces far more agricultural products than it consumes and exports, so without subsidies many of these farmers would simply disappear because of a lack of demand for their products.

[Cuttnhorse]

I just wish the gubment would start subsidizing the poor lowly cow-calf producer. We get didly.

[JohnBovenmyer]

It looks like Iowa has the least amount (relative and absolute) of federal land of any state. Nice to see us come out on top of something!

[Alberta's Child]

There are vast resources on government land - wood, natural gas, minerals, etc.

That might be true for some areas, but take a look at the map in Post #6 and ask yourself how much wood, natural gas, and minerals there could possibly be in that big yellow patch of land between the Coast Range and the Rocky Mountains. Most of that land is desert, which is why the Bureau of Land Management owns it -- nobody in their right mind would pay even a dollar an acre for it.

You also have to remember that even if this land had resource wealth, the cost of extraction and transportation would be prohibitively high. It's no accident that the portion of land own by the government is highest in the parts of the country where the population densities have always been the lowest. There's no point in digging iron and nickel out of the ground in Idaho or Utah if the mills that would mold these things into steel are in the Northeast and the plants that would use the steel to build cars and trucks are in the Midwest.

[Alberta's Child]

I just wish the gubment would start subsidizing the poor lowly cow-calf producer.

In many parts of the country it already does. Not direct subsidies like the grain producers are given, but indirect subsidies like grazing rights on BLM lands.