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Some resources are different than others. Wind and tide are sort of like timber - you either have them or you don’t within your property line.

The Ogallala aquifer? You bet that’s a state resource, and they have so screwed themselves with respect to the shape that aquifer is in.

Greed is good for everyone. Again, if you own it, you should be able to profit from it. If the State owns it, and you are a citizen of that state, then forget putting that money into some coffer somewhere for some pencil-neck to spend - cut the citizens a check. It’s the only way they will get any kind of idea of what that resource means to the larger state economy.

Seattle killed the timber industry in the entire state. They could do that because it was Seattle vs. Aberdeen. It should have been Seattle vs Every Washington Resident, including Seattlite Morons.

If the state builds a wind driven electrical generation facility on state property, a dividend check should go to each citizen. Same with hydroelectric projects. There would be a helluva lot less idiots here asking for these dams to be torn down if people got dividend checks.

I’ll tell you this - it would STOP the government from entering businesses they shouldn’t be entering.

“How come my check did not show up this quarter?”

“Well Mr. Taxpayer, we hired idiots to run the dam project and we think we won’t be in the black for the next 20 quarters - sorry!”

Today, that’s swept under the carpet, along with failed investments in GM, Chrysler, the Banks, etc.

If the US wants to be a business, then its citizens should DIRECTLY benefit. It would be SO MUCH EASIER making such state-run enterprises live by GAAP rules and Sarbanes-Oxley requirements. Defrauding shareholders and defrauding taxpayers would have the same elements and the same burden of proof.

If the discussion about whether the state gets into a business becomes, “We are going to need to pay the right people to run it, because taxpayers will be looking for their check in the mail,” then we have advanced government’s understanding of how capitalism works.

Palin both forged and IMPLEMENTED (actually did it) a strategy whereby the State, the Taxpayer, and the Oil Company benefitted in a way that was transparent to all parties, and furthermore incentivized the oil companies to pump all it could, while taxpayers received benefits that elevated when the price of oil was high, and declined when the price of oil dropped. Simple, smart, and effective.

I contrast that to a healthcare overhaul that had to PASS CONGRESS before anyone could see what was actually in it.

That DEMONSTRATES expertise in my book, having done business with oil companies, governments, and taxpayers.

I’ve seen landowners here in WA state stand in the way of huge commerical projects that could bring in hundreds of jobs just because they didn’t want to. One case here, in fact, the tool didn’t provide proper draining of his property during the five years this mill tried to buy his land, at which point his entire 40 acres was designated ‘mosaic wetland’.

What that meant was that the genius owner now possessed land he could neither develop nor sell for any appreciable amount. I’m all for property rights, but that doesn’t we forgo a great deal of economic opportunity to uphold those rights that we otherwise wouldn’t.

In most cases, it isn’t the property rights that are the problem, as in the case above. It’s the infringement on the rights of usage imposed by government.

We have a doozy of a law up here called “The Forest and Fish Law” which requires confiscatory setbacks of private land, plus mitigation requirements that are positively collectivist in order to comply.

The state isn’t required, and doesn’t live, by those same laws, however. It would be different if taxpayers became shareholders for resource related projects on state owned property.

The other massive problem this would solve is the federal land grab. Most states would annex it back and tell the feds to shove it. Eventually they’d prevail too, once people started getting those checks.

You want government to start behaving like a business? Turn certain state resource aspects of it into a business and the 9th and 10th amendments will get their teeth back. Today the feds take all the cash, and dole it back to the states. The shoe would quickly be placed on the other foot.