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I’m wondering if the book takes the complexities of the world into account?

More than you know. It's one heck of a lot of information in 400 pages.

But, how much airtime has been devoted to questioning the contract that placed the farmers and ranchers at risk?

The national government has made a mess of selling off its lands ever since it ignored the Equal Footing Doctrine subsequent to the adoption of the Constitution. That's how far back this goes. It continued with the use of eminent domain on behalf of the railroads (Abe Lincoln was a prominent lawyer in that regard). It got FAR worse with the Civil War and the 14th Amendment protection of corporations as citizens. So, it's a long story.

We have reached a state of affairs in agriculture where almost everywhere the more thoughtful specialists no longer ask what would be a rational policy to pursue but only which of the courses that seem politically feasible would do the least harm…We must confine ourselves to showing that agricultural policy has been dominated in most Western countries by conceptions which not only are self-defeating but, if generally applied, would lead to a totalitarian control of all economic activity.( Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, 1960 p362)

And he was right.

By attempting to assure agricultural producers a reward for their work, by delaying that growth of civilization, Hayek argued that all was done was to postpone adaptations that agriculture could have made on its own. Elsewhere in that chapter, there were these words:

Few arguments have been used so widely and effectively to persuade the public of the “wastefulness of competition” and the desirability of a central direction of important economic activities as the alleged squandering of natural resources by private enterprise…It is undeniable that where for such technological reasons we cannot have exclusive control of particular resources by individual owners, we must resort to alternative forms of regulation.” (Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty, p368)

That was 1960. Six years later, in 1966 we had an Act to protect the eagle and a few other animals, and another seven years later in 1973 we had the ESA. You’re apparently not in favor of HR2829/HR3705.

The concern I have is political. They'll SAY that we have fixed it and should give it another 20 years to work before we try again. So if it works out as I suggest... Hadn't thought of that one, had you?

How long have we been subsidizing agriculture?

Since Roosevelt, at least.

Has it been ruled unconstitutional?

Who sued?

You believe this new philosophy capable of the energy to grab a holt of us all?

The philosophy is true to Natural Law. I'm doing everything I can. The rest of it is up to people like you. That IS what self-government is about, isn't it?

I count at least a 40-year mindset enabling coercive action through the ESA. Hayek’s work indicates the time-frame is easily longer. You believe we have time?

Maybe, maybe not. Didn't you read the preface?

You don’t wake up in the morning wanting to write something like this. It isn’t that it is a lot of work, or two years (now three) of your life without pay. It is the concern that you may not have the time and money to get it done, or that it might be too late. There is no pleasure to be found articulating the appalling consequences of pervasive injustice, corruption, and ignorance. There is legitimate personal concern for capricious distortion or reprisal against my family. There certainly isn’t the expectation of making a lot of money. There is simply a lot at stake here.
That any government cannot directly manage an economy is obvious. Yet this nation has fallen to the notion that government should have a monopoly to manage something as complex as an ecosystem, with policies subordinated to political prejudice instead of technical judgement.

And consider any other petition of government, that by anyone’s standard is legitimate, to change the dynamics of the ESA, to be unfounded, a “tyranny of the urgent”? Aren’t you basing your argument against doing anything to change the ESA on the idea that the Act is unconstitutional regulation?

In a way, I don't give a damn what anybody does to the ESA as I intend to use it against the government. It's the definition of what constitutes an "expert in the field" and the monopoly control of credentials in the univerisities that concern me. This makes what I intend more expensive and gives too much power to a dependent professorate. In those respects I am against the bill.

My questions aren’t a critique of your work, as I’ve only read a small portion of it on-line—I’m assuming the website contains some of the philosophy of the book.

Philosophy, no data. There IS hard data BTW.

Rather, my questions are asked based somewhat on what you’re doing on your 14-acre latifundia (Latin: for a lot of fun to do a________) and on the analogy of the ranch in chapter one—local zoning and the other rules/regulations/Acts could as easily be responsible for the demise of the ranch. I’d remind you that zoning is as least as old as W, D.C.

Although zoning has been upheld by the SCOTUS, they were wrong. They lacked a good definition on how to deal with externailities and intangibles associated with the use of property and I have discovered the necessary principles. I am working on Tom Campbell now at Stanford, as he was a student of Scalia's. This philosophy has the power to provide the SCOTUS what it needs to restore private property rights as unalienable. (You clearly read right past the central principle in Chapter 1 (as intended; if I just told you, you wouldn't get it anyway). Whether a lot of people get it or not I have no clue. Unless readers grab it and help, it won't go anywhere. I don't have any money left for promotion. The books are finding VERY good homes and readers, so that jury is still out. It's scary though.

As for my land, it is a responsibility. I care for it as I would for any of God's creation. If I care for it well, it will provide for me. As it is, I am using it as a laboratory, to develop restoration processes that are affordable and efficient. We simply don't have the labor in this country to undo the damage done the with our current methods. It's just too big.

Now that you have read the ranch story, you may want to go back and read the first seven pages or so again. Think carefully about what it says about the nature of property as a dynamic and interactive process. You either own your body, or you don't own anything.