[Poohbah]

What bothers me about TNC is that they make sure that they get favorable conditions via legislative fiat before they start engaging in "free market capitalist" solutions.

Long before TNC starts spending money buying land, they make some strategeric campaign donations, and the land they want suddenly gets zoned as open space--and hence unusable. No one is going to buy it, except for TNC. When you have only one customer, you pay what the customer offers, or you don't sell--and you pay property taxes based on the last sale price, many times what the land can actually be sold for.

After TNC buys the land, they sprinkle a few more donations, and all of a sudden, that virgin, untouchable land can be logged, mined, or used for "low-density habitation' (read: a luxurious lodge can be built for occupancy by TNC bigwigs and their cronies).

[Grampa Dave]

In just 3 paragraphs, you have present an excellent summary of how TNC operates:

What bothers me about TNC is that they make sure that they get favorable conditions via legislative fiat before they start engaging in "free market capitalist" solutions.

Long before TNC starts spending money buying land, they make some strategeric campaign donations, and the land they want suddenly gets zoned as open space--and hence unusable. No one is going to buy it, except for TNC. When you have only one customer, you pay what the customer offers, or you don't sell--and you pay property taxes based on the last sale price, many times what the land can actually be sold for.

After TNC buys the land, they sprinkle a few more donations, and all of a sudden, that virgin, untouchable land can be logged, mined, or used for "low-density habitation' (read: a luxurious lodge can be built for occupancy by TNC bigwigs and their cronies).