Follow the Founders, privatize public lands
- Thread starter Oak
- Start date
Irrelevant
Well-known member
Wow. Is that twitter handle real?
Mission accomplished.
Irrelevant
Well-known member
Would a good next move be to ask forbes why they allow their contributors to blatantly lie?
375H&H
Well-known member
If you do that, better hit a bunch of the other media outlets as well. That list will get long.
I find it interesting that the three natural rights that were listed in the First Continental Congress's declaration of rights in 1774 were life, liberty and property; the pursuit of happiness was placed on our Declaration of Independence at the last moment on the 4th of July in 1776 in lieu of property. I believe this omission had at least partly to do with the debate between our Founding Fathers on whether property rights were a natural right given at birth by our creator or if they rather can only be given by government (The latter Jeffersonian thoughts ultimately prevailed). For example, John Adams said "The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence." Thomas Jefferson wrote though that "no individual has, of natural right, a separate property in an acre of land."
With that being said about Jefferson’s thoughts on property rights, he was probably the most important person in our country's history in developing a private land society when considering his influence on the acquisition (e.g. Louisiana Purchase) and the survey of lands (Andro Linklater, whom authored Owning the Land, called this the largest and most orderly transfer of public lands to private interests in world history); further he did this while also influencing language in a 1787 ordinance that set aside a square mile within each township to finance public education which would ultimately lead to the establishment of over 100 land-grant colleges and universities in America. I love that men such as Madison and Jefferson (and later TR) seemed to be such contradictions but I believe this is exactly what made them, and ultimately America, great; this is also why I appreciate the bi-partisan message that you will hear from Randy as he has no problem calling out either party when he believes they’re in the wrong and will give them credit where credit's due when they’re in the right.
Two things that really stuck out to me about Mr. Hanke’s thinking is that he ignores the economic value that coincides with outdoor recreation on public lands (A near $700 billion industry by the most current figures I’ve heard) and the increased capital value of improved land that governments can tap into. I would direct him to a letter sent in 1990 to Mikhail Gorbachev by 30 American economists from institutions such as Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Michigan and MIT (including an eventual president of the American Economic Association) that urged him to not sell off government land for a number of reasons including the low return the government would obtain by selling outright and the loss of sustainable and increasing returns that these lands could generate; these returns could then be used to finance public services which would then increase land value further and allow governments to collect further on these capital gains (This seems like the sound application of business principles to me).
While we are likely too far down the stream of our experiment to allow the full implementation of such a public lands system, it is food for thought and could be the impetus for better management of our public lands which could in-turn provide a more substantive return than outright sale and make a more marked dent into our overwhelming national debt. I think it’s also important to remember that land improvements don’t always have to include structures and highways as it seems that when we purposely strive to speak for those that can’t, we end up collecting perhaps even larger dividends than we would’ve otherwise.
With that being said about Jefferson’s thoughts on property rights, he was probably the most important person in our country's history in developing a private land society when considering his influence on the acquisition (e.g. Louisiana Purchase) and the survey of lands (Andro Linklater, whom authored Owning the Land, called this the largest and most orderly transfer of public lands to private interests in world history); further he did this while also influencing language in a 1787 ordinance that set aside a square mile within each township to finance public education which would ultimately lead to the establishment of over 100 land-grant colleges and universities in America. I love that men such as Madison and Jefferson (and later TR) seemed to be such contradictions but I believe this is exactly what made them, and ultimately America, great; this is also why I appreciate the bi-partisan message that you will hear from Randy as he has no problem calling out either party when he believes they’re in the wrong and will give them credit where credit's due when they’re in the right.
Two things that really stuck out to me about Mr. Hanke’s thinking is that he ignores the economic value that coincides with outdoor recreation on public lands (A near $700 billion industry by the most current figures I’ve heard) and the increased capital value of improved land that governments can tap into. I would direct him to a letter sent in 1990 to Mikhail Gorbachev by 30 American economists from institutions such as Yale, Harvard, Princeton, Michigan and MIT (including an eventual president of the American Economic Association) that urged him to not sell off government land for a number of reasons including the low return the government would obtain by selling outright and the loss of sustainable and increasing returns that these lands could generate; these returns could then be used to finance public services which would then increase land value further and allow governments to collect further on these capital gains (This seems like the sound application of business principles to me).
While we are likely too far down the stream of our experiment to allow the full implementation of such a public lands system, it is food for thought and could be the impetus for better management of our public lands which could in-turn provide a more substantive return than outright sale and make a more marked dent into our overwhelming national debt. I think it’s also important to remember that land improvements don’t always have to include structures and highways as it seems that when we purposely strive to speak for those that can’t, we end up collecting perhaps even larger dividends than we would’ve otherwise.
