*Build, Baby, Build*: My Most Inexcusable Omission

Privatization of federal and state land is a massive missed opportunity. Second in a series of guest-blogging posts.

Every author has to make choices. What's worth including? What isn't? When I finally read the published version of my new Build, Baby, Build: The Science and Ethics of Housing Regulation, I was proud of my choices. False modesty aside, the book — a non-fiction graphic novel — looks great, and manages to cover almost every important angle.

With one inexcusable omission: I forgot to call for the privatization of government-owned land.

What makes this omission so inexcusable? Because I've known for many years that the share of land owned by U.S. federal and state governments is shockingly high. I just forgot about the issue until it was too late to alter the book.

To see the magnitude of government land ownership, check out these three fine maps.

First, here's federal land as a percentage of total state land area:

Second, here's state land as a percentage of total land area:

Finally, here's combined government ownership:

Here is what I wish I said about this topic:

1. Government ownership of land is a massive missed opportunity for humanity. If the government auctioned off this vast expanse to the highest bidders, land prices would dramatically fall, and business could finally start unearthing and developing its untold riches for human betterment.
2. Yes, most government intervention in the housing market is state and local. But if you count government ownership of land as "intervention" — as you should — the federal government's role suddenly looks a lot bigger. Which in turn means that the feds could move housing policy in a sharply more free-market direction without involving any other level of government.
3. Privatization would also let the federal government drastically slash its staggering debt — which now stands at 120% of U.S. GDP! State government debt loads and land ownership are both far lower. But mass privatization of state land would plausibly allow New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and perhaps a few other states to to pay off everything they owe, then fund permanent, sustainable tax cuts with the revenue raised.
4. The obvious objection to privatization is that government owns the land that nobody else wants. While auctioneers could make a lot of money selling off the Grand Canyon and other famous wonders, most of the land is too remote and desolate to warrant a positive price.
5. If you look at the U.S. map, however, the preceding objection seems hollow. History, not economics, explains almost all of the variance in government ownership. Land that entered the union prior to the rise of the ideology of conservationism overwhelmingly ended up in private hands. Then John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt, and other proto-green ideologues arrived on the scene to preach the anti-impact moral standard. They were wildly successful, managing to keep somewhere between 30% and 90% of all land in late-joining states in government hands.

   

• Route through the desolation of West Texas, happily owned by the private sector.

• West Texas is a mighty refutation of the "government owns the land that nobody else wants" story. If you drive from Amarillo to Lubbock to San Angelo to San Antonio, you'll witness hundreds of linear miles of the most desolate land in the entire country. Yet roads aside, almost every square foot of this "wasteland" is privately owned! What do private owners do with this seemingly worthless territory? Besides oil drilling and a little farming, it looks like they're playing the long game. The population of Texas is rapidly rising, and will ultimately justify their investment.
• What would privatization do to our glorious national parks? Dramatically improve their management. As I keep saying, free markets do the good things that sound bad, and government does the bad things that sound good. In the current regime, government grossly underprices campgrounds and other facilities, and severely restricts their further expansion. This sounds good, but it's bad. Private owners, in contrast, would try to balance natural beauty against human convenience. This sounds bad, but it's good. The point of a park is to maximize total long-run human enjoyment, not avoid impact at all costs.

  

8. Large-scale privatization of government land is a wonderful opportunity for domestic charter cities. Want to start a new U.S. population center? Buy a few hundred square miles of uninhabited federal land and try your ideas. "Build it and they will come" overstates, but visionary billionaires like Elon Musk could plausibly build new metropolises from scratch.

I'm not crazy. I know that full privatization of government land is highly unlikely to happen. If even 1% were privatized over the next decade, I'd be amazed. My point is privatization is a massive missed opportunity. And since Build, Baby, Build is all about massive missed opportunities, I really wish I'd included it. If I ever publish an expanded second edition, I definitely will.

Comments

[Brett Bellmore]

For the most part whether a state has a high or low percentage of government ownership of land hinges on when it became a state; At some point allowing private ownership of land went out of favor with government types, and the states formed after that all have huge percentages of government ownership, because the pols just didn't trust the private sector with land.

That's why you see that huge divide between the West and the rest of the country. (With New York as the conspicuous outlier, but notice that's almost all state owned land.)

[Brett Bellmore]

In the interest of honesty, I should note one significant difference between the East and the West: Most of the West is uninhabitable desert! Very beautiful in a stark sort of way, but even if it was privatized, you wouldn't see much of the nation's population living there simply because of the lack of water.

[Dilan Esper]

Yeah my first reaction to this was "has he ever been to Nevada?".

I mean, I'm not a big "lands have to be public" guy, so if someone wants to buy land out there and it isn't a national park or preserve or something, I'm totally fine with selling it, but it's clear that the reason over 80% of Nevada land is public isn't some socialist conspiracy. 🙂

[ducksalad]

Socialist conspiracy, no.

But I do think one needs to consider exactly how and when it became federal property. And no, “bought it from Mexico” or "bought it from France" is not a complete answer. Lots of private land remained private, and church land remained church land when that transfer occured. You need to explain why federal ownership is the default. Why wasn’t the default ownership by Native Americans, or simply no ownership at all? Why wasn’t the land automatically transferred to the states when they formed?

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

But I do think one needs to consider exactly how and when it became federal property.

Well, in the case of Nevada:

https://www.blm.gov/about/history/history-by-region/nevada

When Nevada became a state in 1864, its constitution explicitly said that the state wouldn’t claim any public land that wasn’t spoken for. This left the vast majority of Nevada’s land in the public estate, managed by the federal government.

[ducksalad]

One has to assume that the Nevada constitutional convention didn't just spontaneously feel the urge to refuse ownership. They needed Congressional approval to join the union and presumably did their homework on what Congress wanted to see.

Not that they had any better default claim to the land than the feds.

Lot of people here seem to equate "the public" with "the federal government".

[WuzYoungOnceToo]

One has to assume...

Not if one is willing to spend 30 seconds finding the relevant historical documentation:

https://www.leg.state.nv.us/Division/Research/Library/Documents/HistDocs/1864Act.pdf

So, yes., the residents of what is now Nevada wanted statehood and the federal government wanted control of land within that territory that nobody else wanted at the time, so a deal was struck...which answers your questions:
Why wasn’t the default ownership by Native Americans, or simply no ownership at all? Why wasn’t the land automatically transferred to the states when they formed?

[Stephen Lathrop]

ducksalad, the vast majority of that land spent nearly a century on offer to the public under various homesteading and railroad land promotion schemes. What you see now is the result of thoroughly proved public disinterest.

[Bruce Hayden]

Well, no. NV? Sure. For CO, for instance, when I was in school, many decades ago, when you subtract out military reservations and National Parks, the remaining federal land was split fairly evenly between NFS and BLM, with the primary use of NFS being timber, and grazing for BLM. If you look at a map of the federal lands in the state, most of it is in the western, mountainous, half of the state. Western MT, for as far as you can see, is covered by thick forest, with towering trees, almost all owned by the NFS. Up until a couple decades ago, timber was the big business. But under Clinton, as President, that was mostly banned. Now it’s forest fires, with most of the NFS budget now going to fighting them.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Bellmore, at first, various territories in the lower 48 became states only if they offered viable agricultural opportunities. Those which lacked water, or which had to await massive engineering projects to make water available for agriculture, did not lack for visitors. They were traversed routinely—and sensibly ignored—by thousands of settlers heading across to the West Coast, so long as better agricultural opportunities there remained unexploited. All over the world, dry steppes at high altitudes go undeveloped. No water and short growing seasons explain why.

Later, that "empty," country did get its share of white settlers, after various homesteading laws—and legal depredations on better-quality Indian holdings—delivered a mirage of opportunity. You can see the resulting ruined homesteads and ghost towns of failed settlements dotting the landscape to this day.

After that, came effort to get all the water spoken for, including what could be got up out of deep canyons, or pumped from fossil aquifers. The dam building pretty much wound down by the late 1960s—remaining dam sites were so lacking in engineering feasibility that attempts to develop them delivered dam collapses. The groundwater pumping goes on unsustainably.

That left timber and mineral extraction to support whatever industry the water couldn't. The minerals were always irreplaceable, but plenty are still in the ground, because cheaper sources elsewhere around the globe outcompete them for now. The timber extraction was never practiced sustainably.

So all those western states which developed late are still ruthlessly in the grip of right-wing, rape-ruin-and-run political machines, tempered only a little by Hispanic influence in the Southwest.

As for Caplan on the national parks, rarely in the sordid history of this blog's offerings has anyone published less-informed twaddle. I say that as someone with a lifelong aversion to visiting national parks, or developing more of them. What the various outstanding landscapes which still remain need now is not development of any kind. Even the existing national parks have been overwhelmed by development.

What is needed now, throughout those western states with high percentages of government land holdings, is a good leaving alone. That country has been ignored because it lacks sustainable carrying capacity. A great deal of the land is suitable only for grazing livestock seasonally, a practice impractical to expand because winter fodder for bigger herds is non-existent, and cannot be increased.

Even the seasonal grazing delivers so little productivity that letting that land revert to a totally natural condition is undoubtedly the best use of it. Without the outsized political clout of local ranch owners who get the use subsidy, that would already have happened.

[Bruce Hayden]

“What is needed now, throughout those western states with high percentages of government land holdings, is a good leaving alone. That country has been ignored because it lacks sustainable carrying capacity. A great deal of the land is suitable only for grazing livestock seasonally, a practice impractical to expand because winter fodder for bigger herds is non-existent, and cannot be increased.”

Sure, some states, like NV, have a lot of grazing land, owned by the BLM. Ranchers could make a living grazing cattle or sheep, if they could lease several sections of BLM land. It was left federal land, because the biggest pieces of land you could Homestead were 1/4 sections. 1/4 section was fine for homesteading the eastern Midwest, but inadequate further west. Parts of the western Great Plains were later allowed 1/2 section Homesteading. But much of the Great Basin was too arid for 1/4 section homesteads to beg viable. Hence the century or so of leasing large tracks of land to make ranching viable. In Clarke County, NV, one of the most arid parts of the country, this went on, until Chinese clients of one of Harry Reid’s sons (not the one I worked with) wanted to put solar farms on that grazing land. The end of it was the standoff with Clyde Bundy a decade ago, the last rancher in Clarke County.

But that wasn’t the problem throughout the mountainous areas of the west. Real mountains, and not the mounds that pass for mountains back east. They are geologically much newer, and less ground down by erosion. Much of them were not suited for farming, so Homesteading didn’t make sense. Where we live in NW MT, the woods were so thick that it took an early explorer a week to travel maybe 70 miles. It was so bad, that they were eating some of their horses, before finding friendly Indians to trade with. These are still huge coniferous trees, adapted with thick bark to low level fires every decade or so, burning up the underbrush. That essentially ended with the creation of the National Forest Service, which owned the great bulk of the forest lands in the western states. They suppressed the low level burning that traditionally cleared out the underbrush and the like. Eventually, enough fuel would build on the ground, due to this fire suppression, that the climax coniferous trees would ignite, in “crown” fires that burned much hotter, and became very hard to control. The only viable control of the burning was timbering, which thinned the forests and effectively built fire breaks. But most of that was ended by fiat under esp the Clinton era bureaucrats, in response to irresponsible political pressure by bicoastal Greens, who lived far from those forests. The result is that the fires have gotten worse, year by year, with the bulk of the NFS budget (at least out west) now going to fire fighting. Everything else in their budget has suffered greatly, with campgrounds and roads rapidly deteriorating, etc. meanwhile, in many years, the air quality is so bad that, from the fires, that those living there are advised to stay indoors for months at a time, if they have breathing issues. We are probably now talking millions of square miles of trees, primarily owned by the government.

Leaving it alone, as you suggest, would be disastrous. The fires would just get bigger. Back before the NFS, the fires didn’t really hurt anyone, except occasionally the Indians, because the no one else lived there. The forests were too thick to clear much of the land for farming. Now, there is settlement up to the boundaries of the National Forests, and that means that the large forests burning threaten the people living by and in them. Hence the great effort every year to control the fires. The government sold this land a century ago, mostly through Homesteading, and then their mismanagement of the forests is making it potentially unlivable.

[Stephen Lathrop]

We are probably now talking millions of square miles of trees, primarily owned by the government.

Hayden, there are only a total of 3.1 million square miles in the lower 48. So no, not millions of square miles of trees. The rest of your take is similarly accurate. It does bear close resemblance to Forest Service propaganda, however.

I do not contest Forest Service mismanagement. Or even that there has been too much fire suppression. But you probably already know that gigantic western fires go back as far as history can record. One of the biggest fires ever blanketed northern Idaho and parts of Western Montana near the turn of the 19th century.

To leave it at that is to miss larger more-recent processes which have devastated western ecology. Unprecedented drought has been a huge factor. Probably much of that owes to climate change. Massive insect attacks on forests followed the drought. Also, predictions made 50 years ago have proved out, that damming off salmon runs would deprive upstream watersheds of needed phosphorus.

Dry mountain slopes covered in dead-snag remnants of previous forests now confirm those predictions. In wide areas, the native rocks featured little of the phosphorus indispensable for plant growth; what the trees needed of phosphorus came upstream with the salmon and steelhead, and from the stream beds got distributed up-slope by animals feasting on fish carcasses. Because of the dams, those salmon runs are largely gone, and of course they never got to Montana on the eastern side of the divide. So some forests in watersheds which hosted salmon runs are struggling. A solution would be to eliminate at least some of the dams.

Trees already weakened by drought and malnutrition, or standing dry for years, burn. The smoke blows over the divide toward you, and for that matter, toward the rest of the nation. No doubt you are also affected by smoke from burns ongoing in Canada, often in areas where management processes have not changed, because no management was ever practiced there.

The process you are watching now is not about poor-quality forest management. It is about desertification. And not just in the northern Rockies. Take a look at another aerial view—of northwestern Nebraska, the area called the Sandhills. The name fits. The geology there is Saharan. It is a gigantic field of sand dunes—plainly visible in aerial photography—with their wind-blown march arrested by a thin veneer of grass, grass only made possible by a slightly moistened climate. Kill off that grass with a bit more drought, and a very large chunk of Nebraska will turn almost overnight into an actual sand desert.

Please consider that Western Montana has within living memory been comparatively dry. Despite what you say, It has never much featured, “towering trees.” I guess they look big to you. Haven’t you seen what Douglas firs looked like, and still do, in what little is left of virgin forest on the Pacific Slope of the Cascades? They almost rivaled redwoods. The same species where you live are comparative pipsqueaks.

But of course, there is very little of that old growth left. Check out Google Earth, and look at the clear cuts. You can see plainly the management pattern used to conceal from passersby the extent of destruction. They left thin bands of uncut forest on either sides of highways—bands of trees just wide enough to keep the clear cuts out of sight from a passing vehicle.

Stop your car to take a leak, go a short walk into the woods, and you get a shock. As far as the eye can see, total destruction. Or you can see it more conveniently on your computer; wherever the timber was best, they took almost everything. Don’t look at Montana, look at the mountains of Western Oregon and Washington, and Northern Idaho. Look at the extent of the clear cuts. Subtract that from your imaginary tree-area reckoning. It is gone already.

Also, to the extent that there are private inholdings in the forested parts of the Intermountain West, those tend to be remnants not of homesteading, but of mineral rights laws, which privatized land for mine sites and mill sites.

The mountainsides of the West are practically carpeted with old mineral claims, many of them lapsed, but some which proved out and became private land, and then either did not get much developed, or just went into disuse. Recently exploited for recreation-oriented development, those old claims now furnish a notable part of the inholder fire risk. The notion that it was homesteading overlooks what you ought to be able to see just by looking around—homesteaders grabbed the bottomlands, not the mountain sides where the forests grow.

What you described with boundary-area issues is more a California problem, where the situation, history, and the forest ecology, are notably different than in Montana and the rest of the northern Rockies.

This is a too-long post which barely scratched the surface. The issues are complicated, and ideological hot-takes do little to advance insight—except maybe insight into why political solutions will be hard to find.

[Bruce Hayden]

I will agree that towering is relative, and that the trees along the coast are even bigger. I was surprised though when first moving to W MT, having grown up in the mountains of CO that they had the same species of climax coniferous trees, but significantly bigger. Turns out though that we have a different subspecies of Ponderosa Pines. The line between subspecies is somewhere between Butte and Missoula along I-90, possibly somewhere close to the Continental Divide with Butte sharing the subspecies with much of CO, as well as even Flaggstaff. To me though, they look the same. It felt, to me, like I was coming home. I love it, except for the nuisance of aging to clear the needles and cones every year. It’s esp irksome cleaning off your roof every year, if you have overhanging Ponderosa Pines, as we do. I built a et angular garage a couple years ago that isn’t bad. But the house is a different story. It has a number of irregularities in te roof, to make it architecturally interesting, and the needles, I particular pie up there. At least the pitch of our roof is moderate enough that you can walk it (though a belay rope is preferred). Guy across the street’s roof pitch is enough steeper that no one will chance it.

I any case, we have plenty of water there (with a major tributary of the Columbia running through town). Irrigation of the farms along it is never a problem. Far more water than anyone sees in CO. And hence, probably why the trees are bigger. Not as much though as along the coast, and thus why the really big trees are there.

But I think that you are wrong about the mining. Sure, closer to Butte, there was a lot. But I grew up in CO, where you very often see tailings, when you see an open slope. Remnants of inning are everywhere. There is nowhere near that much in W MT.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

I read something 10-20 years ago about privatizing state park operations in Arizona or New Mexico, I believe. Everyone freaked out -- "McDonalds in ever park!" as if what people want is bad. But it didn't happen. Instead, more people visited, more visitors came back, and surveys showed happier visitors.

One quote really stuck with me, paraphrased as "Government operations set a budget politically, so the incentive is to discourage visitors and not strain the budget. Private operators' incentive is to get more and happier visitors to increase profits."

Of course, "profits" sets off alarms in all the lefties' heads. Nasty, dirty, filthy money, replacing elite wisdom with spreadsheets and facts.

[Malika the Maiz]

"Instead, more people visited, more visitors came back, and surveys showed happier visitors."

I'd like to see a citation for that claim, if you can provide it thanks!

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

I've googled several times and had no luck. It was a full length article with interviews, visit reports, typical New Yorker and Atlantic kind of thing, but I know it wasn't either of them.

[Sarcastr0]

Government operations set a budget politically, so the incentive is to discourage visitors and not strain the budget

This is a fundamental misapprehension of how government workers operate.

No, they're not going to slow-roll a park's interest and availability to the public. Government employees are usually into the mission of who they work for. They're not there to bean-count they're here to make the parks great for the public.

Nothing to do with profits being filthy, just the usual low-level market worship and inability to continence those who prioritize other stuff and aren't incentivized by only $$$.

[M L]

countenance

[Sarcastr0]

Fair.

[ducksalad]

You know, guys, there are many other ownership options besides "federal government" and "for-profit corporation".

- NGO
- Homesteading w/ improvement based claims
- Distribution by lottery
- Land trustees elected independently of the rest of the government.
- Distribution of tiny pieces by birthright, let the market consolidate the pieces into useful chucks naturally.
- Local government
- Etc.

[ReaderY]

Let’s just say that if you move from reducing zoning restrictions in existing urbanized and suburban areas to asking for wilderness areas to be opened up for development, a lot of your potential coalition is going to drop out.

And in general when you use an issue you can potentially get a coalition on as an opening or segue to something your potential partners don’t want, you risk not getting anything.

Sometimes it’s appropriate to just go for the inch and not make it quite so obvious that you regard getting it as a mere stepping stone to taking a mile.

[Brett Bellmore]

That's true. I get the impression most of his support comes from the pro-urbanists, who want people living as densely as possible because that's the way THEY like it. These sorts of people want as much of the country as possible closed to development, except maybe the sort that involves better trailheads on the hiking trails.

[Malika the Maiz]

Given yesterday's conversation, aren't you for government zoning regulations to have people live the way YOU like it?

[Brett Bellmore]

With the decided difference that I'm a member of the supermajority of the population who like low density single family housing, rather than the small minority who actually LIKE high density multi-family dwellings.

[Malika the Maiz]

What happens if most people like to have conserved lands?

[Brett Bellmore]

I think they do, actually. But I think it's been pretty clearly demonstrated that what most people want actually doesn't count for much in today's America.

[Malika the Maiz]

Sorry if I was unclear, I'm saying that it'd likely be easy to find polls of people saying they want these federal lands largely conserved. Since you argued a supermajority justifies government restrictions regarding zoning I wondered if you thought these polls justified further conservation.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

Then pay for that conservation themselves. Don't use my taxes for your projects.

Same with historical buildings. Buy them yourself.

[apedad]

I don't like providing bombs to Israel.

Don’t use my taxes for things I don't like and let them buy their own bombs.

HEY! Maybe you're on to something.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Should successful, educated, skilled residents of modern, strong communities be taxed to subsidize the economically inadequate, poorly educated residents of America's can't-keep-up rural and southern communities?

Conservatives should ask someone to explain this issue before they attempt to answer.

[Frank Drackman]

Just when I think you can't get any more revolting, you go ahead and totally redeem yourself. Your Incarceration is showing, rural and southern communities have way more Ed-jew-ma-cated, skilled, peoples than the Shitholes of Atlanta, Chicago, Detroit, and especially the District of Colored Peoples.

Frank

[Stephen Lathrop]

His support comes from land developers, and resource extraction interests, with a sprinkling of ideological anti-environmentalists.

[CCP]

The point about the parks is interesting. I have frequently remarked that when you visit the US national parks, if you look closely, you will notice that the park infrastructure was built AS park infrastructure. By contrast, if you visit the Canadian national parks, what you will find is functional towns that happen to be in parks. So, in the towns, visitors/consumers have choices of where to stay, what to eat, where to shop, and what to do. But perhaps more amazingly, when you get out of the towns, the parks seem a little “wilder.” Perhaps the good professor is on to something here.

And similar to some of the other comments, I'd actually resigned myself to actually not ever getting to visit some of our more spectacular parks, for the simple reason that the limitations of infrastructure produced traffic nightmares that I wouldn't want to deal with on my 'vacation.' But then, I went on a private, commercial hiking/cycling tour, and it was easy to access and actually enjoy the parks.

[Brett Bellmore]

No argument there; It was murder getting into Zion national park, though it was certainly spectacular. It's a big park, but the number of people who want into it is simply bigger.

[CCP]

that is precisely where i learned that lesson!

[ducksalad]

Well, I think the wildness has more to do with the overall number of Canadians per acre of parkland.

But yeah, Banff. Somehow people live and work there in what looks very much like private housing and businesses – individualized architecture, branded supermarket, etc – but somehow isn’t. I asked some locals and the answer was too complicated and Canadian for me to understand. Apparently you can live there but you need an approved reason, or something like that.

[Brett Bellmore]

Here we have "inholdings"; When the parks were established, a significant amount of private property within their borders remained private because the owners refused to sell. The park service is mandated to permit those owners access to their property and the use of it.

[Sonja T]

CCP - my understanding is that many of the canadian national parks had existing towns in place at the time the national park was created. Banff national park is an example. Likewise, in the US Arcadia national park (Bar Harbor Maine) pre existed the creation of the national park

[John F. Carr]

If you're a sincere member of Team Climate you want to pack people into dense areas and leave most of the country as a desert wasteland or unspoiled paradise.

A large fraction of government owned land is in places without water or with other geographic difficulties.

[Nige]

Yeah you want people close to work and amenities and communities of neighbours and friends with minimal intrusion of traffic and pollution and easy access to public transport, lots of public parks and affordable rents. What a nightmare.

[John F. Carr]

Looking at the beauty of the development on the seashore reminded me of the Sideling Hill cut in Maryland. It was said to be beautiful, look at the geology! It is an eyesore.

[taqmcg]

Just drove through there a couple of times in a trip from Baltimore to Louisville. It’s kind of interesting and we’d been primed to look for it at the rest stop just to the east. It’s nowhere near the scale of the Grand Canyon, and the cuts are cleaner, but a cliff cut by dynamite isn’t that much different from one cut by a river. Seeing the strata was interesting.

Many years ago I was able to take a side trip to Iguazu Falls while in Argentina on business. It was immediately clear that the airport was right next to a highway when I exited the plane from the sound of the passing traffic. I was embarrassed a few minutes later as I realized that this was the sound of the falls themselves! It wasn’t the sound pollution of a nearby highway. It was the soothing roar of nature. Out expectations and sense of context can color our emotional reaction to what we see and hear.

In any case Sideling Hill was a government project… Perhaps if I68 had been built as a private project you would like it better!

[Brett Bellmore]

You should check out the "little Grand Canyon" in Georgia.

I've been there AND to the real thing, and the resemblance is pretty uncanny, except for scale.

It's also a serious example of why farmers absolutely have to plow across hillsides, not up and down them... Some farmers screwed up in the 1800's, and the next thing you know, you've got a miniature Grand Canyon. It's still growing, too, the park has to regularly move back the railings.

[Stephen Lathrop]

The seashore development cartoon was hilarious. It accurately depicts the kind geologic glop you typically find along the California coast, all of it destined in short order to dump the houses into the sea.

[Malika the Maiz]

I'm not sure "if only the Grand Canyon could be run like Disneyland" sounds like a good idea to me....

[Artifex]

It already is to some extent. Ever hear of Xanterra ?

[John Rohan]

In that illustration of the men driving along the coastline, imagine billboards every mile of the way blocking the view. There are certain areas I would prefer the govt to either own or regulate.

[Malika the Maiz]

Come See The Toyota-Mitsubishi Pearl Harbor National Memorial!

[Krayt]

To get in the way of things, to get paid to get out of the way, is the core purpose of government since day one.

[Chris Upchurch]

“History, not economics, explains almost all of the variance in government ownership.”

I think you’re confusing cause and effect here. The reason some territories took so much longer to join the union is economics. They had difficulty attracting a sufficient population of settlers to justify statehood because the land was less attractive and economically productive.

[Brett Bellmore]

That explains the timing, sure, but the variance in government ownership rates is largely because the government at some point became disenchanted with the idea that most land should be privately owned, and just obsessively held onto as much as it could.

The same change in attitudes in those running the government explains why the homesteading programs were terminated: Not for lack of interest, the government just stopped being willing to let go of land.

[David Nieporent]

Which in turn means that the feds could move housing policy in a sharply more free-market direction without involving any other level of government.

I don't see how this follows. The moment a piece of federal land is privatized, the state restrictions on the use of the land kick in.

[Noscitur a sociis]

I took his position to be that moving from the status quo (no development allowed) to development under the state restrictions is "mov[ing] in a sharply more free-market direction".

[Lee Moore]

Do States own land in other States ? And if they do, do they get state immunity eg from taxes and regulations applicable to land owners in the other State ?

And what about China (boo !) owning land in the US ?

Or other countries that we approve of, like, er….er ?

[Brett Bellmore]

"Do States own land in other States?"

It's not totally unheard of. But they're legally just ordinary property owners in such cases.

[apedad]

Yes, China owns land in the US - and close to at least one US military site - and it's causing quite a stir.

https://www.kpbs.org/news/news/politics/2023/06/26/china-owns-380-000-acres-of-land-in-the-u-s-heres-where

[Please, Daivd, Seek Help]

Bryan,

Here, you are refuting the notion that there will be no buyers for government land by saying that buyers are playing the long game:

> What do private owners do with this seemingly worthless territory? Besides oil drilling and a little farming, it looks like they're playing the long game. The population of Texas is rapidly rising, and will ultimately justify their investment.

I agree. But why shouldn't the government play the long game? If a private owner is likely to get return above inflation by holding on to junk land until the time is ripe, why wouldn't the government get more optimal returns from holding onto the same land until time is ripe?

If a land has value 1 today and value 5 tomorrow, and one of the reasons why you think the government should sell the land is to maximize government revenue to pay down debt, why should the government allow the excess returns between 1 and 5 to go to the first private buyer?

To the extent property tax is a disincentive to hold onto land, the government doesn't pay property tax. To the extent we're talking about time value of money / discount factors, the government's sovereign monetary powers and size should give them a longer term view than any private investor (both in terms of facing less carrying cost for debt today and also in terms of long term planning).

Likewise, it follows that if most of the land is not going to be developed immediately and instead anticipate some long game future, than the benefits associated with sale which require development will not come to fruition now. I totally understand why the government should sell land to private developers to build houses to reduce the cost of housing. Why should the government sell land to land speculators who will eventually sell land to private developers to build houses to reduce the cost of housing?

Finally, isn't a huge amount of government land in the western states used as below market rate grazeland? You might reasonably oppose this kind of welfare for cattle farmers on a general principle of non-intervention in the economy, but that proportion of land is clearly not going unused, it's being deployed as a part of industrial policy. I also get the sense that given the Bundy militia idiots say even nominal BLM grazing fees are tyranny, it seems hard to believe they wouldn't explode if they were forced to pay market rates.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

.

I also get the sense that given the Bundy militia idiots say even nominal BLM grazing fees are tyranny, it seems hard to believe they wouldn’t explode if they were forced to pay market rates.

I vote for market rates.

[M L]

Well, yeah. When I read this part:

“The population of Texas is rapidly rising, and will ultimately justify their investment.”

I thought, that’s a rather flippant statement. If it weren’t, we should all be reallocating our portfolios in some percentage to vacant desert in West Texas. But I don’t think he meant it too seriously, he’s just saying this investment theory could be one plausible reason someone may own that land.

Perhaps government should act more like a for profit corporation that maximizes value for it shareholders i.e. citizens, emphasizes efficiency and is easily able to conduct mass layoffs, restructurings, bankruptcies etc, avoided requiring additional capital from its shareholders unless necessary, etc.

But as things stand, "hold onto this land as an investment speculation so that you can sell after X years and get Y return on investment" doesn't seem like the most plausible idea for the federal government.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Somewhat better informed than most other comments.

[bernard11]

Good point.

It's a basic financial/economic idea, which I'm sure Caplan is well familiar with. Shows up on exams all the time, with timber often the subject of the example.

You own a tree. When should you sell it? Depending on how complicated you want to make the question you can include a variety of variables, functions describing their behavior, different costs, etc.

The main point is that, even from a pure economic POV, the tree is not just sitting there unchangingly, waiting to be sold. Having the government hold it rather than grabbing the cash from a private buyer is not at all irrational.

Suppose, to play Caplan's game, the tree's value is increasing more rapidly than the rate on the debt. Why rush to sell?

[Nige]

They tried to use trees as carbon credits and offsets. The whole thing turned into a greenwash scam. When you turn things into financial devices they immediately become abstracted and subject to financial gameplaying and divorced from their basic real-world functions.

[Noscitur a sociis]

Whatever the merits of this position, I think you did well to leave it out of the book.

The YIMBY movement is starting to rack up successes because it has attracted supporters from across the ideological landscape, and it's done that by staying focused on its core issue. That's impressive (especially for a movement with so many liberals in it!), and moving away from that is going to be counterproductive. So keeping crazy ideas like "sell off the Grand Canyon" in a separate lane from broadly popular ones like "loosen restrictive zoning laws" is a good strategy. (Indeed, I might almost suspect that you know that, and made this choice deliberately instead of "forgetting" to put it in the book!)

[Artifex]

"What would privatization do to our glorious national parks? Dramatically improve their management."

Like the previous zoning screed, this strikes me as way too simplistic. I think there are some serious unintended consequences lurking. This is maybe true, but you should probably think through the full ramifications and determine if it is truly what you want first.

So let's imagine you do privatize. Fundamentally you are privatizing access to what amounts to a set of very scarce set of resources. There is only one Yellowstone, Yosemite or Grand Canyon. You really can't run more than a certain number of people through without trashing the place and you can run fewer if you really want to preserve the natural feel. The resources are scarce and I really don't see an innovative way to make it less so. This scarcity extends through most of the permits and campsites on recreation.gov. To give an idea of just how scarce some of these resources are, some unlucky permit seekers for a Grand Canyon raft trips wait 20 years for their permit to get pulled. It is getting worse on all fronts.

Real privatization has a way to deal with scarcity. There is a signal called price. Price will adjust with demand. Demand here is high and increasing on a limited resource. While it is all well and good for your average libertarian to say: "Price is a great way to allocate access to these resources", are you really ready for a world where if you are not exceedingly wealthy the high demand national parks are closed to you ?

[Roger S]

Yes, but if we flood the USA with foreigners, as Caplan proposes, we will need to jack up the prices of those parks until most Americans cannot afford to do there.

[Sarcastr0]

Not really in the scope of this conversation.

[Bruce Hayden]

My problem with public ownership of so much land out west is that it is grossly mismanaged for political purposes, because those demanding restrictions don’t have to live with the results. Much of western CO (where I grew up) and MT (where we now live) is owned and run by the NFS. IN MT, it’s thick forests of towering trees. CO has the same trees, but not as towering due to it being drier. In W MT, the economy used to be primarily timber and mining, with some agricultural. But under Clinton, to appease bicoastal Greens, timbering was essentially banned. The result is that the western part of the country burns almost every year. In recent years, the bulk of the NFS budget has gone to fighting the fires that result from several decades of fire suppression, and a couple decades of almost no timbering. It's not just the Rocky Mountains, of course - much of our smoke is coming from W WA and OR. The result is that routine maintenance of their infrastructure, including camp grounds and the like, are rapidly deteriorating.

[Sarcastr0]

I almost never agree with you, but I do here.
We knew the science, and still banned timbering *and brush clearing*.

The timespan goes well beyond the Clintons, and is cause largely by short-sighted environmental lawsuits based on broad regs about removing materials from parks.

[Stephen Lathrop]

Sarcastr0, with regard to parks, the issues are more complicated than you say. Feel free to continue to disagree with Hayden.

If you want a better overview, read, To Conserve Unimpaired, The Evolution of the National Park Idea, by Professor Robert Keiter* of the University of Utah law school.

*Full disclosure, old friend of mine, from first grade onward.

[Nige]

Agree on the mismanagement because Jesus people can be stupid about forestry but we also know the effects of deforestation can be catastrophic.

[Brett Bellmore]

You have to either regularly log and clear brush, (And for some species have controlled burns.) OR allow fires to clear the brush for you. It's a choice, one or the other. Properly manage, or don't manage.

If you just fight fires without clearing brush or logging, you're just accumulating fuel load that will sooner or later burn, and likely too hot for the fire loving species to survive.

[Nige]

Of course the reason you have to do that is because, simplistically, a number of herbivores and their predators have been stripped from the eco-systems.

[Sarcastr0]

I don’t know the research, but not letting fires occur naturally is absolutely an element in assuring when they do they’re huge destructive infernos.

[Bored Lawyer]

Privatization would also let the federal government drastically slash its staggering debt — which now stands at 120% of U.S. GDP! State government debt loads and land ownership are both far lower. But mass privatization of state land would plausibly allow New York, Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and perhaps a few other states to to pay off everything they owe, then fund permanent, sustainable tax cuts with the revenue raised.

LOL. When the govt., whether federal or state, gets money, the inevitable impulse is to spend it, preferably for political gain. The notion that the revenue would be used to pay down debt or fund tax cuts is as real as the tooth fairy.

[bernard11]

Clinton substantially reduced the deficit. Bush II substantially reduced taxes.

Argue all you want about the actual numbers, or the merits of the policies, but these things happened.

And yes, I know the difference between the debt and the deficit. The debt/GDP ratio dropped sharply under Clinton, only to jump up under Bush.

[Brett Bellmore]

Clinton had the dot.com boom, which occurred while the parties were at each other's throats over impeachment, so they were temporarily unable to agree on how to spend the loot. That's all that happened.

Neither party is any good at balancing budgets, really: It's a trap in democratic countries: Once borrowing money to buy votes is permitted, anybody who refuses to ends up on the outside looking in, so government is perpetually controlled by people who borrow and spend. Only an existential emergency allows escaping this trap. See Argentina for an example of this.

I actually have the most ire for the Republicans over this: The Democrats are fairly honest in just wanting to spend like mad, the Republicans lie about it. And the last chance we had to escape this trap before an eventual crash was in '95 with the balanced budget amendment, and that bastard Gingrich deliberately managed the votes to make sure it didn't pass.

[Nige]

It's like we're supposed to forget the dergulated building boom prior to 2007 that somehow failed to make houses affordable except via debt that turned out to be ruinous on individual and global levels and involved poorly constructed housing built in the stupidest places with no regard to planning or infrastructure or where people actually wanted to live.

Also missing the point of nature reserves and national parks so spectacularly it has to be deliberate.