How The Feds Got All That Western Land (and Why It's A Problem)
Submitted by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,
Government owned and subsidized lands in the American West have been a source of conflict among competing interest groups since the 19th century. Since the very beginning of white settlement, lands have been used by the federal government as part of a political scheme to subsidize and reward certain groups while punishing others.
The current standoff between ranchers and federal officials in Oregon is simply the latest chapter in a long contentious and sometimes bloody history of groups competing for control over government-owned lands in the West, and by ensuring that lands continue to be allocated by political means rather than through the market, government ownership of lands simply perpetuates conflict in the region.
The Origins of Government Ownership in the West
Why is it that so much land is controlled by the federal government in Western states in contrast to the rest of the county?
The troubles initially began with the Louisiana Purchase which established the federal government as the direct administrator of immense amounts of non-state land. However, the ideological justification for permanent federal ownership really began to gain influence by the late 19th century as many Americans, including influential economists of the time, began to adopt ideologies that saw centralized government as necessary for regulating the economy. We see these ideological leanings in the creation of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887 which was initially created to regulate the railroads. Over time, the ICC became the inspiration for a host of other federal regulatory agencies that began to appear by the early 20th century.
As with the railroads, land in the west began to be seen as a "public resource" that required federal regulation as well.
But ideology was just one factor. The widespread nature of federal lands can also be attributed to mere administrative, historical, and geographic accidents that led to an expansion of federal land ownership well beyond what anyone had expected.
First of all was the fact of Indian settlement on Western lands. It may strike many as hard to believe, but the treatment of the Indian tribes west of the Mississippi was actually more restrained than it had been in Eastern states.
In earlier generations, for example, Indian settlements were completely destroyed with all the inhabitants killed or forcibly removed to locations west of the Mississippi. In other words, the tribes of the east were more completely decimated than were many tribes further West.
Much of this is due to the fact that whites populated the West more slowly and in smaller numbers than in, say, the Great Lakes area, but some of it is also due to the fact that the tribes often received better treatment from federal troops than they did from the ad hoc local militias they encountered in the Eastern states.
This is why Kit Carson saw his U.S. Army work in forcing Indians onto reservations as a "humanitarian" mission. Based on experiences in the east (and in early West Coast settlements), Carson surmised that the Indian tribes of the west would be completely destroyed if left to the "mercy" of locally based militias.
Over time — and contrary to past efforts of this sort — the removal of the tribes to reservations came to be dominated by the federal government. With this came what were effectively federally owned reservations. Legally, the reservations were sovereign lands guaranteed by the law of treaties. But the reality of US military domination meant the lands were really federal lands.
The Overrated Homestead Act
At the same time the federal government was moving the tribes onto reservations, it was attempting to encourage settlement by whites on those same lands. This was important to the federal government for military reasons. It was important to the federal government that whites with an allegiance to the US settle the lands instead of, say, Canadians or Mexicans, and it was important toward making sure that the Indians did not attempt to re-settle the land.
The Homestead program was also a clever welfare scheme that provided nearly-free land to new settlers who were paying nowhere near what the cost of acquiring the land had actually been. The taxpayers back East had already covered much of the immense cost of Indian removal and infrastructure construction. The new homesteaders paid but a small fraction of this cost. But from the federal government's perspective, it was worth it since the cheap land meant pro-American settlers were keeping others out.
The homestead act is often romanticized and praised by free-market types, but it should not be. The Homestead program was, ultimately, a federal land redistribution scheme, and it worked about as well as anyone skeptical of federal competence might expect. It also further expanded the role of the federal government.
Homesteading, as defined by federal law, worked relatively well in places like eastern Kansas or in the eastern Dakotas where it still rained enough to allow for crops without irrigation.
Further west — west of the 100th meridian — things were much drier, and the small acreage plots dictated by the Homestead Act made very little sense. Not surprisingly, Congress had written laws without bothering to check to see if they made any sense in light of geographic realities.
With so little water out west, and with fragile ecosystems that could not support anywhere near the agricultural population density that the Homestead Act envisioned, conflicts quickly arose over resources. Devastating boom-bust cycles like the Great Dakota Boom took shape in which new settlers flooded new lands only to find that they could not make a living on such small plots and with so little water. The lands were later abandoned.
In the wake of these new realities came rampant fraud in which large wealthy interests bent or broke the law to acquire large swaths of land that had been intended for small-scale settlement. Water rights became frequent bones of contention, and all the while, federal intervention became the tool of competing special interests who used federal power to gain lands and water rights for themselves.
The Spread of "Public" Lands
As it became clear that it was impossible to impose the eastern settlement model on the west, politicians and activists continued to cling to the idea that land ownership should still consist of only small parcels, even when such a plan made no sense at all in arid lands with sparse grass.
As a Plan B, the feds began to encourage the use of "open range" and the idea of public lands in which large numbers of small landowners would share water and grazing resources.
Eventually, neither the government nor the settlers wanted these lands to be privatized. Each interest group — homesteaders, ranchers, and water owners — wanted the lands to continue to be public since each group assumed it would be able to use its own political power to gain de facto use and control of the lands.
Thus, today, we are living with the results of this system throughout the west. Federally-owned lands continue because interest groups would rather battle for control of the lands through political means than allow the lands to be privatized and pass outside the control of special interests. Meanwhile, the public in general tolerates this state of affairs because so many view markets as damaging to both the environment and ordinary citizens. For all its faults, they reason, federal ownership of the land must be less bad that private or even local-government ownership.
Eastern Oregon as Microcosm
In the current controversy over public lands in eastern Oregon, we're witnessing just another conflict between interest groups over how federal lands should be used, and the history of land politics in eastern Oregon tends to mirror the West overall.
In eastern Oregon as elsewhere, an important step in giving the Federal government a larger role in the local economy was in turning reservation lands into "public" lands for use by whites.
William N. Grigg has recently explored how conflicts between ranchers and Piute Indians in eastern Oregon led to demands by the ranchers for a larger federal role in the area. And, when the Piute Indians were finally forced out of Oregon, this paved the way for more federal control over lands in the region as what were once Indian lands became federally managed "public lands."
But the drive among interest groups to control federal lands extends well beyond conflicts with Indians. Throughout the West in the late 19th century, cattle ranchers were engaged in regular feuds with sheep herders and farmers over who could use and control federal lands. Oregon was no different.
In her book Forest Dreams, Forest Nightmares, Nancy Langston looks at how conflict among competing groups vying for control of the land in eastern Oregon led to ranchers calling for more federal involvement. Following the expulsion of the Piutes, the public lands quickly began to be overgrazed both on old Indian lands and in other public lands as well.
According to Langston, "law and custom specified that the range was supposed to be open to all, and not the exclusive property of the wealthy. Grass in the mountains was free and belonged to those who got their first: the Enclosures Act of 1873 stated to t no one could legally fence public domain."
As is typical with any "commons," the resources in public lands were immediately strained to the point of making the land unusable. This then led to violence as each group attempted to exclude all other groups from the land. Langston explains:
Tensions finally spilled over into cattle and sheep wars throughout eastern oregon. In Union county, cattle owners formed a group called the Sheep Shooters Association. They ran advertisements in the La Grande Gazette identifying certain cattle ranges where sheepherders were advised not to cross recognizable boundaries ... they also announced they would be placing lethal saltpeter mixed with stock salt in certain hotly contested range areas. Jon Skovline wrote that "Andy Sullivan, who ran horses on the flats below the Campbell Brothers, homestead burned out several night corrals built by itinerant sheep owners along what is now called Burnt Corral Creek. It is very likely that Sullivan also burned the accompanying tented camps of the herders. Lew McCarty was shot by unknown assailants." Thousands of sheep were also killed in grant county where feelings were strongest because summer range was in shortest supply.
Meanwhile, homesteaders attempted to drive away cattle ranchers when they "fenced the creek bottoms to cut off the water supply from the large stockmen...Bitter feuds resulted."
Violent fueds between sheep herders and cattle ranchers continued for years until, by 1903, Langston writes, " local sheepmen as well as cattlemen were ready for regulation, even though [the sheepmen] feared the government would rule in favor of cattle over sheep ... Ranchers were ready for an end to the disputes and increasingly welcomed government intervention."
The "Sheep Wars," as they are known today, were hardly unique to eastern Oregon, nor were the range wars between homesteading farmers and cattle ranchers.
For the most part, the cattle ranchers, through more effective use of fear and intimidation, won these political conflicts, and throughout the first half of the 20th century, the "Cattlemen's Associations" dominated state legislatures and the land use bureaucracies that regulated land use throughout the West. They've even passed laws making it illegal to criticize cattle ranchers.
In a familiar story of regulatory capture in which the regulated interest group actually controls the regulators, the cattle industry has long shaped debate over the use of public lands for grazing purposes.
Since the 1960s, however, the cattlemen have been increasingly eclipsed by other interests including environmentalists and urban residents looking for expanded access to water. The EPA has assumed an expanding role in managing federal lands and neighboring areas, and with it comes greater regulation on ranchers and on land use in general. Environmentalists are relishing their relatively newfound power, and ranchers don't like it when they're unable to exercise the same amount of influence to which they have been historically accustomed.
It is this new ideological and political conflict that is fueling today's battles between federal land agencies and ranchers.
However, it should be remembered that, generally speaking, ranchers who use federal lands have never been opposed to the existence of federal lands. After all, federal subsidization of water projects and federal control of watersheds has furnished ranchers with cheap water for years, at the expense of taxpayers and urban dwellers. In dry and high-altitude areas especially, cattle are reliant on alfalfa crops and on other non-forage feed, which means their need for water is immense.
Why We Need Decentralization Now
If we wish to defuse national conflicts over land use, the only answer is to decentralize the land itself. It should be no concern of people in Washington, DC — 3,000 miles away — as to how a handful of ranchers want to use a tiny corner of land in rural Oregon. Similarly, taxpayers in, say, Ohio (a net taxpayer state) should not be paying to mitigate the effects of overgrazing by ranchers in Oregon, or to build their water projects.
There are, of course, many legal and constitutional obstacles to decentralizing land ownership, but the political obstacles are numerous as well. For example, many ranchers oppose ending federal ownership of grazing lands because it would likely mean an increase in grazing fees.
Moreover, federal rules mean ranchers can often maintain their federal leases indefinitely without having to worry about prices ever being driven up by competitors.
Were grazing lands to be taken over by states or localities — or privatized — ranchers would have to compete with other ranchers, outdoor-recreation proprietors, and conservationist billionaires on the open market. Ranchers may quickly find that their formerly cozy grazing arrangements are now unaffordable. For many ranchers, a federal bird in hand is still better than two private-sector birds in the bush.
At the same time, environmentalists want perpetual federal control because they are convinced that any decentralization or privatization would mean that lands will be taken over by rapacious ranchers and miners.
But would they?
It is not at all clear that markets or local governments would prefer that land be used for agricultural purposes as opposed to other purposes. For example, were Rocky Mountain National Park to become a locally-controlled park or state park, there is, realistically speaking, zero chance that it would be handed over to ranchers or miners. The park is far too valuable to the local economy as part of the recreation and tourism industries. To turn the park into range land would devastate the economies of the local communities, many of which contain wealthy and influential voters.
But, say that the park were broken up into parcels and sold to a number of private owners. (We're in the realm of pure fantasy at this point.) It would make little sense to use the land for mining or ranching even in this case. Given the infrastructure in place and the relative closeness to a major metropolitan area, the lands in and around the Park are likely far more lucrative for recreational purposes than for mining or ranching.
So, when we ask the question of "if it's privatized/decentralized, won't those people take over the land?" The answer is: "It depends."
Yes, some remote or otherwise unattractive areas will lend themselves to ranching and strip mining, and some areas (especially those less remote from where people live) will lend themselves to being preserved as parks and recreational facilities. The lands in the American west are incredibly diverse and different areas will be ideal for different purposes.
And, in an age of growing eco-tourism and outdoor recreation, there's a lot more to the west than ranching and mining.
But let us never forget that were it not for federal infrastructure such as dams, military bases, and federal highways, the West would have far fewer people and much less development than it does today. As has been demonstrated by numerous scholars of the West — especially Gerald Nash in his economic history of the West, The Federal Landscape — the development of the West has been largely dependent on federal spending — and we're talking about spending far above and beyond the initial federal efforts that cleared out the original inhabitants and laid down the first intercontinental railroad. The modern West as we know it today is a result of immense federal spending done during the Depression and the Cold War.
Likewise, it has been the federal government that has created the billion-dollar mega-dams, dumped plutonium into the ground, and failed miserably at fire suppression. The footprint of the federal government is everywhere in the west, and it could very well be that in a world with a smaller federal government, the West would look very different indeed.
The Democracy of the Marketplace
Ultimately, however, its the democracy of the marketplace that is best suited to determine how lands should be used in the west.
The perennial conflicts in the West over land seizures by environmentalists, regulatory battles, micromanagement, and overgrazing all illustrate how much of a failure the federal land ownership scheme has been.
With control over such immense resources, the far away federal government does not respond to local needs or local demand, but to national interest groups.
If we truly wish to democratize the use of land in the west, we would privatize it, or at the very least make it responsive to local populations instead of national interests. It is the marketplace, and not politics, that truly reflects the desires and needs of the people who wish to use lands and reward or punish those who own it.
In his book Bureaucracy, Ludwig von Mises long ago explained how it is the consumers who decide how economic inputs (such as land) are to be used:
The real bosses, in the capitalist system of market economy, are the consumers. They, by their buying and by their abstention from buying, decide who should own the capital and run the plants. They determine what should be produced and in what quantity and quality. Their attitudes result either in profit or in loss for the enterpriser. They make poor men rich and rich men poor. They are no easy bosses. They are full of whims and fancies, changeable and unpredictable. They do not care a whit for past merit. As soon as something is offered to them that they like better or that is cheaper, they desert their old purveyors. With them nothing counts more than their own satisfaction. They bother neither about the vested interests of capitalists nor about the fate of the workers who lose their jobs if as consumers they no longer buy what they used to buy.
In the absence of bailouts, subsidies, and government protections, only those who use the land in a way that benefits others will be rewarded accordingly, at the expense of their competitors.
What will land use in the West look like for the next 100 years? Will it be just another century of unaccountable federal bureaucrats picking winners and losers? Or will the democracy of the marketplace be permitted and thus allow the people who use the land and depend upon it to have a say?
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If anyone has a claim to Oregon's Malheur Wildlife Refuge, it’s the Paiute Indians http://alj.am/bgaw
Guess which rugged western icon claimed Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for the people? http://on.nrdc.org/1ZSIKe7 via @OnEarthMag
See photos that led Roosevelt to protect the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge @NPRskunkbear http://n.pr/1ORVrUE
@Wilderness Jan 6The Oregon radicals aren't acting for "the people"--they serve nobody’s interests but their own http://sfchron.cl/1mCqdom
While the FED's been busy swallowing up all the land, OTHERS have been busy swallowing up all the CA$H >> https://goo.gl/bFYusM
"Our Land: Collateral for the National Debt"
http://www.peakprosperity.com/forum/our-land-collateral-national-debt/38295
"The taxpayers back East had already covered much of the immense cost of Indian removal and infrastructure construction."
Yeah, really, really far back east. Like Europe. There was no income tax until 1913. American citizens didn;t pay taxes to the Federal government. The only taxes the gov't got were excise taxes, customs duties, and the sale of land to the railroads. More or less.
Yeah, they've been covering the debts, by paying a full half price to fuck the "whores", after all, it was a gift to begin with.
"After all, federal subsidization of water projects and federal control of watersheds has furnished ranchers with cheap water for years, at the expense of taxpayers and urban dwellers. In dry and high-altitude areas especially, cattle are reliant on alfalfa crops and on other non-forage feed, which means their need for water is immense."
This is another load of total crap. Study your Western water law.
Just ask questions at the locks, who has the keys.
The take over of more and more land by governments is actually part of the Wildlands Project component of Agenda 21 Biodiversity Treaty. The long-term intent of this component of the larger Agenda is to restrict and ban human access to the majority of the Planet. It is being implemented in drips and drabs to keep it under the radar of the masses. Don't get distracted by the politics. Keep your eye on the larger Agenda.
http://nwri.org/the-wildlands-project/un-biodiversity-treaty-and-the-wil...
And here is a link to the map. Red zones are banned from human access and yellow zones are heavily restricted:
http://www.agenda21course.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Biodiversity-Ma...
Even the California Bullet Train is part of this same Agenda. It will be needed to connect population zones. It was a natural to get it started in California because ignorant Californians will happily vote for anything that is supposed to be "green". Take a look around the America 2050 website when you have a little time. Why do you think Governor Brown was such a large presence at the recent climate changes convention in Paris where they were plotting on how best to extract more taxes from the masses around the planet so they would have the money to implement the larger Agenda? Pull the wool off your eyes and put the pieces together. They are all connected.
http://www.america2050.org/megaregions.html
TR was a Progressive.
Al Jazeera? ROFL
It's total overreach by the federal government. They're limited to owning forts, ports and 10 square miles that is Washington, DC.
Besides that, the Homestead Act and the Kincaid Act were 2 of the most important acts for this country. Stay on the land for 5 years and you owned it with a Land Patent. And all Land Patents still exist, yet hardly anyone knows about them. You are an 'elector' if you have one, and can vote for the real original jurisdiction president inside of the corporate clowns. Go to teamlaw.net and you can learn all about the Land Patent and how to get one. Most important thing you can do right now for your country.
the Feds own anything they can take & protect with a weapon.
it's becoming increasingly apparent to Wait What that if you can't defend that which you claim to be yours, no matter how much you worked for it, it was never really yours. it belongs to that someone who can walk up and take it from you. you can take your case to some kind of authority, but your loss is not really their concern, their concern is that such acts are against the legal system itself, not you in particular.
The bankers own the land. And if they dont', they will when the Feds go belly up. They will be stripping assets for pennies on the dollar just like they did in the soviet Union when ift fell apart.
You're all freeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
But you don't own any land. If you want some then you will have to buy it. At "market" prices. Using the money that we create out of think air and distribute as we wish, with an interest rate of our choosing that can vary as we choose ...
And when you buy it, you will become indebted to the governmentire and have to pay taxes on it each year or they can easily take it away from you again.
Get a Land Patent and you own it. And you will be sovereign on your land.
Yeah... over their dead and rotting corpses, perhaps...
The land may be nothing more than collateral. When the bankers/UN/oligarchs/IMF come to down to collect they will mine and drill the living hell out of it. They will kill off or harvest all of the wildlife with complete abandon at their leisure just like what happened when they built all the dams and killed all of the buffalo.
Then all of the environmentalists heads will implode but I doubt if they are smart enough to realize that they were the useless idiots that made it all possible.
Save the invasive smelt!
The environmentalists are useful tools to help governments gain more and more control over lands.
<------ Willful decentralization by the Oligarchy
<------ Boot stomping on faces forever
Agenda 21
Agenda 2030, its been updated. get with it
They're tryin to scam a bunch of land in AZ for "education". Every time I hear about I think about how all that lottery money was supposed to go to "education". A bunch of money from the indian casinos is supposed to go to "education". A bunch of money from the new stadium is supposed to go to "education".
Near as I can tell there must be a Rothschild named "education" somewhere depositing a bunch of checks.
The Bureaucracy is eating the Taxpayer's lunch.
Not looking forward to Uncle Warren Buffet's private Rocky Mountain Park.
How much did Fed.Gov/.org pay Ryan to write (in an attempt to justify the landgrab) this fucking article?
Takes a lot of square miles to test-fly reverse engineered spacecraft.
If it's gaurded there's a good chance there's something there. No gaurds; there must be something under ground.
All you need to know...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T424sWq1SkE
She forgot about post offices and post roads, but otherwise a great vid!
Cut them loose.
You won't lose anything, its just worthless land anyway.
You can still buy it after all.
Young Politician Number One: "Hey! Here's an idea! Let's print massive amounts of money and use that along with the peoples taxation to buy up all the land and get all of that off the tax rolls. We'll then call it the "publics land" and then place government employees in guard shacks on every road leading into it and charge the people for its use!"
Old Politician Number Two: "Son, I believe you have a fine career ahead of you."
nmewn,
Then, we can ban the public use of said land, bust and fine anybody caught in the myriad of "infractions" for use, enact civil forfeiture laws, AND rent the land to foreign corporations SIMULTANEOUSLY!
You could also dig deep caverns in the land to store spent radioactive fuel... glowing chinamen...AWESOME!
Infowars this is a really good explanation, it really shows how corrupt the BLM is? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uMeO06Jj7w
The Rep from Oregon is fucking Great a true American! Watch that congressmen and recommend using force against this group? Are you fucking kidding me? I cant imagine what the BLM are really doing?
Here are some thoughs from an Oregon rancher on this topic ...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2016/01/08/im-an-oregon-rancher-heres-what-you-dont-understand-about-the-bundy-standoff/
...it's about States Rights. And that will be all. For all you Constitutional muthafukkerz, try reading it.
.
What absolute and total Mises garbage!!!!!!!!!!
Yes, the market will solve all the problems. /s
Breaking up the grazing lands, parks, and reservations will allow their private owners to use them as the "god of the market" intended. /s When you hear someone talk of the "wonders of the market", hide your daughters because a sacrifice will soon be asked for.
The BLM and other bureaucracies need to work with all parties (ranchers, indians, enviromentalists) to develop appropriate land use rules that will range from grazing to no use at all.
An interesting article on grazing and soil health:
www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2014/aug/19/grazing-livestock-c...
An argument based on climate change. So 'for the children','because terrorism', ... and now 'because climate change' as all-purpose excuses.
Equally valid, of course.
Give it back to the Native Americans.
"Give it back to the Native Americans. "
That would indeed be a noble thing to do provided one could posit a proper argument for a specific person or persons.
But, who specifically do you mean by 'Native Americans' ?
The sitting government of Mexico city obviously
Yeah, we could do that, but I want ALL the beads we gave them back, uh, and all the casinos, too...
Although it's easy to blame the Federal Government for everything - sometimes with good cause - you need to really take a look at Americans themselves. See that article I linked above ... See the reader comments. There are a HUGE number of readers who are critical of the rancher ... Mr. Keith Nantz ... and his point of view. It must be truly discouraging to American ranchers to receive so much criticism from the people who eat their beef every day.
The fact is that a lot of Americans live in cities, and THEY HAVE GOT ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE about what life is like on a ranch, or anywhere in the West. But all these people still weigh-in with their opinons. Stupid opinions maybe ... ill-informed opinions maybe ... but it's a reality.
Can we expect our political representatives to be wise, if the public wont take the time to understand an issue?
http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VeluAfJlKZg
K
No, Tyler, we can presume the something beyond our worst imagination would happen. Did anyone imagine frackers would come in and destroy the area, causing hundreds of earthquakes, and the local population can't get the local/ state/ federal (bought or self- interested) government to resolve complaints? Complaints involving corps. usually have some Erin Brockovich- style theme to it. Ignorance is bliss, I wish I'd taken the other pill, too. Everything underneath the surface has some ugly, corrupt, rotten, inefficient mechanism to it that doesn't make any sense other than to benefit some scumbags who thinbk they're so superior. If it was some resource valuable to the benefit of everyone in the area, it's most likely at the top of the list for exploitation by the greedy few who are so deserving of only the very best.
Then design a structure where they are beholden to a council of Representatives, and that those aggrieved may prescribe legal penalties limited to their personal gain, based on their afore mentioned beholden status to a democratic electorit group.
Or not, just throw it all out because the parasites are in the throat.
You can't eat land.......
The water rights have never belonged to the federal government. They are managed by the States in the west.
The grazing allotments used by western ranchers today are bought and sold on the free market.
The economic system that produced the wealthiest nation on earth depends on the means of production being in the hands of the private sector.