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> People in Alaska want to develop their land In many cases, the "people" who want to develop things are actually not people but rather businesses or agents of

by z9znz 4y ago

> People in Alaska want to develop their land In many cases, the "people" who want to develop things are actually not people but rather businesses or agents of businesses. Go to rural or remote places which have been upgraded and you will find locals lamenting about the changes which invited industry. Many people like their environment undisturbed.

rayiner 4y ago
Businesses are just groups of people doing stuff, that hire people to do stuff and sell stuff to people. And you can go into San Francisco and find plenty of people who don’t want Silicon Valley businesses in the city, or people who complain about how NYC has become gentrified. But I bet if you took a vote “should tech companies all leave San Francisco for Texas” or “should NYC go back to the way it was in the 70s” that would be a land slide against losing those businesses.
- ajross 4y ago
  Yes, but Businesses are very clearly not the antecedent of the "they" you used upthread to reference "Alaskans". You can't make a nativist argument about the rights of the local population and then try to extend that to a Texas-based petro-behemoth wanting to drill new holes.
  - rayiner 4y ago
    There’s tons of people who want those “Texas based petro behemoths” to “drill new holes” for the exact same reasons folks want San Francisco based ad behemoths to build offices in their city.
    - ajross 4y ago
      And there's "tons" that don't, aren't there? So... maybe we should do this democratically and let the elected government decide what happens with federal land and not resort to this kind of "who matters more" nonsense?
      - rayiner 4y ago
        Most people would say that they should have more say about jobs versus community trade offs in their local area than folks somewhere else. It’s only due to accidents of history that New Yorkers can veto economic development in Alaska in a way Alaskans can’t do with New York. Not just due to numbers but due to the historical development of the relevant property rights.
        ajross 4y ago
        > in Alaska in a way Alaskans can’t do with New York This is wildly incorrect. Alaskans have vastly higher relative representation in the federal government than New Yorkers, and it really isn't close. It's something like 3x as many house/senate votes per capita! It's just not absolute. New Yorker are Americans, just like Alaskans, and so New Yorkers get a say about what to do with American resources like federal wilderness areas, just like Alaskans get a say with how to regulate New York guns shops, medical procedures or tax rates. We call that "democracy", and while it's currently sorta falling apart in this country (due in no small part to the kind of absolutist arguments being deployed right here in this subthread) it's the best scheme we've picked. People really need to start finding ways to live with it instead of burning everything down.
    - z9znz 4y ago
      That's true to a degree, but there's always the not-in-my-back-yard condition. I got to see this first hand during the Barnette Shale gas drilling boom in the mid-2000s. As Texas, particularly the DFW area was very pro-oil&gas, many people were very much in favor of fracking and the possibilities it opened up. Many of those people stopped being in favor once actual wells appeared in their neighborhoods. At one point I could see five different wells from the second floor of my suburban home. Their noise was audible all the time, and our roads became clogged with heavy trucks delivering liquids and materials necessary for the fracking process. Oh, our roads got destroyed rapidly from those trucks as well. The few landowners who got lucrative mineral lease deals were very happy, but "the people" living all around were definitely not happy. So a small few individuals profited well, a few oil and gas companies profited very well, and the general population suffered. That was even before the earthquakes started. Keep in mind also that "the people" are generally speaking rather like sheep -- not stupid necessarily, but given to following the herd. "Everybody knows" that Texas is an oil state, so it's only natural that you will be in favor of the industry your state is famous for. To go against that means you no longer fit with your neighbors, colleagues, church members, sometimes even your family (if you're from Texas you probably have a cousin who works in the industry) etc. However, after negative outcomes appear too often or too clearly, the concept of "the people" fractures. I can't speak for the SF folks, but I would bet that there are quite some strong differences of opinion amongst them, just as there are people living in nature who are very opposed to development around them.
- jacobolus 4y ago
  Just to be clear, your claim is that because businesses would be happy to be gifted public resources for their own private profit, therefore generic “people” would like it because businesses = groups of people? And you think “gentrification” (i.e. private sale/renting of private property in low-income neighborhoods to yuppies) is essentially the same as the President unilaterally deciding to sell part of a congressionally established National Wildlife Refuge to land developers, because you can find someone unhappy with either one?
  - rayiner 4y ago
    No, my point is that businesses developing undeveloped land creates profits for businesses but also jobs and economic activity for the local community. And while some people don’t want that economic activity to happen—just like they don’t want Silicon Valley workers moving into San Francisco—most of the community is happy to have the money coming in. The distinction you’re pointing to—federal versus private ownership, is both inaccurate and irrelevant. Nobody is “gifted” anything—the federal government leases or sells the land. And from the perspective of the local community the distinction doesn’t make a difference. They care about the economic development, not the legal particulars of the property rights. The legal particulars also don’t matter to the conservationists—their objection isn’t the price that the government is getting for these leases.
    - jacobolus 4y ago
      Lots of things “create jobs and economic activity” (for at least someone, in the short term): Ponzi schemes. Mob protection rackets. Dumping untreated toxic sludge in the local river. Burning down the rainforest and replacing it with palm oil plantations and cattle ranches. Establishing a pharmaceutical monopoly and then jacking the price up by 1000%. Opening child-labor sweatshops. Prostitution of sex-trafficked slaves. Kidnapping for ransom. Medical research on unwilling human test subjects. Child porn production. Black-market organ sales. Judges conspiring with for-profit prison companies to send innocent people to jail. Selling small arms to mass-murdering foreign paramilitary groups... Hand-waving away all of the details because you think “jobs” outweigh “the legal particulars” is a free pass to support pretty much anything you personally prefer (or personally profit from), irrespective of its harms. I’m sure it would create a lot of short term jobs if we leased Yellowstone to the Disney company to develop into a theme park. But “maximizing short-term local economic development” is not how we make decisions about what to do with congressionally established nature preserves.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

by z9znz 4y ago

rayiner 4y ago

Businesses are just groups of people doing stuff, that hire people to do stuff and sell stuff to people. And you can go into San Francisco and find plenty of people who don’t want Silicon Valley businesses in the city, or people who complain about how NYC has become gentrified. But I bet if you took a vote “should tech companies all leave San Francisco for Texas” or “should NYC go back to the way it was in the 70s” that would be a land slide against losing those businesses.

ajross 4y ago
Yes, but Businesses are very clearly not the antecedent of the "they" you used upthread to reference "Alaskans". You can't make a nativist argument about the rights of the local population and then try to extend that to a Texas-based petro-behemoth wanting to drill new holes.
- rayiner 4y ago
  There’s tons of people who want those “Texas based petro behemoths” to “drill new holes” for the exact same reasons folks want San Francisco based ad behemoths to build offices in their city.
  - ajross 4y ago
    And there's "tons" that don't, aren't there? So... maybe we should do this democratically and let the elected government decide what happens with federal land and not resort to this kind of "who matters more" nonsense?
    - rayiner 4y ago
      Most people would say that they should have more say about jobs versus community trade offs in their local area than folks somewhere else. It’s only due to accidents of history that New Yorkers can veto economic development in Alaska in a way Alaskans can’t do with New York. Not just due to numbers but due to the historical development of the relevant property rights.
      - ajross 4y ago
        > in Alaska in a way Alaskans can’t do with New York This is wildly incorrect. Alaskans have vastly higher relative representation in the federal government than New Yorkers, and it really isn't close. It's something like 3x as many house/senate votes per capita! It's just not absolute. New Yorker are Americans, just like Alaskans, and so New Yorkers get a say about what to do with American resources like federal wilderness areas, just like Alaskans get a say with how to regulate New York guns shops, medical procedures or tax rates. We call that "democracy", and while it's currently sorta falling apart in this country (due in no small part to the kind of absolutist arguments being deployed right here in this subthread) it's the best scheme we've picked. People really need to start finding ways to live with it instead of burning everything down.
  - z9znz 4y ago
    That's true to a degree, but there's always the not-in-my-back-yard condition. I got to see this first hand during the Barnette Shale gas drilling boom in the mid-2000s. As Texas, particularly the DFW area was very pro-oil&gas, many people were very much in favor of fracking and the possibilities it opened up. Many of those people stopped being in favor once actual wells appeared in their neighborhoods. At one point I could see five different wells from the second floor of my suburban home. Their noise was audible all the time, and our roads became clogged with heavy trucks delivering liquids and materials necessary for the fracking process. Oh, our roads got destroyed rapidly from those trucks as well. The few landowners who got lucrative mineral lease deals were very happy, but "the people" living all around were definitely not happy. So a small few individuals profited well, a few oil and gas companies profited very well, and the general population suffered. That was even before the earthquakes started. Keep in mind also that "the people" are generally speaking rather like sheep -- not stupid necessarily, but given to following the herd. "Everybody knows" that Texas is an oil state, so it's only natural that you will be in favor of the industry your state is famous for. To go against that means you no longer fit with your neighbors, colleagues, church members, sometimes even your family (if you're from Texas you probably have a cousin who works in the industry) etc. However, after negative outcomes appear too often or too clearly, the concept of "the people" fractures. I can't speak for the SF folks, but I would bet that there are quite some strong differences of opinion amongst them, just as there are people living in nature who are very opposed to development around them.
jacobolus 4y ago
Just to be clear, your claim is that because businesses would be happy to be gifted public resources for their own private profit, therefore generic “people” would like it because businesses = groups of people? And you think “gentrification” (i.e. private sale/renting of private property in low-income neighborhoods to yuppies) is essentially the same as the President unilaterally deciding to sell part of a congressionally established National Wildlife Refuge to land developers, because you can find someone unhappy with either one?
- rayiner 4y ago
  No, my point is that businesses developing undeveloped land creates profits for businesses but also jobs and economic activity for the local community. And while some people don’t want that economic activity to happen—just like they don’t want Silicon Valley workers moving into San Francisco—most of the community is happy to have the money coming in. The distinction you’re pointing to—federal versus private ownership, is both inaccurate and irrelevant. Nobody is “gifted” anything—the federal government leases or sells the land. And from the perspective of the local community the distinction doesn’t make a difference. They care about the economic development, not the legal particulars of the property rights. The legal particulars also don’t matter to the conservationists—their objection isn’t the price that the government is getting for these leases.
  - jacobolus 4y ago
    Lots of things “create jobs and economic activity” (for at least someone, in the short term): Ponzi schemes. Mob protection rackets. Dumping untreated toxic sludge in the local river. Burning down the rainforest and replacing it with palm oil plantations and cattle ranches. Establishing a pharmaceutical monopoly and then jacking the price up by 1000%. Opening child-labor sweatshops. Prostitution of sex-trafficked slaves. Kidnapping for ransom. Medical research on unwilling human test subjects. Child porn production. Black-market organ sales. Judges conspiring with for-profit prison companies to send innocent people to jail. Selling small arms to mass-murdering foreign paramilitary groups... Hand-waving away all of the details because you think “jobs” outweigh “the legal particulars” is a free pass to support pretty much anything you personally prefer (or personally profit from), irrespective of its harms. I’m sure it would create a lot of short term jobs if we leased Yellowstone to the Disney company to develop into a theme park. But “maximizing short-term local economic development” is not how we make decisions about what to do with congressionally established nature preserves.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]