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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” wo

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.

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.