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American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

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Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#151

Post by ericmay »

bdamm wrote: post #148
ericmay wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Our national park system in the US is larger than the entire country of Sweden and Denmark and Iceland (or close enough) - depending on how it's defined maybe throw Norway in there too. I don't need to walk through someone's private property to see all this great stuff. Maybe the Nordics should set aside more public land and catch up to the United States?

I don't want to roam in Yosemite. I want to roam starting from my house.

I don't want people roaming through my yard and stepping on my plants and stuff or god forbid they bring their stinky dogs and their urine and feces so I have a fence put up to keep them out.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#152

Post by ericmay »

bdamm wrote: post #147
ericmay wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've heard it's great this time of year. Lots of cool stuff to look at.

Roaming on either of these will lead to you being arrested.

You can just avoid those areas and roam on not government property. There's tons of it out there and nobody cares.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#153

Post by stickfigure »

bix6 wrote: post #97
BeetleB wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the early 80's, Congress passed some laws that allow people to buy undeveloped land, and declare it to be undeveloped for perpetuity (no one can develop on it even if sold). The owner gets some tax benefits from doing so. It became a niche segment in the real estate. The idea is you find land that is cheap, but you have a feeling it has mineral wealth. You buy it cheap, get the survey done, and show that it was re…

I go back and forth on this. I love the idea of preserving land but this also seems to be a way for the wealthy to insulate their home eg buy 10 acres next to your house and declare it undeveloped. Now you get an amazing property in a pristine zone that nobody can touch all while getting a tax break you don’t need and boxing out the next generation.

Outside of cities, land is already zoned like this. R5, R10, Ag20, Ag100, etc.

You don't even have to be particularly rich, you just have to be willing to live in the country.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#154

Post by zip1234 »

conductr wrote: post #115
aftbit wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm gonna roll to doubt this. I live in a planned suburb with lots of cul-de-sacs which leads to long car-centric paths without sidewalks to walk through. Most of my neighbors (and myself) are very comfortable with people cutting through or around their yards to bypass this. I've gotten explicit permission to cut through when I'm walking my dog from the neighbors that own the most valuable shortcuts, but I wish there…

The majority of new-ish master planned suburban communities I’ve seen do have walking paths, bikeways, and parks baked in. Usually with some large HOA maintained pool, theater, I’ve even seen man made beaches (100s of miles from a coast). Although, they still usually have fenced yards and cutting through someone’s fenced yard without explicit permission is highly frowned upon, I would actually say dangerous when comb…

These are often designed by people that don't ever walk anywhere.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#155

Post by edm0nd »

renewiltord wrote: post #145

We should not exempt non-profits from property tax. For these conservation projects, it will be a defacto ad valorem tax and it's a good thing. Americans will lock themselves out of prosperity and then blame The Rich, The Politicians, Foreigners and so on rather than allow for the development of the vast acres of land that America has. Conservation is fine. But perpetual free locking away of land is total bullshit. T…

wait. I can form a non-profit to buy acres of land through and it wont have to pay annual property tax on it?

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#156

Post by whatever1 »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #111
whatever1 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you did not fight for it you don’t have ownership rights. The state owns the land. The rest of us are mere users of it. For the many downvoters do this thought experiment: the neighbor country attacks and takes over your country. What is your ownership title worth? Exactly 0. Hence it was not yours to begin with.

Doesn't that imply that ownership doesn't and can't exist? What do you own that cannot be taken by force in some way or another? Some non-physical stuff like happiness or sadness, maybe, except that if you were killed you wouldn't have those either.

It’s not a universal or god-given right. It’s a privilege granted to us by the state we reside in. People sacrificed their lives so that we could enjoy this benefit.

Therefore, when I encounter individuals in my generation who haven’t participated in any wars and assert that they own their land, not the state, I can’t help but believe they require a reality check.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#157

Post by wbl »

potato3732842 wrote: post #83
placardloop wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The public land situation in the western US is vastly, vastly different from the situation in the east. Just like you’re saying comparing the US to the UK are two different situations, you also have to treat parts of the US separately. Almost all of the US’s public lands are west of the Rockies. If you live in Colorado, California, Oregon, Washington then you can basically throw a rock and hit some public lands. East…

That's not quite true. There are huge in number, small in overall size, amounts of public land east of the Mississippi. They're mostly all state forests, nature preserves, etc, etc and 99.9% of them are wholly unremarkable and barely utilized because you can only hike in so many identical forests or walk to the top of comparable hills before you get bored. 50+yr ago they were far more utilized (per capita) because th…

The decline of hunting has little to do with recreation. Plenty of deer in the east. Also post COVID there was a wave of people heading out there.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#158

Post by renewiltord »

edm0nd wrote: post #155
renewiltord wrote: post #145

We should not exempt non-profits from property tax. For these conservation projects, it will be a defacto ad valorem tax and it's a good thing. Americans will lock themselves out of prosperity and then blame The Rich, The Politicians, Foreigners and so on rather than allow for the development of the vast acres of land that America has. Conservation is fine. But perpetual free locking away of land is total bullshit. T…

wait. I can form a non-profit to buy acres of land through and it wont have to pay annual property tax on it?

Yep. You're not going to be able to live on it or anything though. And you can't exactly give it to yourself later to do something with. Not legally, but people find ways.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#159

Post by shmageggy »

cogman10 wrote: post #139
rafram wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Two very, very different situations. The UK is a small, densely populated country without large areas of true wilderness. Over 90% of the country's land is private. The one area of the UK where there are large expanses of land without many inhabitants is Scotland (due to the Clearances), but the land there is still mostly owned by large land barons, and so Scotland has a more permissive law that allows non-destructiv…

> without large areas of true wilderness Depends on your definition of large. You'd probably be shocked at just how much wilderness is in the UK. Don't get me wrong, just about every farmable piece of land is growing food. However, you might be shocked at the presence of forests and camping grounds still to this day. Either way, the right to roam in the UK is something I wish we had in the US. There are more than a f…

> You'd probably be shocked at just how much wilderness is in the UK.

You're right. I was shocked at just how little there is. If one's definition of large is more than a few square km, there's virtually none, for any sensible definition of wilderness, at least south of the Cairngorns.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#160

Post by achierius »

mothballed wrote: post #103
bix6 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I go back and forth on this. I love the idea of preserving land but this also seems to be a way for the wealthy to insulate their home eg buy 10 acres next to your house and declare it undeveloped. Now you get an amazing property in a pristine zone that nobody can touch all while getting a tax break you don’t need and boxing out the next generation.

It reminds me of all the desert shithole land I looked at that had covenants created by a dead boomer back in the 80s that require something ridiculous like "we will only allow a mansion to be built next to our pigfarm." In theory it's possible to reverse but in practice it requires something like standing on one foot, holding your breath, and reciting the entire bible. People desperately need housing and even in bum…

Isn't this (covenants that basically have dead people in their graves reaching out to smite living people) exactly what the dead hand rule was created to prevent? This was a major part of the "defeudalization" that took place between the 17th-19th centuries in most of western Europe, as before then the nobility would entail their estates so as to keep them whole in the senior male line. It does allow for limited postmortem control, but practically not more than one human lifespan thereafter.

C.f. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_against_perpetuities

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