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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

#81

Post by placardloop »

rafram wrote: post #49
geye1234 wrote: post #20

The UK has a much more intelligent (though far from perfect) approach to land use. It has public rights of way (if on foot, horse or bicycle) crossing the whole country. You can walk from one end of Britain to the other without trespassing, and without using roads (much). Many of these paths are very, very old, in a few cases Roman or pre-Roman, although more are medieval. Until recently, they were based on common la…

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…

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 of the Rockies, you can go your entire life without ever even seeing public lands.

https://www.backpacker.com/stories/issues/environment/americ...

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#82

Post by rascul »

aftbit wrote: post #63
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…

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…

> Or maybe we could build suburbs with these sorts of walking-paths baked in from the beginning.

We can. They exist. I've been in some of them.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#83

Post by potato3732842 »

placardloop wrote: post #81
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…

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 they weren't closed to motorized recreation and hunting and fishing hadn't yet been regulated with intent to discourage participation.

But yes, the vast BLM lands out west have no analogue in the east.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#84

Post by legitster »

mothballed wrote: post #2

Property rights as conceived by Adam smith, John Locke, and even the most ruthless anarcho-capitalists like Murray Rothbard does not acknowledge the right of ownership of land from merely seeing it and declaring everyone else is blocked from accessing the next place. In all such systems, ownership is first derived from developing or homesteading the land. People that own undeveloped land purely for the reason of bloc…

People make Adam Smith to be some sort of blowhard absolutist, but his actual work is very observational and astute.

> “Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor.”

Adam Smith inferred that strict property rights were overall good for law and order and developing society, but that in the long run they would lead to inequality (which in his views was an acceptable tradeoff if the overall lot of the poor was improved).

More to your point, Adam Smith was skeptical of commons. The experience in England at the time was that commonly owned land was abused and neglected.

> “It is in the interest of every proprietor to cultivate that, which belongs to himself, and to neglect that, which belongs to all.”

There's really nothing about "capitalism" as a system that is mutually exclusive with also preserving nature. It just needs to be tied into an ownership structure (private or public) that is incentivized to preserve it.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#85

Post by pixelpoet »

shayway wrote: post #75
pixelpoet wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not that I don't understand what they want to express and how they use the phrase. I'm arguing that it's a poor phrase for the job, when "one of the few" exactly and necessarily implies that, while "one of the few" doesn't necessarily. In fact it's even more vacuous ("nothingburger") because sometimes it's not even clear which way the person means it; if I say "I'm one of the only people to do a handstand on a T…

Is your objection to the use of 'only' to refer to multiple things, or specifically the phrase "one of the only"? Would you consider "I am only five minutes late" to be valid? (edit - for the record, this was in response to the first paragraph only, as the others were edited in afterwards)

My objection is in direct analogy to "could care less": it fails to rule out the very thing that is to be ruled out.

The grains of sand example should make it clear: it is not true that this grain is one of few at the beach, but it is true that it's one of the only. This makes it a poor expression for scarcity, and while obviously we know what was actually intended (as with "could care less"), that doesn't really make it any better.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#86

Post by mulmen »

k33n wrote: post #76
em-bee wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

not completely locked out of access to the area, but locked out of using one of the only available road to that area.

So not locked out of the area by any stretch of the imagination and no evil was done.

Yeah just drive around West Texas and come in the other side.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#87

Post by bdamm »

ericmay wrote: post #58
wood_spirit wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Crikey, I”d hardly sell the UK as good with land access! The UK is pretty awful in comparison to the nearby Nordics. Sweden, for example, has a right to roam in nature which makes the constant antagonism between footpath walkers and landowners that are a mainstay of the English countryside seem so petty.

I'll tell you what, the Nordics themselves are pretty awful when compared with the Outback or American southwest. You can just roam wherever you want, no questions asked!

Try roaming through Area 51. Or White Sands.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#88

Post by dyauspitr »

geye1234 wrote: post #20

The UK has a much more intelligent (though far from perfect) approach to land use. It has public rights of way (if on foot, horse or bicycle) crossing the whole country. You can walk from one end of Britain to the other without trespassing, and without using roads (much). Many of these paths are very, very old, in a few cases Roman or pre-Roman, although more are medieval. Until recently, they were based on common la…

I don’t know if I want random people walking through or camping on my land.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#89

Post by potato3732842 »

hangonhn wrote: post #71
dessimus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The American eighteenth-century enlightenment approach is an attempt to make everything tidy: it's based on the rationalist idea that a thing is its definition and nothing more. So private property is private, that means nobody else can use it: case closed. You may be unaware, but the American legal system allows for property owners to be held civilly responsible for the actions of uninvited individuals, including c…

IANL. Under American law, if the owner doesn't enforce exclusion the land can become public through implied dedication if the public continues to use it over time.

>IANL. Under American law,

Good thing you IANL'd that because this is very much a state by state thing, not an "american" thing.

Re: American Prairie unlocks another 70k acres in Montana

#90

Post by gamblor956 »

hangonhn wrote: post #71
dessimus wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The American eighteenth-century enlightenment approach is an attempt to make everything tidy: it's based on the rationalist idea that a thing is its definition and nothing more. So private property is private, that means nobody else can use it: case closed. You may be unaware, but the American legal system allows for property owners to be held civilly responsible for the actions of uninvited individuals, including c…

IANL. Under American law, if the owner doesn't enforce exclusion the land can become public through implied dedication if the public continues to use it over time.

Implied dedication doesn't make the land public, it simply creates a public easement allowing the public to continue using the land in the manner it was being used that created the implied dedication.

For example, if people openly hike through part of a private property for 5 years (in CA), and the owner knows this and does nothing, then after 5 years there will be a public easement for the public to continue using that part of the land as a hiking trail and the owner can no longer prevent that. OTOH, if he puts up signs on the 12th month of the 4th year, saying "Hiking permitted by owner", then no public easement is created, and the owner can subsequently close off public access at any point.

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