2. “Any real libertarian solution would sell the rights to the highest bidder.” No True Scotsman.

3. “You want practically the opposite of libertarian — insulating your special interest from both government and the economic system.” Straw man. An argument based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position.

4. “My point, that you seem unable to ever understand, is that even if Sierra Club or REI win the bid for public lands, they would still be grossly inefficient land managers because they would incur most of the costs and not be able to capture most of the benefits. They couldn’t get revenue from the water rights, the consumptive fish and wildlife, the camping and skiing gear, etc.” Bare assertion fallacy. A dogmatic statement asserted, but unproved, which the speaker expects the listener to accept — on faith — to be true.

5. “And to bring this back to the point about this blog post, the Sierra Club would not pay to put out fires…” Another bare assertion fallacy.

My point, that you seem unable to ever understand, is that even if Sierra Club or REI win the bid for public lands, they would still be grossly inefficient land managers because they would incur most of the costs and not be able to capture most of the benefits. They couldn’t get revenue from the water rights, the consumptive fish and wildlife, the camping and skiing gear, etc.

And to bring this back to the point about this blog post, the Sierra Club would not pay to put out fires, especially not to protect building in inholdings or on the border of their land.

I didn’t think so.

What instead of the libertarian fantasy land, the government made lots of money by selling the land AND then not exempting them from taxes?

Or maybe, just maybe, there is a real world where the people want the federal government to invest billions of dollars in land assets to grow some fish and wildlife that people pay the state government a little money to hunt and fish, and pay REI, Suburu, and the Sierra Club a LOT of money to hunt and fish.

You’re also distorting my comments, essentially a strawman.

The libertarian approach to land management is to completely ELIMINATE the Forest Service and replace it with non-profit conservation trusts. Therefore there would be NO subsidy, for anyone, the USFS, REI, Subaru, etc.

Private, non-profit conservation trusts work across the world, with some of the largest preserving as much acreage as the National Park Service. Your unsupported assertion that this system is “full of holes as practical public management” is ludicrous and more pontification on your part.

Please do some basic research before spouting any more nonsense and come back with some sources to back up your baseless opinions.

Sure lots of economic activity generated by the trees — but the Forest Service doesn’t get any of it. Since the libertarian approach of the Antiplanner requires the Forest Service to self-fund, my point was that that system would have no incentive for the Forest Service to fight the fires since it does not get the benefit of the tree.

That other story you told is mostly a big urban myth. The “let it burn” approach is so restrictive that they let burn a meaningless number of acres. Fires burn small most of the time, except when conditions are right and then all fires burn big.

The “subsidies” for timber companies are as real as the “subsidies” for REI and Suburu, yet you seem to think one is right and one is wrong. And the idea that the forests are responsible for “high tech” firms is just plain silly, but if you want to count it then you have to count it is another “subsidy”.

My point is that this Antiplanner libertarian approach to public land management is cute, but it is totally full of holes as practical public management. As is this other system of attacking some “subsidies” but then calling other things “benefits”.

First, if you don’t understand the libertarian-based approach to land management, educate yourself. Start at Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment (FREE). You talk about “capturing value” but you fail to mention or perhaps understand the political mismanagement of public lands, which includes subsidies for companies that profit from degrading public lands.

Your statement that trees are worthless except for timber negates your previous statement; if trees are only good for timber, how do REI and Subaru and water companies benefit from trees?

And as FREE points out, high-elevation timber has more value standing than as timber as it costs more to harvest it than the timber is worth on the market. Additionally,

Roadless lands, wilderness, free-flowing rivers, national parks and forests, and healthy wildlife habitat stimulate … economic activity. These amenities attract entrepreneurs. For example Bozeman, Montana has over 60 high-tech firms in a town of 35,000. Freed by FedEx and the Internet, “modem cowboys” (and cowgirls) move here [the West] for our high environmental quality.

If you want to understand why the Forest Service initial suppressed wildfire, read the Wiki article or try Pyne’s Fire in America: A Cultural History of Wildland and Rural Fire.

As for why fire is still suppressed, it depends on the agency and is heavily impacted by culture. As some have noted, the Wildland/Urban interface has expanded, and homeowners demand federal protection even though they built in forests that historically burned every 3-10 years (Ponderosa pines). The USFS capitalized on Euro fear and demonization of fire to combat a force deemed harmful to timber resources, and that bias and culture continues. With the NPS, human-caused wildfire is suppressed due to its location and risk to property and human safety. However, beginning in the late 1960s, the NPS broke away from the USFS paradigm of full suppression and began to reintroduce fire to the ecosystem; some natural fires in wilderness areas are allowed to burn–under close monitoring–if they meet certain criteria.

Anyway, I’ve written another long-winded post. Seriously, it’s 2012. Never has so much information been so readily available; it just requires a few seconds of searching, a few minutes of reading, and most importantly, a willingness to use the technology rather than settling for lazy, drive-by pontification.

Now that the trees in a National Forest are not worth anything for timber, why would the Forest Service even want to put out a fire except to protect the captured values of all the others?

(Note – this is an economic theory argument, not a real world argument.)

Yes, most (59%), but not all forests have been affected. And fire return interval is very important, especially for higher-elevation forests of Red Firs, Whitebark Pine, etc. I also question the human effects on forests where the FRI is quite long and usually stand-replacing (such as lodgepole). At most, humans may have slightly increased (in the grand scheme of things) the FRI in such areas.

Indeed, there is no market for small-diameter trees, and cutting them for wood products fails cost/benefit analysis (especially in terms of added infrastructure, namely roads, which results in a degraded environment). These areas can be mechanically thinned prior to burning if needed. According to my ex-FMO, who is now very high up in the Denver office, this is just an excuse to get to profitable old-growth. I agree.

RE: mass education of the public. That was my job for a decade, but the audience was select and open-minded. Smokey Bear’s propaganda often proves difficult to counter among the general public. Perhaps a mass ad campaign where Smokey comes clean on his half-truths and blatant lies?

Better still IMO would be to transfer USFS land to localized non-profit conservation trusts that manage the land with long-term goals in mind rather than short-term gain for logging corporations that pay pennies on the dollar to export timber abroad. I’m going out on a limb here, but I’m going to guess the vast majority of Congressional reps don’t know $h!t about fire ecology and environmental history and are therefore extremely unqualified to manage fire activity in the west from the shores of the Potomac. Individual members of Congress also financially benefit from their whackadoo policies, whether it’s “federal grazing permits for livestock that feeds on publicly held lands” or their cozy relationships with Helicopter Assn. International. And even without the financial benefits, they benefit politically by providing expensive and ineffective airtankers and helicopters to fight wildfires.