The Federal government made a deal with forrest communities. We will have national forests that you won't get any property tax revenues from, but you will get revenue from the forestry, mining, and other economic activity on that land.
Then the federal government shutdown most economic activity, and local communities had to shutdown their schools and other government functions (while at the same time losing their lumber mills). Of course no one that mattered cared because it only impacted 'flyover people' and coastal people don't care if they break their commitments (in the form of the federal government that represents them).
I'd love to see sometime in my lifetime the feds get held accountable to keep the promises they made in the past that they just stop keeping, while the feds use the full force of the law to ensure THEIR side of the deals are kept up.
The rationale(s) for creating National Forests are multitude, but one good reason why they exist is in the Northeast the Green Mountain NF and White Mountain NF form the watersheds of multiple important rivers (Hudson, Connecticut, Androscoggin, etc) that are critical for industry and welfare (drinking water, etc). The federal govt recognized this a century ago and put these forests into management without putting them into 100% preservation and as such created a delicate balance between conservation/preservation and commercial and recreational use.
IMO the National Forests are the true jewels of the American conservation system because they set aside some of the most valuable (from a land value perspective) lands in the interest of multiple use.
Outside of cities, the main ways to make a living is using the natural resources. Logging, mining, farming etc.
Laws are made by city people, who think of work as something you do sitting by a desk. They see the countryside as a nature reserve to keep beautiful for their vacation trips. So they ban most commercial use of natural resources.
This is part of what makes rural communities poor and desperate societies, surrounded my massive wealth that they "own", but are not allowed to prosper from.
yes, poor people prosper when international megacorps pay them minimum wage to chop down all their trees. the corp keeps all the profit, and moves on when the trees are gone, and usually leaves a bunch of pollution behind. That's why old mining towns in the appalachians are so prosperous!
I think you are unintentionally proving their point. We tightened regulations and have just exported pollution to dictatorships (e.g., CCP). If city folks just do local bans without similar import bans, what is the point?
> yes, poor people prosper when international megacorps pay them minimum wage to chop down all their trees
Or, why not let the poor people decide for themselves? In your story, the only illegal thing the megacorp did was pollution. Why didn't existing laws address that?
I don't know why you're getting down voted because you're correct.
I'm in flyover country, in a state with few "cities" and yet the laws reflect the values of a city dweller who uses the countryside as a stop off vacation.
We're dying in the rural part of this country, the towns, the people, all of it. And the arguments that I constantly see are - well just move to a city.
As a counter point, in Western NC the National Forests are major tourist destinations, and many rural towns with no other industry to speak of are able to thrive because people come from all over to enjoy them. These towns are filled with businesses catering to tourists and there are plenty of jobs doing so.
Logging isn't the only way for a community to profit from a forest, conservation can do this too.
You could look up the original Bureau of Land Management charter by congress, which does in fact mandate that the BLM's charter[1] is to manage federal lands with the goals of sustained resource yield:
> The Congress declares that it is the policy of the United States that goals and objectives be established by law as guidelines for public land use planning, and that management be on the basis of multiple use and sustained yield unless otherwise specified by law.[4]
They are managed to balance interests to ensure long-term needs, not cannot simply declare that timber, minerals, etc are off-limits:
> The government must consider "a combination of balanced and diverse resource uses that takes into account the long-term needs of future generations for renewable and nonrenewable resources, including, but not limited to, recreation, range, timber, minerals, watershed, wildlife and fish, and natural scenic, scientific and historical values."
The deal was very explicitly that federal land was to be managed to avoid a tragedy of the commons with regards to resource extraction. Resource extraction was one of the primary goals mandated by congress and no, they cannot simply decide they don't want to.
What if we hold people accountable to the zoning rules in an area they CHOSE to purchase within? You don't want zoning rules, you are free to purchase in a local that doesn't have and/or forbids zoning laws.
That is a good point and I totally agree with that, if you bought a house there for short-term rents then (in this case) you most likely made a risky investment.
Worked at a company where certifications were reciprocal (USA certified could be sold in the EU, EU certified could be sold in the USA). Our product was prevented from sale in the EU because they disagreed on one part of the design, nevermind the reciprocity agreement. Add in the way that the EU is friendly to companies the do bribes and kickbacks versus in the USA you go to jail if you use bribes/kickbacks overseas, and we ended up at a huge disadvantage outside the USA. We had the best product, so we still won a lot of deals, but there were huge sales that the EU competitors either won or soured with their bribe/kickbacks schemes for government officials. They then tried to do the same to undermine our service center capabilities. After that I don't see EU regulations as being in anyone's interests, just in someone's pocket.
I was great in a crisis in dev/IT, and always said 'sure, we can do that', which got me to the top. You know who you want at the top? Not the person that thrives on crisis, but the person that hates it and goes to great length to ensure stability and prevent it. Luckily I realized that and empowered the guy I inherited who was on a 'PIP' plan because he was always the 'we can't do it', went too slow, let's think this through guy.
What's the median? The median excluding NYC, LA, and SF? Why is freakonomics using average? They know that's a 'manipulate public discourse' number not really a useful one, especially for something that can easily have 1 or 2 9 to 10 figure net wealth individuals in attendance.
If you think the average person's soil is bad, try looking into the solid waste matter that the US government allows to be applied directly to our crops. They basically take what's otherwise called sewage sludge, including all the chemicals we pour down drains, and spray it on fields as fertilizer.
'Make work' because in a country without a well developed transportation system healthcare decides you shouldn't just 'not get treatment' when you can't drive? Kind of a heartless take. Especially considering those in treatment are the most likely people to not be able to drive outside of minors.
If anythings sounds like you should direct condemnation at our lack of functional community transportation systems not the limited tools the medical system has to account for it.
I am so grateful that there are programs in the USA that can get people to treatments. When my mother was dying of cancer and could no longer drive it wasn't always possible to get her to appointments. Luckily she was able to utilize community transportation. I think without it she might have given up on going to the support group she loved so much just because she wouldn't have wanted to burden others to drive her that often.
My quip is supposed to be lighthearted, as the medical industry is obviously not a wealth-transfer scheme to transportation providers. The medical system gets paid regardless of whether their treatments actually help their patients. I don't think doctors are in charge anymore.
And in the early 20th century pahlavi’s regime beat women who chose to keep wearing the hijab. Religious extremism in the form of salafi Wahhabism isn’t common in the country, nor is militant jihad. It’s theocratic authoritarianism. I think the difference is worth noting.
> extremism in the form of salafi Wahhabism isn’t common in the country
It’s not like the SA government (as a whole) was ever particularly that keen about the extremism part. Fundamentally they are not that different from Iran in most ways. They started from very different positions of course (secularism never having been a thing in the Arabian peninsula). SA is at least kind of moving into the right direction in some areas when it comes to women’s rights (even if at an extremely slow pace).
Not sure why you want to label what to me is a distinction without a difference. You care about the motivations of a few at the top, I care about the local police and their supporters, which are acting like religious extremists not authoritarians.
The purpose of my example was to demonstrate that oppression of women in Iran is a form of political control because it happens under secular and religious regimes, sorry I don’t think I expressed that clearly enough. I don’t consider Iran religiously extremist for multiple reasons. The populace practices such a moderate form of Islam. The country doesn’t export radicalized people. The government has some degree of tolerance for other religions (as long as you’re not a convert from Islam). The government acts in the name of religion, but in my opinion is guided by power and control rather than ideology.
In comparison, Islamic extremists do things like kill infidels and seek to establish an Islamic caliphate.
Have you reported these and the fact that this is a reoccurring issue to the FTC? Most of these agencies need consumers to initiate action.
Every time you see these scam 'ads' or sponsored listings, report them. Every time you get something unsafe from Amazon (for example I submitted the semi-recent Youtuber investigating fuses that are unsafe) report it to the FTC. The agencies that stop this initiate action from reports. Which means you have to report these things.
They have proven they won't unless they are punished. You can wish it worked different, or you can accept reality and report these things, or you can live in a society full of scams. Those are your options.
I have a friend that owns a huge forrest. Currently seedlings come from human harvesters who go into the forest and gather cones. This doesn't necessarily represent the best candidates, but 'good' candidates that people could get to. A drone that could gather cones from any tree would add to the diversity of future forests and allow better choice candidates to be selected.
Keeping ahead of beatles is a big thing for him. Better aerial detection would be good. Currently he misses stands that could have been managed better earlier.
Documenting and automating what current forresters would be huge because their kids aren't interested and aren't spending the time to learn and will be managing things much more like a farm than a healthy forest if they manage at all (most likely they will just harvest it all and then sell the land).
Then the federal government shutdown most economic activity, and local communities had to shutdown their schools and other government functions (while at the same time losing their lumber mills). Of course no one that mattered cared because it only impacted 'flyover people' and coastal people don't care if they break their commitments (in the form of the federal government that represents them).
I'd love to see sometime in my lifetime the feds get held accountable to keep the promises they made in the past that they just stop keeping, while the feds use the full force of the law to ensure THEIR side of the deals are kept up.
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