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posted by Fnord666 on Friday September 01 2017, @10:56AM   Printer-friendly
from the monumental-decisions dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

U.S. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke said on Thursday he has sent recommendations from his review of more than two dozen national monuments to President Donald Trump, indicating that some could be scaled back to allow for more hunting and fishing and economic development.

The recommendations follow a 120-day study of 27 national monuments across the country, created by presidents since 1996, that Trump ordered in April as part of his broader effort to increase development on federal lands.

The review has cheered energy, mining, ranching and timber advocates but has drawn widespread criticism and threats of lawsuits from conservation groups and the outdoor recreation industry.

There were fears that Zinke would recommend the outright elimination of some of the monuments on the list, but on Thursday, speaking to the Associated Press in Billings, Montana, he said he will not recommend eliminating any.

Zinke said in a statement that the recommendations would "provide a much needed change for the local communities who border and rely on these lands for hunting and fishing, economic development, traditional uses, and recreation." He did not specify which monuments he plans to recommend be scaled back.

The Associated Press reported that Zinke said he would recommend changing the boundaries for a "handful" of sites.

If you're taking millions of acres off the table for one site, you fail at knowing the definition of a monument.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-interior-monuments-idUSKCN1B41YA

Also at RT, CNN, The Washington Post and The Hill.


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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @02:24PM (15 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @02:24PM (#562510)

    Profit may be the only reason for you to do something. It's quite childish to then project your personal worldview as "the one and true god" of beliefs. In my view all that matters is positively changing society. Sometimes this goes hand in hand with profit, sometimes it does not.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @02:33PM (14 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @02:33PM (#562515)

    To say that you want society to change positively is to say that you want society to profit.

    A bank balance, for example, is just one way to measure profit.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:13PM (12 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:13PM (#562533)

      You can't have it both ways. Either "profit" is a stand-in for "general benefit" or it is specific to the capitalist economic model. If it is a general word to indicate benefits in any form then you must drop the focus on private ownership. If not you're intellectually bankrupt and kindly go back to school.

      • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:35PM (6 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:35PM (#562548)

        Capitalism is not separable from "profit", even in the most general sense of the word.

        This is because nobody knows what anything should cost, or what something should be priced—society has to find these values; centuries of experiments (and, last century in particular) have revealed that so far, we only know one good way to find these values:

            The Price Mechanism

        For a system as complex as society, the only workable solution for finding the values in question seems to be evolution by variation (supplier competition) and selection (consumer choice); as you can see, we're making our way towards capitalism.

        • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @05:19PM (5 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @05:19PM (#562605)

          Ah yes, the "free market" which does not actually exist and unless you manage to solve the pesky "human" problem it will never exist. Update your presumptions, cross reference with reality.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 01 2017, @06:41PM (4 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 01 2017, @06:41PM (#562654) Journal
            You don't need a perfectly free market in order for the pricing mechanism to work.
            • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @07:26PM (3 children)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @07:26PM (#562680)

              Free market when you want it to solve efficiency problems or get rid of regulation, don't need a free market for pricing mechanisms to work.

              God DAMN how has your existence not ruptured the space time continuum?

              • (Score: 2, Informative) by khallow on Friday September 01 2017, @08:54PM (2 children)

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 01 2017, @08:54PM (#562722) Journal

                Free market when you want it to solve efficiency problems or get rid of regulation, don't need a free market for pricing mechanisms to work.

                You got it.

                God DAMN how has your existence not ruptured the space time continuum?

                Because I understand nuance apparently. Tools don't have to work absolutely perfectly in order to be usable tools.

                • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @10:41PM (1 child)

                  by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @10:41PM (#562756)

                  Hahahah, ok whatever khallow, remain a walking paradox and enjoy all the arguments you can until people realize its just easier to ignore you. Only reason I respond is so that some random person isn't suckered into your semi-reasonable yet contradictory statements.

                  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 02 2017, @05:34AM

                    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 02 2017, @05:34AM (#562858) Journal
                    There is no paradox. You're just not getting it. Let's review the earlier complaint:

                    Free market when you want it to solve efficiency problems or get rid of regulation, don't need a free market for pricing mechanisms to work.

                    The second sentence says nothing about the first and vice versa, hence they can't contradict each other. A freer market tends to be more efficient and less ridden with regulation, neither which really has anything to do with the existence of pricing mechanisms (the efficiency of the mechanism, sure, but not whether it exists). But you can have a market that's pretty far from the free market ideal and still have pricing mechanisms. You just need a few things like price discovery and voluntary trade. And that's pretty much it.

      • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 01 2017, @05:47PM (4 children)

        by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 01 2017, @05:47PM (#562617) Journal

        You can't have it both ways. Either "profit" is a stand-in for "general benefit" or it is specific to the capitalist economic model.

        This is ridiculous. There's a huge number of words out there with multiple meanings. Nothing magical about profit that it can't have multiple meanings as well. I get that you don't want semantic mixing of the term, but that isn't actually happening here. The claim is being made that personal profit is usually societal profit as well. Sure, it's not always true, there are plenty of examples of activities that have huge externalities to them that outweigh the benefit of the activity to the involved parties. But most activities don't have those huge externalities.

        • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @06:28PM (3 children)

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @06:28PM (#562640)

          You are ridiculous. Words can have multiple meanings, no one is saying profit can only mean one thing. However, when making an argument you can't substitute in the various definitions to support the narrow definition of privatized business profits.

          Sure, it's not always true, there are plenty of examples of activities that have huge externalities to them that outweigh the benefit of the activity to the involved parties. But most activities don't have those huge externalities.

          EXACTLY! So can we stop this pointless debate? National parks / monuments are a public good, privatizing them is the continuation of robbing the public for corporate profits.

          • (Score: 1) by khallow on Friday September 01 2017, @06:57PM (2 children)

            by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Friday September 01 2017, @06:57PM (#562667) Journal

            National parks / monuments are a public good, privatizing them is the continuation of robbing the public for corporate profits.

            Unless we benefit more from privatizing them than the loss of the public good. Then it's not.

            • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @07:04PM (1 child)

              by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @07:04PM (#562671)

              If something is better then it is better. If it isn't better then it is not better. I will go with historical evidence of corporations abusing natural resources for their own profits instead of this hypothetical privatized system you imagine.

              Draft up your proposals, include a contract that enforces environmental protections and limits on what the private owners can do, THEN we can discuss whether the public land should be privatized. You want me to trust the market / corporations? I refer again to historical evidence.

              • (Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday September 02 2017, @07:39PM

                by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Saturday September 02 2017, @07:39PM (#562991) Journal

                I will go with historical evidence of corporations abusing natural resources for their own profits instead of this hypothetical privatized system you imagine.

                And? Abusing natural resources is not necessarily a bad thing. All our stuff is made from abused natural resources.

                Draft up your proposals, include a contract that enforces environmental protections and limits on what the private owners can do, THEN we can discuss whether the public land should be privatized. You want me to trust the market / corporations? I refer again to historical evidence.

                Why should the rights of the land owner be limited in such a way? What's going on here is that for the past twenty years, the federal government has been using the Antiquities Law to reserve large tracts of land by presidential decree. It's relatively mild right now with perhaps 1-2k square miles land area and ~50k square miles of sea area reserved per year on average over the past two decades. But there's nothing legally to prevent future presidents from escalating this to vast fractions of the US in the future and using the power to push their agendas. There needs to be some pushback.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:14PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @03:14PM (#562534)

      You've been confused by your Anarchocap for Dummies book. ;-) The weenie word you're looking for is value. And a weenie word it is. Value is defined as fundamentally anything that makes a statement using it true, even if it contradicts another statement's usage of the word. This argument is kind of like trying to say claim that all colors are green. The only difference is academic - the wavelength absorption/reflection bands are changed a shade, but it's all green. Radio waves? Nope, green waves. X-rays? Nope, green-rays. Is the sky blue? No, it's green. Space empty... black? Nope, green. Roses are red? Nope, green. Of course you're free to say whatever you like, but trying to magically redefine words to make a view seem less radicalized is itself an ironic example of extreme radicalization.