Of Course We Should Privatize Some Federal Land (but probably won’t)

The Federal government controls a ridiculous amount of land in the West including more than half of Oregon, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Alaska and nearly half of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. See the map (PDF). The vast majority of this land is NOT parks!!! It is time for a sale to raise some funds and improve the efficiency of land allocation.

The conservative Mike Lee has a bill that would allow some sales. Great! The only problem with the bill is that it is loaded down with restrictions and qualifications. For example, there is a cap of 0.75% on total sales–that’s right, the land sales are capped at less than 1% of the total Federal land and that is a high cap because most of the rules prohibit any sale. The sales that are allowed have to be nominated by state or local governments, must be adjacent to developed areas and close to infrastructure. Moreover, the land can only be use for housing. Lyman Stone has a thread going into even more detail. The very modest goal–as you can see at right–is to rationalize some checkerboard land patterns.

Even so, the bill is probably doomed. Just mentioning federal land sales triggers a moral panic, as if someone proposed auctioning off Yellowstone. Supposed conservatives like Lomez are fueling this hysteria (e.g. here, here and here). It’s nonsense. Here and here is the type of land we are actually talking about—notice the difference?

As Matt Darling pointed out, this is Everything Bagel Liberalism from Conservatives—a bloated mess of proceduralism that empowers special interests and kneecaps supply.

If we can’t even sell Federal scraps then we’ve abandoned any pretense of governing in the public interest. We should be building entirely new cities–freedom cities!–not whining about fishing and hunting on scraps of scrub. This is exactly the same as urban NIMBYs who lobby to save “historic” parking lots. Pathetic. The federal land monopoly is not sacred. Let it go. This is where the rubber hits the road: if MAGA means anything beyond vibes and grievance, it should mean cutting red tape and unlocking land for Americans to own and build upon.

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