CompuServe Messages

Todd: I don't reject the public trust concept out of hand. A trust, however, usually is defined by its purpose and the idea of incapacity. The problem, as I see it, with witholding public lands from a desired use, is that there is no well-defined common good in many instances. The trustees are thus doing nothing more than imposing their personal preferences on others. This sort of behavior is bad enough when it comes from elected officials, but surely we should not condone it from bureaucrats!! If a trustee improperly excludes the beneficiary from the enjoyment of the property held in trust, and the beneficiary manages to get access to the entrusted property, the beneficiary has not stolen anything. Sound common law reasoning, which has the advantage of according with our moral principles at that!!! The argument from a trust model also fails because it assumes the incapacity or incompetence of the beneficiary, and it implies the geater sagacity of the trustee. I prefer to think that the fossil and mineral collecting community ought to be treated with the same respect that our constitution and laws give to the criminal accused, the handicapped, the ethnic or racial minority, etc. If there needs to be reasonable use regulations or permitting, so be it. But let's not anthropomorphize the earth and fret about the "scars" that collectors might create on the face of the earth. Let's not rationalize this aesthetic Nazism by saying that collectors should be satisfied by "taking a picture." The "specimen" had no value at all, to anyone, till the collector admixed his labor and knowledge with it. John (locke) and Karl (Marx) would have even agreed on this one. Nathan