CompuServe Thread

Todd: If you haven't read Mein Kampf or Das Kapital, you should. Maybe during the winter months when collecting is difficult. <g> I'm certainly not advocating unlimited commercial exploitation of BLM properties. I am, however, horrified by news stories of mineral collectors who have been arrested or oppressed by overzealous bureaucrats for collecting specimens with hand tools in isolated areas. I cannot fathom what "damage" they inflicted on the land. The definition of "damage" will almost certainly be contested, which is why I offered Doug the example of quarries on private property as an example of an improvement of the natural landscape. Environmentalists will decry, no doubt, the quarry as a "scar" on mother earth, but we should see the quarry as 1) an appropriate development of resources and 2) an educational opportunity to explore and understand the stratiography of a region. The environmentalists' quaint anthropomorphism should not blind us to the ephemeral nature of the "scar" on the earth in geologic time. Knowing that concepts of "damage" to the landscape will be essentially contested, I'm reluctant to delegate control over these resources to bureaucrats for all the reasons I've cited. Such a proposed solution has much in common with the statist ideologies I referred to in my previous emails. BTW, if you never read Marx, why are you insulted if someone calls you a communist? (Which I certainly did not do.) Some of my good friends have been communists, which I do not hold against them in the least. I, for one, believe in the ability of rational argument to persuade someone to change his or her mind. The problem with ideologies is that they are the antithesis of science; their proponents will not accept any evidence as counting against their theories. As I have explained, I would modify my views if someone would 1) document the nature and extent of the problem, and the inadequacy of current regs, 2) the unavailability of private sector answers, and 3)the proposed regulations as the least intrusive resolution of the problem into our traditional rights and prerogatives. If you want to shut me out, please do. If you want to persuade me, then speak and act rationally. Offer me reasons and solid evidence, not college anecdotes and emotions. Nathan