National Parks
Acadia National Park, near Bar Harbor, Maine, is the first National Park to be established east of the Mississippi. It encompasses most of the gorgeous rock of an island otherwise known as Mount Desert Island, the remainder of which is populated by quaint fishing villages turned tourist destinations. The 47,000+ acre park is constituted of lands donated entirely by private citizens.
Queue the libertarian nay-saying:
Libertarians generally believe that parks should be established privately, and maintained privately. So what objection could one possibly raise to a park like Acadia, established in such a manner? Simply put: none. But it’s not that easy – the problem isn’t the establishment of a park, the problem is with its maintenance and upkeep of the park, which after having been donated to the federal government, becomes the collective charge of all citizens near and far, some of whom will never set foot on its soil, or ever desire to do so. A park – local or national – is not a public good, by virtue of its non-exclusivity, which can be enforced by (among other methods) toll roads, access fees, or membership dues. And the benefits conferred by such a park are limited to those who own property within or adjacent thereto, or otherwise subscribe to its ownership in some collective manner, and hence rivalrous.
The economic effect of this transference of “ownership” from private to public hands, is that it artificially reduces (significantly) the availability of what is already rare, and hence, exclusive, real estate. The value of what little land remains privately held is consequently pushed upwards to an otherwise unsustainable level – there are practically no single-family residences offered (as of today) for less than $300,000. The cost and burden of maintaining the pristine and natural environment which would justify such land rents is borne not by the primary benefactors – the residents – but instead by the nation’s population as a whole. So those families who donated lands to the National Parks Service at the beginning of the century were able to secure for their posterity a windfall profit in the form of inflated property values, at the expense of everyone else.
This is why a consistent libertarian should revile at the very idea of nationalized parks. It is not because we hate the environment, it is not because we hate unadultered open spaces – it is simply because the benefits conferred thereby should be financed by those people (and only those people) who benefit from them. Anything else is demonstrably unjust.
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Great post. I agree. I’ve written about the desocialization of land here: http://www.mises.org/story/2539
I make the same point, that it’s unjust and inefficient to donate private land for public purposes and therefore unlibertarian.
And even conceding (perhaps wrongly to my more extreme libertarian colleagues) that while all land is unique, some land is “more unique” than other land (e.g., the Grand Canyon) — which MIGHT argue for public ownership — it still does not argue for public operation.
Stated differently, the government can still own Old Faithful, but only in order to franchise it to the highest-bidding private operator.