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News-Sentinel.com Your Town. Your Voice.
Opening Arguments

A feudal effort

John Malone, like Ted Turner a cowboy-hat-wearing cable TV pioneer, has vaulted past Turner's 2 million acres to become America's biggest landowner with 2.2 million acres. He says real estate "is a pretty decent hedge on the devaluation of currency" and that now is the time to buy land "because of low borrowing costs and land prices."

Some might worry that Mr. Malone's purchase may ease America back to its more feudal days when the rich owned most of the land. Environmentalists fret about an era of “Kingdom Buyers.” Others may see them as the most responsible long-term stewards. Either way, the wealthy are likely to continue looking at large tracts of land as the safest long-term, hard assets at a time of extreme market volatility and low borrowing costs.

Do you think the wealthy will be good land stewards?

They're more likely than the government to be good stewards. When I read about environmentalists being upset about something happening on a certain tract of land, it so often seems to be government-owned rather than privately held land. People tend to take better care of their own stuff than they do other people's stuff. One reason people out West seem to be bigger anti-government activists than those in the rest of the country is that they're fighting against the landlord. It's shocking how much land the federal government owns -- 84.5 percent of Nevada, 57.4 percent of Utah, 53.1 percent of Oregon. The federal government has direct ownership of almost 650 million acres, nearly 30 percent of our total territory. And when you throw in all the land owned by state and local governments (which is difficult to quantify since most don't even have inventories), I'd say feudalism is the last thing we need to worry about.

Comments

William Larsen
Thu, 10/13/2011 - 10:51am

2.2 million acres is a lot of land!!!! That is 3,437 square miles. It is the same as square that is 58.3 miles on each side.

Christopher Swing
Thu, 10/13/2011 - 3:46pm

"When I read about environmentalists being upset about something happening on a certain tract of land, it so often seems to be government-owned rather than privately held land."

Given that people are going to have an easier time finding out what's going on with/on public land than with private, that would make obvious sense. More sense than concluding it has something to do with how well people take care of whose stuff.

Harl Delos
Thu, 10/13/2011 - 6:20pm

Malone started out in Colorado, New Mexico, and Wyoming, and recently bought a million acres of Maine and New Hampshire woods.

If all his land was in Colorado, it'd be about 3% of the state, which doesn't sound nearly as impressive. In fact, in the 1880s, the XIT ranch (the brand means "Ten in Texas") had over 3 million acres in one piece, and Texas is obviously a lot more productive ranch land.

Wyoming is pretty desolate, and Maine is pretty close to cities, yet the land is so worthless, nobody can be bothered to cut down the trees and farm it.

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