Correspondence
C 0 R R E S P 0 N D E N C E To tl~ F_ditor: More than a letter to the editor would be needed to correct the misleading and misimeorm~ comments of B. Bruce-Briggs in your June-July issue. To...
...But I do think that Bruce-Briggs' facile "putdown" calls at least for a protest...
...Paraphrasing Mr...
...He objects to the protection of wilderness areas from overuse because "most human beings seem to feel that people are more important than animals and the overrunning of wilderness areas indicates that better use is being made of them by man...
...Important: allow six weeks for address change...
...The Alternative reserves the right to reject any copy for any reason...
...Millions of ordinary citizens from Ramapo, New York to Petaluma, California to Boca Raton, Florida, have been making a "fuss" about land use...
...Excellently written, too...
...But would this imply class bias...
...Large numbers of urban-dweUing Americans own no land and may never do so...
...For some purposes, flatness is a workable assumption, but not for many...
...MISCELLANEOUS Adam Smith Neckties...
...The article undertakes to show how silly, how trivial, the so.called land-use issue really is when exposed to the hard reality of facts...
...Thus, the author could hardly say that "no land use creates a pollution problem" if he understood the dangers created in many communities by toxic substances seeping from so-called sanitary landfills or of the (continued on page 39) There is opp 9rtunity...
...Land-owning, as well as landless, Americans have made it a major political issue throughout the nation and at all levels of government...
...How else can one explain the assertion that "No agricultural expert seriously doubts that we could increase production fifty percent with existing technology on existing lands, if there were sufficient demand...
...The notion that environmental quality is only of concern to a privileged few does not square with the evidence of public opinion polls during the last decade, nor with legislators' impressions of popular preferences...
...Print your new address and mail this form to The Alternative...
...Bruce-Briggs' argument that the low densities of American metropolitan areas make "air and water pollution...negligible to the point of being, for all practical purposes, nonexistent" is comparable to arguing that the earth is for all practical purposes fiat...
...Their inappropriateness in an urbanized, high-technology America is daily becoming more apparent--but the old pioneer ideas have been built into the economy and the transition to a more appropriate land-use ethic is unavoidably painful...
...To argue that"no one has ever made a credible case that any of our urban problems are exacerbated by crowding" is to ignore realities as obvious as urban traffic jams, and a large documented literature on human socio-pathology...
...What is bad is the PR barrage by the mice that roar about this lion that beeps...
...The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1976 39...
...Army Corps of Engineers for development and agriculture...
...11-12...
...Nor is it clear how he got the idea I am a "laissez-faire self-styled conservative...
...Two colors fit all: Gold on Burgundy and Gold on Navy Blue...
...Needless Fuss" is a supercilious polemic which tries to discredit ideas through ridicule: presented in exaggerated or distorted form, these ideas are then countered by "common sense" or "simple arithmetic...
...More than that, it is fiun to read...
...Just look at those figures again: $7.1 million for a monster on a 150 ft tower to give a crummy 1.5 MW, barely enough to power 500 homes...
...Send Information to P. Terzlan, 909 North Larrlmore Street, Arlington, Virginia 22205...
...Specify size: medium, large or extra large...
...This included the right to destroy the productive capability of land, to use it to the detriment of neighbors, and to manipulate its market value for speculative gain...
...Competition for the best sites for various uses has enormously increased the price of land in all sub-urbanized areas...
...owned land, private land unavailable for purchase, and land unsuitable for occupancy or investment...
...Bruce-Briggs is right in suggesting that, in the United States, public opinion has traditionally supported no more than minimal public controls over land...
...NO evidence is presented to support this allegation...
...His sneer at the "monotonous stretches of Levittowns" indicates which side he is on...
...11201...
...I am not advocating Indian life-styles, but observing that in industrialized, automotive America, low densities do not necessarily result in negligible pollution...
...of Econ., Univ...
...Enclosed is my check for $10.00 103C (please print) Name . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Address . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . State . . . . . . . . . . . . . Zip . . . . . . . . . . Date of change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . l ___ _s.srfied BOOKS & PERIODICALS Indians Of The Americas...
...Airport boosters and the Federal Aviation Agency wanted an airport on land that conservationists and the National Park Service considered essential as a fresh water reservoir for the Everglades National Park, and that speculators and farmers wanted drained by the U.S...
...Conflict arises over intersecting, and often incompatible, claims on land in bounded localities: and these controversies are in no way alleviated by the gross acreage of undeveloped land somewhere else...
...One would think a presumed scholar would have the wit to refer to the original source, the anthology No Land is An Island where an essay by A. Lawrence Chickering takes up this point...
...Even if the proposition is recognized as absurd, serious refutation requires far more effort than the assertion...
...But in fact, from a historical perspective, it is the conventional American concept of ownership that is revolutionary, running contrary to an older Anglo-Saxon tradition and to the laws of most ancient and modern states...
...This suggests planning of some kind--at least mutual premeditated forebearance--behavior not easily achieved in citites as they have developed in America...
...Prior to mass use of automobiles and expressways, American suburbs clustered along commuter railways...
...D Changing Your Address...
...IVhere land is situated makes all the difference...
...The simple percentage arithmetic which Bruce-Briggs invokes to "commonsensically" deflate alarms over land use have very little relevance to actual issues or controversies...
...Social attitudes lag notoriously behind life's changing circumstances...
...CaldweU also appears to have difficulty reading American prose...
...BruceBriggs is correct in observing that: "For several hundred years Americans have taken for granted that they had the right to do pretty much what they pleased with their own land...
...If he were aware of the studies of the behavior of sulphates and oxides from industrial emissions, he could not dismiss the air pollution issue as solely one of population densities...
...The Swedes complain of acid rain from sulphates and particulates carried across the North Sea from Great Britain...
...Box 877, Bloomington, IN 47401...
...Write Svetozar PeJovlch, Dept...
...Anthony Harrigan in SENSING THE NEWS Access to Energy is the best single concise source oJ up-to-the-minute fncts - - facts to confound the anti-science, anti-technology, anti-free enterprise demagogy of the eco-freak doom-criers...
...The leapfrogging over open farmland to random siting of tract-housing and factories across the open countryside has more to do with the economics and politics of land development and transportation than with the preferences of most people...
...Throughout American history the police power and eminent domain have been available in theory to protect the public interest in land use...
...Box 10267, El Paso, TX 79993...
...In most cases, the people involved would probably be above average in education and income...
...Box numbers $2 each...
...Anyone having copies in good condition please write me at Box A., The Alternative...
...Send $4.95 for one shirt ($9 for two and $4 for each additional shirt) to The Baron, P.O...
...The social origins of founders and members of some of the leading conservation organizations "indicate a serious attempt by the prosperous to ban the rabble and preserve the wilderness for themselves...
...If Bruce-Briggs' article reflects true convictions, it then also reflects a disastrous lack of understanding of the natural sciences, of the American conservation movement, of agriculture, of public health, and of public law--among many other things...
...of Dallas, Irving, TX 75061...
...For example, in the famous Trail Smelter Case an international arbitration awarded compensation to American farmers for damages caused by industrial emissions originating in a thinly settled area of Canada...
...Bruce-Brigg s replies: In his annoyance over an analysis that he finds incongenial, Professor Caldwell attributes notions to me that I do not hold (i.e., I did not argue against "crowding" but against incorrect notions of alleged overcrowding) and has invented history (i.e., his version of English land law is wholly false...
...Market economics could not resolve the issue in the absence of government policy decisions...
...Immediate delivery...
...Thus, the so-called "fuss about land use" is no mere fuss, nor is it needless...
...Please specify ad classification: Help Wanted, Positions Wanted, Books & Periodicals, Literary, Conferences, Personal, Miscellaneous...
...Not surprisingly Bruce-Briggs invokes the pseudo-issue of"ducks versus people" to discount one set of human values in favor of another...
...The skeptic should compare how much land he can buy on the coast of California or Florida with an equal amount (plus or minus mineral rights) in South Dakota...
...If increases in building costs are putting the free-standing private house beyond the reach of low-income buyers, the advocates of land-use controls are hardly to blame, and neither are the federal agencies whose mortgage and insurance policies have encouraged mass low-cost tract housing...
...He is very wrong to suggest that "there has been little public debate as to whether land use is indeed a national problem...
...But is a bias in favor of alternatives to the automobile through public transportation a bias against the handicapped, and those too young, too old or too poor to own automobiles ? Efforts to reduce the necessity for routine mass use of automobiles does not deny the automobile to ordinary people, but may well prolong the period when they may enjoy the advantages of the automobile at fuel costs they can afford...
...Please renew my subscription for one year...
...Moreover, all Americans, and more particularly those paying Federal income tax, had a stake in the nation's investment in the Everglades National Park which development or drainage in the peripheral area would have impaired...
...But debate is hardly needed to establish the fact that land use has become a major popular concern throughout the nation...
...to keep young blue-collar workers and their motorcycles out of wilderness areas, confuses the off-road vehicle issue and unfairly distorts the motives of environmental protection groups...
...Bloomington, Indiana 36 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1976 CORRESPONDENCE (continued from page 36) contamination of streams by acid mine drainage or agricultural chemicals...
...The monotonous stretches of "Levittowns" that are also a part of suburbia may seem desirable to people who flocked to them from deteriorating inner cities...
...Marxist rhetoric" is sometimes comical but Marxist analysis is oftentimes illuminating...
...Experiments with unconventional types of The Lion That Beeped ERDA and NASA have awarded $7.1 million to build the largest windmill ever constructed, a 1.S megawatt electric generator powered by two fiberglass blades spanning 200 fl, all mounted on a tower 150 fl tall...
...The land-use attitudes of pioneer Americans did not prevail in England prior to colonization, nor have they done so in most of the rest of the world...
...The investment is an astronomical $4,733 per installed kilowatt, about 10 times that of a conventional power plant...
...It reflects small credit on the quality of scholarship at Indiana University...
...Complete catalog sent upon request...
...First temporary vows, then life vows much later If we're still into It...
...In summary, to refute the specious rhetoric of "Needless Fuss about Land Use" is somewhat like presenting positive disproof of the statement that t h e " moon is made of green cheese...
...To attain 19070 of even the present generating capacity, and even if the wind blew at 18 mph everywhere all the time, you would need 63,333 of these beeping lions windmills here, windmills there, here mills, there mills, everywhere windmills, Business Week is going nuts, eea, eea, yo...
...but that development at "very-low-densities" (2 acre lots) have that effect...
...Please don't Inquire for someone else, or if you can't entertain the possibility of this being your thing for life...
...Limited number of back I~ues of the American Mercury edited by Mencken and Nathan, rare issues, good condition, $7.50 per copy...
...I n America...
...There were limits to space in Calhoun's pens, as there are also practical limits to the space available to residents of Southern California...
...An American can have no more land than he can obtain by purchase, gift, or fraud...
...Send advertisements with full payment to: Classified Ad Department, The Alternative, P.O...
...But Bruce-Briggs is highly "selective" in his choice of facts, ignoring the evidence that explains why land use is the nation's most important environmental problem...
...PERSONAL PROTESTANT BENEDICTINE MONASTERY Help me start one...
...On the contrary, I think it doubtful if one could fin d many agricultural experts who would agree with this statement and even those would surely have serious reservations about the costs of such an increase and the ability to sustain it over time...
...LIBERTARIAN REVIEW To: ACCESS TO ENERGY Box 2298-T, Boulder, Colo...
...Yet the conditions under which land is owned and used are, and always have been, distinguishable from the mere fact of land tenure...
...These critics rarely mention biases among other classes that could deny an opportunity for people to enjoy unspoiled nature...
...But high densities can exist without "crowding," or intolerable interpersonal overload, provid34 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1976 ed that there is an orderly and mutually considerate distribution of persons and their activities...
...Is it an accident that the block development movement appeared just as black Americans began to move to the suburbs...
...To say that almost all Americans want suburban sprawl because many want a single-family house with land, is like arguing that almost all Americans want lung cancer because many enjoy smoking...
...l f Pulitzer prizes were given on an unbiased basis to outspoken and authoritative journals, one certain!y would be given to Access to Energy...
...Such attitudes were feasible only in a pioneering society with abundant land and a poorly-developed sense of community as contrasted with unqualified personal interest...
...Totally unsolicited comments by some of the 2,300 subscribers: Moat aensible, data-packed publication on the market...
...It is easy to assert that "complex studies are unnecessary" if one has no comprehension of the complexities of the real world...
...Lynton K. Caldwell Bloomington, Indiana Lynton K. Caldwell is Arthur L. Bentley Professor of Political Science at Indiana University, and autbor of several books on environmental policy...
...There are many well-todo white-collar motorcyclists including business executives and college professors...
...Always attach address label when writing to us about your subscription...
...Caldwell's description of the widespread local land-use control agitation is correct...
...A motorcycle rally in the fragile ecosystems of our southwestern deserts or alpine meadows could destroy in one afternoon, and for all foreseeable future time, an environment that was thousands of years in the making...
...I did not write that "the existing densities of American metropolitan areas make air and water pollution negligible...
...The conservationists include themselves in the restrictions they advocate for everyone in the interest of preserving the integrity of the environment for all people including generations yet to come...
...One might note Stanley Milgram's studies reported in Science (1970) on the adaptation of people to circumstances of very numerous and heterogeneous populations in areas of high density, for example in New York City...
...The author's belief that "simple arithmetic is adequate to put the land use problem in perspective" may explain his total misconstruction of the issue, of its causes, its real and not distorted arguments, and of the motives of persons working for scientifically-informed, longrange land-use planning consistent with the interests of society as a whole, now, and in the future...
...80302 Enter my subscription to Access to Energy for one year (12 monthly issues...
...For example, the controversy over the Greater Miami, Florida airport arose because many people, and several government agencies, had incompatible plans for the same area...
...But do not all classes and conditions of mankind have biases...
...10 each ($20 the set) postpaid...
...WANTED: Editions of Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy, Pascal's Penseas...
...To thls extent their "bias" is neither "ugly" nor "narrow...
...This statement disregards the concept of the "carrying capacity" of land for various purposes...
...Caldwell might also poll the political science faculties of major universities...
...For example, he declares that: "Viewed from a historical perspective these demands for strengthened government land use controls would seem to be almost revolutionary...
...The "class bias" of environmentalism also reveals itself to the author through public officials who want to discourage ordinary people from having houses and cars, but who themselves live in "nice big houses" in "posh" low density suburbs...
...There is great need for public action to protect the public interest and the welfare of the vast majority of individuals in land now and in the future...
...But we cannot be confident that their children will regard their environment as ideal...
...Box 877, Bloomington, IN 47401...
...Orange County, California has provided at Dana Point on the Pacific Ocean opportunities for more people with more interests in the water than could be accommodated by unplanned cluttered developments...
...Inquire as to available numbers at Box B, The Alternative...
...The high mobility and relative afflt~ence o f Americans puts a high premium on attractive recreational and second-home sites...
...One would think a "political scientist" would recognize the political implications of the piece--that the invention of "problems" of land use are useful to selfish local interests who wish to maintain their perceived quality of life by excluding the upwardly mobile...
...Fran Griffin wears an Official Alternative Turkey Tee Shirt and you should too...
...Bruce-Briggs has chosen a poor subject on which to exercise his evident talents as a polemicist...
...Excerpted from the October 1976 issue o f ACCESS TO ENERGY a pro-science, pro-technology, pro-free enterprise monthly newsletter, now in its fourth year of technical enlightenment, opposition to government intcrf~,ence in free markets, and refutation of environmental superstitions...
...Thus it is not explicit historical property rights that are threatened by land-use controis, but rather relatively recent and selfinterested interpretations of what the rights of land.owners "ought to be...
...It is not true that sprawl is the price of suburban living...
...That in itself nced not be bad...
...ERDA reportedly claims that it is designed "to test the feasibility of wind energy in meeting the nation's fuel shortage," and Business Week quotes, or more probably misquotes, a Lockheed spokesman as saying that by 1995 "wind energy can supply almost 19% of the electric power demand., Will someone please lend the bird-brained boys of Business Week a pocket calculator...
...For example, landuse control has become a popular issue in Vermont, overcoming traditional aversion to government regulation, because a second-home influx from megalopolis has been perceived as threatening the environmental and social integrity of the state, and has given rise to numerous conflicts over changing patterns of settlement and land u s e . Bruce-Briggs confuses population densities and crowding...
...Underlying wilderness protection, Bruce-Briggs finds "an ugly strain of narrow class interest...
...D.O.H., St...
...Similarly, the proposition that low density means negligible pollution has very limited practical validity and as a generalization is absolutely untrue...
...In the rural remainder, the amount of land actually available for purchase (and attractive to most people) shrinks to a fraction of the total when one subtracts publicly...
...CONFERENCES Hear Jas...
...It disregards the not uncommon need of people to prevent themselves from inadvertently destroying what they are attempting to preserve...
...12-word minimum...
...REACH 45,000 READERS with an Alternative classified advertisement 2.5 cents a word...
...Buchanan, I. Klrzner & others...
...is to disregard the excellent examples of planned waterfront development that optimizes a finite resource for a diversity of popular interests...
...Upon examining these controversies, the root cause seems to be people getting in each other's way--differing interests claiming "rights" in the same limited areas...
...Conference on Austrian Economics "Subjeotivism," Dallas, Dec...
...Regarding the lack of "evidence" to support my allegations of class interest in the stop-growth movement, he might have noticed that this journal does not provide annotation...
...Please attach address label from the back cover of your Alternative in the space below...
...The relationships of people to land are not simple, and have become especially complex in an advanced technological society such as ours...
...At the very least, an honest analysis would present a comparison of the social origins and incomes of officers and members of conservation organizations with membership in associations for mental health, family relations, multiple sclerosis, responsible government, and civil liberties...
...Men of any age...
...Free catalog out-ofprint books...
...Its effectiveness rests on the implied assumption that the only class biases that are ugly are those of the relatively well-off or welleducated...
...Published by Dr Petr Beekmann, professor of electrical engineering at the University of Colorado (independently of the University or any other institution), and written for laymen (yet Ph.D.'s renew their subscriptions, too...
...Most Americans seem to want land in or near that 1.15 % of urbanized land which Bruce-Briggs cites to show that the pressure on land is highly localized...
...Bob Fein, 139 Joralemon St., Brooklyn, N.Y...
...In this, he would be right if he meant, as I believe he does not, that the big mistakes of government have been to accept and legalize short-range, ecologicaUy-harmful land-use planning by developers, speculators, industrialists, and public utilities without regard for long-term social and economic costs borne by entire communities and by posterity...
...To argue that it is "excellent that our waterfronts are 'cluttered' with vacation resorts for how else can a maximum number of Americans enjoy the water...
...I enclose $9...
...Some of the worst mistakes of public planning have been made by government acting de facto as the agent of special interests without regard to the preferences of the broader community of citizens...
...There are many different reasons why Americans want land, and location is highly pertinent to most of the uses they have in mind...
...Finally, Bruce-Briggs declares that "the most glaring inefficiencies of land use are the results of past government planning mistakes...
...Bruce-Briggs, it is interesting to observe how often laissezfaire self-styled conservatives metaphorically walk backwards into Marxist rhetoric...
...There has in fact been a great deal of debate...
...The two concepts are not invariably related...
...Is it not in their interest to protect ~eir access to forests, beaches, and meadows, and in so doing to safeguard these environmental assets which large numbers of users, in the absence of protective ground-rules, might innocently destroy through mere pressure of usage ? The implication that class-biased selfishness is behind the efforts of "a leading western-based club" (Sierra...
...Sprawl defeats what many Americans have sought in suburban living and accounts for grass-roots efforts-in many communities to contain or prevent the disorderly and ultimately uneconomic destruction of the countryside by indiscriminate subdividing...
...This ploy is always good for laughs at the expense of "environmentalists," employir, g phrases such as "those whose concern for mosquitoes overrides concern for humanity," or those who prefer "sea gulls to people," as if these were the real preferences at issue...
...Order from The Commodore, The Decatur Shop, North Adams, Michigan 49262...
...I am Interested In purchasing back Issues of the Gazette des Amls des Livres...
...BruceBriggs' apparent lack of information on this point...
...Comparable densities in India generate much less air pollution because most travel proceeds on motorless vehicles or on foot...
...He can't have what others won't sell...
...I'he attack upon environmental protectionists as serf-serving elitists has been a favorite strategy of radical egalitarians...
...SARKES TARZIAN INC...
...This newsletter is an incisive, tell-it-as-it-is journal that is fast developing a nationwide following...
...research is always expensive...
...Nor would the United States Congress have enacted the Coastal Zone Management Act had it agreed that subdivisions and cluttered resorts maximized the values of the coastal areas for most people...
...Suburbs adjacent to Boston, Chicago, New York, and even Los Angeles were relatively compact (as compared to now) prior to the second quarter of this century...
...On the contrary, the effect of cluttered development, in depriving many Americans from access to and enjoyment of the coasts, was a factor prompting this piece of national land-use legislation...
...The bulk of Professor Caldwell's letter is incredibly confused and/or deals with irrelevant issues...
...To refute his article, "Needless Fuss about Land Use," would require a much longer commentary...
...Americans can't have "just about all the land they want" if where they want it makes a difference...
...THE ALTERNATIVE Circulation Department P.O...
...Calhoun did not pack his rats into tight spaces...
...Evidently a substantial number of Californians did not believe that unplanned development of the coast was excellent or they would not have adopted by popular initiative Proposition 20 establishing state responsibility for land use on the coast...
...The crowding that reached pathological proportions in those experiments was not a consequence of absolute unavoidable densities, but rather a consequence of rat behavior in an environment with unnaturally restricted parameters...
...The desert holly in Death Valley is now suffering damage attributed by scientists to smog seeping over the mountains from the Los Angeles Basin...
...Send to: The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1976 35 housing arrangements have taken place throughout the country and the experimenters are usually the relatively young...
...To argue, for example, that Americans "can have just about all the land they want" is to carry abstraction beyond any practical meaning...
...The footnote consigning experiments with rats to the wastebasket of erroneous analogies is itself a misconstruction, if it refers to the studies of John B. Calhoun on the ecology and sociology of the Norway Rat...
...Paul, Minn...
...Some of our least dense cities, such as Los Angeles and Phoenix, have among the worst air pollution, because, as densities diminish in America, trips by automobiles increase...
...But would it be in the public interest to jeopardize the values of wilderness to all other persons on behalf of cyclists who may take advantage of many other areas fol recreation...
...There is plenty of evidence to correct Mr...
...From Maine to Hawaii any sampling of newspapers would readily show that land use is a major, and often the major, issue in many, perhaps most, communities-large and small...
...Milgram found that high-density urban life in American cities created an interpersonal overload that led to behavioral adaptations that many people would describe as sociopathic or anti-social...
...Box 877 Bloomington, Indiana 47401 (Please attach address label here...
Vol. 10 • December 1976 • No. 3
