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Comment by riversflow | Hacker News Reader

Man, I come from a rural background and generally feel for the interests of rural folk, but these wealthy ranchers really grind my gears with their entitlement. ‘How are we supposed to ranch and maintain our way of life when the government makes changes’—like using the countryside to pasture livestock as they’ve ‘done for generations’ is an inalienable birth right. Give me a break, everyone has to adapt with the times, ranchers should be no exception. For all their ruggedness they honestly act like spoiled children. ‘Wolves will affect the livelihood of my archaic, wealthy rancher lifestyle’ doesn’t really reverberate with me. Suck it up buttercup.

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To put a point on the entitlement, ranching in the midwest is often synonymous with grazing for minimal cost, on federal land. That's basically a giant subsidy.

SO the true cost of meat SHOULD include erosion, pollution, and management of federal lands, antibiotic release into the water table, water use, and GHG emissions. But instead we pay most of those costs through taxes and have lower cost at the grocery store.

https://www.blm.gov/programs/natural-resources/rangelands-an...

IIRC, the BLM charges around 15% of what it would cost on the open market. If the land were sold off like these rugged individualists want, most of them probably couldn't even afford it. Ranchers are usually well-off, but not massively so.

They'd be stuck paying someone else sky-high grazing fees. The market would probably just get taken over by big players just like most of the rest of agriculture has.

They really should include all externalizations in every business. It's the only way to provide incentive to exerting the required effort to create sustainable businesses in a free market.

So their cows mow the grass for free while the farmer gets cows fed for free. Sounds like a win-win on the surface.

You realize we are talking about natural habitats here, right? It's not a lawn. Most public grazing land is arid, and quite fragile. Grazing can turn a rich ecosystem into a moonscape very quickly.

Not to mention the feces destroys water quality.

> like using the countryside to pasture livestock as they’ve ‘done for generations’ is an inalienable birth right

I understand (and share some of) your sentiment, but it's worth correcting you to say that ranchers (usually) don't feel that grazing rights are an "inalienable birth right". Instead, they feel that grazing rights are a property right, and they should not be deprived of this property without compensation. What may surprise you is that courts frequently agree with the ranchers' interpretation!

Most people don't realize that when a ranch is sold, the grazing rights are sold along with the private land. They have market value, and they are attached to a particular property. Banks treat them as collateral, and maybe more importantly, the IRS treats them as assets for the purposes of taxation: https://famguardian.org/publications/propertyrights/estatax.....

So yes, everyone must adapt, but it's not nearly as simple as the ranchers simply being wrong. The way the US West was settled created a system where private individuals really do have a (some sort of) legitimate property right in the use of public lands. Unless you are willing to give up on private property altogether (personally, I'm more sympathetic than most to Proudhon's "Property is Theft" argument) a more nuanced understanding is necessary.

Here's a good (and reasonably balanced) article that gives more background about the issues: https://www.perc.org/2016/01/21/managing-conflicts-over-west.... The first third is about the Bundy case, the middle about the how we got the system we have, and the last part is about where it might go from here.

Then they can pay market value for the use of land, IMO.

Subsidized grazing costs should come with rider "we can change the rules".

> ‘How are we supposed to ranch and maintain our way of life when the government makes changes’

You quoted a statement that isn't in the article.

> like using the countryside to pasture livestock as they’ve ‘done for generations’ is an inalienable birth right.

I didn't get this at all from the article. Where are you picking this up?

> Give me a break, everyone has to adapt with the times, ranchers should be no exception.

Sure, but they have a right to defend their interests. If ranchers voted to allow wolves and bears back into downtown denver, do you think the people of denver have a right to be worried?

> For all their ruggedness they honestly act like spoiled children.

Are you sure you come from a rural background and you generally feel for the interests of rural folk?

> ‘Wolves will affect the livelihood of my archaic, wealthy rancher lifestyle’ doesn’t really reverberate with me.

Once again your quoted text appears nowhere in the article. You are intentionally misleading readers here by making it seem like you are quoting from the article and falsely attributing the quotes to the ranchers.

This is actually in the article.‘Will also fears the initiative lets urban areas make a decision that'd largely affect rural Colorado.’

Why is it that so many comments that claims "I come from a rural background", "I am a resident in X", "I am a blank" go on to attack what they claim to be and mostly in a misleading and sneaky way? I normally see this in vegan related post, "I eat meat" and then goes on list the vegan manifesto, but it is spreading everywhere it seems.

I don't know if they're all rich. Ralph Lauren certainly is. But I tend to agree. There simply aren't that many ranchers. But there are millions of Coloradans—and visitors to Colorado, outdoor/nature tourism being a much larger business in CO than ranching—who favor reintroduction. If Yellowstone is any kind of guide, ecosystems would benefit. Wolves are all over the Northwoods of Wisconsin now, and the negative side effects are basically nil.

Wolves are pretty much all over Wisconsin now.

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