The timber industry represents so many basic illustrations of the shortcomings of capitalism and private property as a system compatible with human society.

Through reading a mystery about the timber industry, Half Nelson by Jerome Doolittle, I found out about a 1930s book about capitalism, The Folklore of Capitalism by Thurman W. Arnold. I read it in 2014 or so. It has become a foundational text in my personal belief system. Due for a reread in fact.

I will have to look up Marshall's manifesto. Had not previously heard of it. I think you did a post on Gifford Pinchot and his very mixed legacy, love it when you do posts like this.

Thanks for the book recommendation!

found it online for free.

https://archive.org/details...

Thanks for the book recommendations. But neither book is in the Multnomah County Library system. BOOOOOO!!!

Interlibrary loan. MCLS can do it. Costs the postage, iirc.

Thanks. Always forgetting about that option.

211680. Memorized that logging into the auto checkout. It's the MCL 'routing number', analogous to your card number as 'account number'.

I found an old copy of the Arnold book at Powell's for about $10. As for Half Nelson it's a mass market mystery paperback and I found a copy of that for about $3.50. ETA I love loaning out books. We should start a Portland based LGM book club.

The best shortcut from 10th and Burnside to 11th and Couch there could possibly be.

A classic case of the Hobbit proverb, "Short cuts make long delays"

I used to have a system: upstairs to Humour to check for Viz hardback annuals, over to Sheet Music, and then outta there....

The sheet music section of the central library is weird and ghostly. I love visiting those non-frequented sections.

Is that dedicated sheet music store still there on SW 10th or 11th? Talk about a relic.

No.

i have personally spent way too much time looking into whether it'd be worthwhile for community groups i am peripherally involved in to become partof the interlibrary loan system.

and i still don't have any idea what that entails.

Might be dated? Charles Wilkinson (1985) Land and Resource Planning in the National Forests. 64 Oregon L. Rev. 1.

Thanks!

I've been having a discussion on my own blog about socialism as a dirty word. It's unbelievable how obtuse people can be about this. "Socialism means Stalinism, therefore if you advocate something that I want to label as socialist (or that you so label yourself) you want us to all live in the Soviet Union, because that's what socialism means." They can't be made to see that this is not an argument. Just like the guy who claimed that the concept of "organic food" is meaningless because organic means carbon compounds and all food is carbon compounds.

all food is carbon compounds.

So is kerosene. Drink up!

Carbohydrates=hydrocarbons, right?

It's the commutative property.

The Nazis used the word "socialist" too. Anyone can take a word and mis-use it. And anyone can take something too literally on purpose to make it ridiculous. Do people who do this think they are super clever?

Actually, yes, most of them think they are super clever. They are mistaken, but that is what they think.

I tell them they must have been really confused when they first tried Buffalo Wings,,,,

Less intelligent people who think they're smart are easy to manipulate. Heck, left alone they'll lie to and manipulate themselves. The secret to being smarter? Assume you're not. Then you'll ask questions, try harded and maybe figure some things out, while maintaining the healthy dose of sceptism necessary to hypothesis rather than pontificate. And yes, I know I just pontificated. Oh well, can't sing, ain't pretty and my legs are thin....

I've had the same arguments with a few people. Both the Nazis and the Soviet Union co-opted the word "socialist" at a time when the theory of socialism was accepted by a lot of the rank and file as the basis of an egalitarian society, and that the nations or parties that incorporated the word "socialist" weren't necessarily that friendly to the working man. On the other hand, a lot of nations that more or less have socialist parts of a government just call themselves "Sweden" or "Denmark". Or even "Japan", "Spain", or - heaven forfend! - "The United States of America".

Edited for clarity.

I think it is now that Trump likes him -- check again next time Trump changes his mind!

Kim is going to win some primaries for sure- have you seen his rallies?

Right, as in National Socialism aka Nazi

"Just like the guy who claimed that the concept of "organic food" is meaningless"
I wouldn't say it is a meaningless concept, just a grossly mis-named one.

"It's unbelievable how obtuse people can be about this..."
Most are just trolling, how the RW in this country use and used the word "socialism" bears very little relationship to how anyone else uses and defines it.
It encompasses most everything everyone else has called socialism and quite about more covering everything from
"zoning laws I don't like"
to
"safety regulations I don't like"
to
"government provided garbage pickup"
to
"Welfare" (as defined by them)
to
you get the idea

So since Socialism=Stalinism, therefore the law requiring you to buy liability insurance when you buy a car is Stalinism and un-American.

Exactly.

one of my RW students today got his "angry face" when I talked about the Interstate Highway system.

Sigh. Did they bring up the Nazi connection? And do they then avoid driving on the interstates?

We need less plastic in cars and more of that good 'ol fashion Stalinism.

Organic food is a great example! The name seems wrong until you think about the difference between meaning and connotation -- the connotation being 'the opposite of methods that are harmful to organisms around the growing process,' generally speaking. In that sense organic is a shorthand that captures that. Yes, if you look too literally, it harms the concept, but if you listen for the general sense of what is meant... you know, work with the other person in good faith to share meaning, not just confound things... then you can understand what's being discussed just fine.

In socialist forestry, wood chucks woodchuck.

Soviet Union co-opted the word "socialist" at a time when the theory of socialism was accepted by a lot of the rank and file as the basis of an egalitarian society

It's weird how much of political discourse is literally just playing semantic word games. Somehow people manage to understand that just because a tin-pot dictatorship calls itself The People's Democratic Republic of Kleptostan doesn't necessarily mean it's bad to value people, popular sovereignty, or representative government. Yet one poorly governed country calls itself "socialist" and suddenly the entire idea that maybe we should be able to engage in collective action to mold the economic conditions we live under becomes anathema.

You can try to explain that one of the first things the Bolsheviks did was break up and sideline the actual worker's councils and it's in one ear and out the other. Apparently socialism is when the workers have no say in the conditions of their labor, and the less of a say workers have the socialister it is.

I've gotten a treat in arguments like that. "You may THINK Scandinavia is socialism, but if even so much as one percent of its economy is privatized, it is NOT SOCIALIST! It is... wait for it... Socialist In Name Only!"

Cool, I'll let the McCarthyists know the Soviet Union wasn't actually socialist either.

The problem is that advocates for socialism will claim that public ownership of resources means that the resources can be managed based on achieving the best possible combination of goals and while they are willing to grant there may be imperfections in the system, they will only be deviations from this ideal. But the example of the Soviet Union demonstrates that this is absolutely not true and the system that emerges can be a hellscape instead. This is not a minor detail and it suggests the wide range of possible outcomes of public ownership of resources.

Frankly, I have very little confidence in the management ability of the US government (the defense industry being a useful example) and also that the delusions and malign interests of the environmental movement as public advocates could very easily result in poor state management of lands. You need a well-trained, professional bureaucracy with a healthy public consensus of reasonable goals for public land usage to get an optimal result.

He is rather a hero here in Montana (ironic in a very red state) and there is a major wilderness are just north of here named for him (home to the largest grizzly population in the lower 48).

Erik, how does the Bureau of Land Management's control of lands that it leases to private ranchers work as a kind of socialism? It doesn't seem that it's promoting social welfare as much as subsidizing ranchers.

ETA: thanks for all the comments, both thoughtful and entertaining!

They not only subsidize ranchers, they subsidize miners too! However, they probably use those fees to help cover the costs of administering the many natural areas and wilderness areas they administer, so it's not 100% terrible, I guess.
I just looked this up and of the 247 million acres they control, mostly in the Western states, ranchers hold permits to graze 155 million of them.

Oh lookie here, my dad on banjo with the Earth First! singer Darryl Cherney, singing "Ballad of BLM" (at about 9:20). (refresh to see, I can't put links in comments on my work computer and have to edit them in)
https://www.youtube.com/wat...
Documents from Oregon's radical environmental movement... on YouTube. Weird.
The bureau of land management is part of the US
And they manage our soil much better than anyone could, I guess
...they know what each damn tree is worth 'cause trees are what they love
...Each acre stomped by cattle is a dollar thirty-five!
Etc. A bit over the top but still.

BAD. ASS.

I would be surprised if the fees BLM (or USFS) collects from grazing even cover the administrative costs of the permitting system. (Mining is more complicated, sometimes.)

In 2017, BLM charged ranchers $1.87 per head of cattle per month. That's far far less than the cost of a bale of hay, which provides about one day of forage for an adult cow.

ETA: the price in 2019 is ... $1.35.

Wow, my dad's band's song below is from 1989 and claims that it was $1.35 an acre back then. That's awful. And yet, Y'all Qaeda claims that it's tyranny to charge these tiny fees.

The law pegs the fee to what Congress thought was reasonable in 1966, with minor adjustments to the current market. It sometimes goes into the $2 range in the "expensive" years.

See my edit above. Same in 2019 as in 1989...

Yeah, cowboy welfare. At least there are Hispanic-Americans that get in on the scam. The program would get the stink-eye if a lot of black people took that scam.