I am angry right now. Really angry.
Perhaps I should start at the beginning.
But when is that beginning? I could start from the events of last week, but that wouldn’t really tell the whole story. To do that, we need to go back further.
All the way back to when I was five years old…
My lifelong dream
It’s the early 1970s, and I am on a summertime trip with my mother in Ireland.
What was she thinking, taking a five-year-old to a foreign country all by herself?
Well, the truth is, I was a good traveling companion, even at that young age. Then, as now, I was an earnest, friendly extrovert. Then, as now, I was interested in everything. Then, as now, I was just happy to be wherever I was, doing whatever I was doing.
A donkey ride and a meat pie for 10p? I’m in. A meander through old ruins? I’m there. Falling asleep in a pub while my mom plays Irish music well into the night? Sure, I love sleeping!
Ireland was where I fell in love with rain. Ireland was where I fell in love with green fields and rolling hills. Ireland was where I fell in love with land.
A castle sitting atop a hill. A Martello Tower guarding a rugged coastline. For some reason, five-year-old me decided I wanted one of my own. My own castle, surrounded by my own land.
Fast forward a few years. My parents take my siblings and me to an event at a large estate on Long Island. I don’t remember why. (Maybe so they could play more Irish music. Maybe for some other reason. I was quite young.)
I don’t remember the mansion. I mean, I remember it was big and beautiful and opulent and all that. But it’s not the house that registered … it was the grounds. I will never forget the feeling of seeing those gardens for the first time. The flowers. The topiary. The stone walls and grass pathways.
The visuals have mostly faded, but the feeling remains. And it definitely reinforced what was becoming a lifelong desire: to own my own piece of ground.
The Big Sky
Fast forward again. I am in my mid-20s, and I finally have a small surplus of money. Not a lot, but enough to buy … yep, you guessed it … a piece of land. So that’s what I decided to do.
I lived in the People’s Republic of Taxachusetts at that time, and even back then, I knew better than to buy land there, or anywhere else in the northeast other than New Hampshire (which I did consider). Ultimately, after a lot of research (into various U.S. states and a few foreign spots), I chose Montana.
By 1993, I was ready. I headed out and started looking at land in the first place I landed—smack dab in the middle of that big, beautiful state. Within a short time, I found 20 acres of timberland that looked nice. The seller was asking $8,000; I offered $5,000. Their counter split the difference at $6,500, and we had a deal.
I had no idea what I was going to do with that land, but I had it. That was what mattered.
I still had a little money left, and I enjoyed buying land so much that I decided to do it again. I bought another piece in a different county. I cut it into three smaller pieces, sold them all, and doubled my investment. That gave me enough to do it once more. A friend and I bought a piece in a third county, deep in the middle of nowhere. We built a small cabin on it and (eventually) sold that one too. I wasn’t getting rich, but it was income for a brief time.
Another fast forward…
I am sitting with a girlfriend in a Missoula diner. I‘ve got my placemat flipped over, and I am drawing up ideas for a dream house. That girlfriend is long gone, but the idea never left. One day, I have always believed, I will build the perfect house on the perfect piece of land.
I redesigned that house over and over in the years that followed. Sometimes on paper, sometimes in my mind as I drifted off to sleep. Most iterations of the design were far beyond anything I am ever likely to be able to afford, but I figured I’d set my sights high and adjust as needed. Everyone gets to have dreams. That was one of mine.
The dream comes true?
Fast forward again—all the way to the beginning of this year.
I had long ago sold those other pieces of land, but I still owned my very first piece—that 20 acres of timberland in central Montana. In all that time, the taxes were only—get this—five bucks a year! It has cost me next to nothing to own that property.
As most of you know, land out West has appreciated tremendously in the last three decades. I received a lot of offers for it over the years, but they were all lowballs. Finally, this January, someone made me a real offer. Not a cheapo speculator, but someone who actually wants to live there.
Even with stupid, evil capital gains taxes, it will still be enough for a down payment on a piece close to where I live now. Closer to family.
I can finally get my forever piece of land. The piece I’ve always dreamt of. The one thing that I have consistently wanted since I was five years old. (That’s a little more than 50 years, for those keeping score at home.)
So I started my search. I began looking online and talking with real estate agents. As soon as the winter let up even a little bit, I jumped in my car and began driving around the rural counties south of me.
What exactly am I looking for?
More than 20 acres. A mix of timber and pasture. Other than that, it’s an “I’ll know it when I see it” sort of thing.
A few weeks ago, I saw it.
Without a real estate agent, I could only look from the road. But even just from that vantage point, I could see the place was special.
To give you an idea, here is a 360-degree view from the spot where I was parked.
Pretty nice, huh?
I took pictures. I found the front two corner flags. I sat on the road and talked with this butterfly.
I stayed there for 35 minutes, and in all that time, not a single car drove by. The only traffic was a red-tailed hawk, a few other birds, and that one little butterfly.
A week or so later, I was back on the property — this time with a real estate agent.
He was very indulgent. 45.7 acres is a lot, but we walked the whole thing! We started along the north line, then went across the middle to a large section (maybe 15 acres or so) of woods.
It wasn’t scrubby woods, either. The trees were tall. They were still free of leaves, and sunlight bathed the forest floor.
While we were among those trees, I could swear I smelled something sweet, like crème brûlée or cotton candy. We were in the middle of nowhere, far out of reach of any bistros or state fairs.
“Do you smell that?” I asked, describing it. He didn’t.
Five minutes later, I asked again. “Are you sure you don’t smell that?”
How could he not? The air was redolent with sugar! But he didn’t.
Maybe this is what falling in love smells like, I thought. And I was falling in love with this property.
(I looked it up later, and in fact, sugar maples do emit a sweet smell in springtime. Follow my nose—it always knows!)
We continued down the hill to the southeast corner, then up to the pond at the northeast corner, half of which was on the property. A goose went honking off in stunned disbelief that two humans had the audacity to disturb his day. A boy mallard and a girl mallard were unperturbed, however, and just kept swimming on their merry way.
We went back up the hill—past stands of mature hardwoods, across a green pasture, and back to the road.
I have bought enough properties in my life to know not to get too excited until you’ve checked details. Does it have good water? Does it have weird neighbors? There are lots of little due-diligence factors to look into.
But try telling my heart that. I was beyond smitten. From the looks and layout of the property, it was perfect.
You could see the excitement in the real estate agent’s eyes as he sensed my buying signals. We shook hands on the understanding that we would be in touch very soon.
Not so fast…
Instead of driving straight home, however, I decided to do some further reconnoitering of the surrounding area. I drove west. The road quickly turned to dirt, and after about a mile, I came across some farmers talking on the side of the road. Perfect!
I rolled down my window. “Do you guys mind if I ask you how deep your well is?” I asked.
And so began a 20-minute conversation. I told them which property I was looking at. I learned about well depths and water quality in the area. The farmer’s wife, dressed in dirty coveralls, walked up to join the conversation. I was clearly interrupting their workday, but they were all kind and very indulgent.
Then the wife dropped the bomb.
“Oh, by the way, there’s a toxic waste dump next to that property.”
“There’s a what?”
Off in a green field somewhere, a five-year-old boy started to cry.
She was right.
I thanked them for the crucial (and potentially life-saving) information and headed for home. Naturally, I began my own inquiries into the matter, and sure enough…
Between 1983 and 1987, the county government dumped sand laden with heavy metals “in three trenches, each about 20 feet wide, 400 feet long, and 10 feet deep.” There was no containment system. This was dumped straight into the native soil. They also dumped “old vehicle gas tanks, tires/rims, drums, [and] car parts.” And for good measure, they burned a bunch of tires.
The leachate drainage system for this monstrosity “discharged toward a constructed pond draining off the east end of the site.” Maybe the goose was honking because his pond has been “impacted by continuous leachate flow” and “contains elevated concentrations of total phenolics” at 26 times the acceptable level.
Arsenic. Nickel. Zinc. Cadmium. Didn’t cadmium in yellow paint help make Van Gogh crazy? Maybe it makes geese crazy too. It very likely shortens their lifespan, and that of their offspring.
And I just can’t take the risk.
Five-year-old me, 20-something me, and 50-something me were all equally heartbroken. Yes, I should have known better than to allow my emotions to precede my research.
Whatever. I’m not a robot. And this is important to me.
Who will protect us from government?
I am a market anarchist, or a panarchist, or whatever you want to call me. As such, I spend a lot of time fielding objections that are all variants of the same argument:
But without government, how will we _______?
The blank is then filled with one or another social good (security, justice, roads, etc.) that is presumed, a priori, can only be accomplished by a government with a monopoly on “legitimate” force.
There is a wealth of literature on how other solutions have worked in the past, are working in limited fashion now, and can work at scale in the future. Most people who make these objections are unfamiliar with this literature, and yet they insist, with incandescent surety, that nothing else can possibly work.
One of the common variants is, “Without government, who will protect us from externalities like pollution?”
As I watched the perfect property recede for the last time in the rear view mirror, the irony was overwhelming. The GOVERNMENT dumped these vile things in this pristine place! Government was the only externality for ten miles in any direction.
It doesn’t matter where the dumped materials originally came from. Government put them there.
Government did not protect us from pollution … Government was the polluter.
In fact, governments are often the world’s worst polluters, and their status as governments usually shields them from any liability. We will discuss that in part 2. In part 3, we will look at some market solutions to the problem of pollution.
My search has not ended. In fact, I am going back out this weekend, and I will keep going out until my dream comes true.
But I will never forget that beautiful piece of land … or what the government did to it.