Of Course We Should Privatize Some Federal Land (but probably won’t)
June 21, 2025
The Federal government controls a ridiculous amount of land in the West including more than half of Oregon, Utah, Nevada, Idaho and Alaska and nearly half of California, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. See the map (PDF). The vast majority of this land is NOT parks!!! It is time for a sale to raise some funds and improve the efficiency of land allocation.
The conservative Mike Lee has a bill that would allow some sales. Great! The only problem with the bill is that it is loaded down with restrictions and qualifications. For example, there is a cap of 0.75% on total sales–that’s right, the land sales are capped at less than 1% of the total Federal land and that is a high cap because most of the rules prohibit any sale. The sales that are allowed have to be nominated by state or local governments, must be adjacent to developed areas and close to infrastructure. Moreover, the land can only be use for housing. Lyman Stone has a thread going into even more detail. The very modest goal–as you can see at right–is to rationalize some checkerboard land patterns.
