Okay, I’ll bite, Dr. Krugman:
1. You never address the issue of whether the Federal government SHOULD own all that land in the west. Somehow, your home state of New Jersey does just fine without the Federal government owning most of it.
2. You say the government charges too little, but your accompanying report just says the government takes in less than it costs them to administer the land. Are you aware that government costs tends to be many times more than private sector costs for the same activity? Furthermore, if lots of different landowners existed, grazing fees would have to be low because of competition.
3. You say that because cattle ranchers get a supposed subsidy from the government, they’re not rugged individualists. That’s a really silly argument. I mean, you could argue everyone in history who lived in some country was not an individualist because they benefited from government in some way. I’m sure Daniel Boone took the state roads as far as they would go before walking in the wilderness. Big deal.
4. You toss in accusations of racism with no evidence whatsoever.
5. You say that conservatives believe private property rights are absolute. That’s a strawman argument. No serious conservative believes that. Thomas Sowell has written about limitations on property rights, to name one example. No conservative thinks someone should be able to store unprotected nuclear waste on a suburban street.
6. You then throw in a reference to Duck Dynasty for no reason other than it gets giggles from your leftist base.
The crux of the issue is whether massive government ownership of land leads to corruption. There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence that this whole mess started because of a solar panels deal involving Harry Reid’s family. How about a column about that, Dr. Krugman? But it’s a lot easier to just make snide comments about ranchers and Duck Dynasty to appeal to the amoral leftist elites that read you.
He does point out there are externalities involved - none of us has absolute freedom to do whatever we want. Even in our private actions the law sets limits. We cannot treat our animals cruelly, even if they live on our property. We cannot siphon off power illegally on our property to avoid paying our utility bills. We cannot create a public eyesore on our property and so forth.
We do not have complete freedom anywhere - and there is no area, from birth to death in which government is not present. In every area of our lives we are held accountable. This is part of our progress from the state of nature to living under some form of government. In our world, we gave up our freedom for the greater good. The theoretical ideal of freedom remains only that in our world - a dream.