A Third of America Belongs to America
Why Hacker News recommends it
Offered as the quick, clear explainer on US federal land ownership whenever land use in the West comes up.
What it is
CGP Grey explains what it means that a third of the United States is federally owned land. It describes the agencies that manage it and why so much of it is in the western states.
Recommended by 3 HN commenters across 3 different months, 2018 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Recommends smegger001 · 2020-02 · on “Monopoly was invented to demonstrate the evils of capitalism (2017)”
Yeah CGP Grey had a god video about federal land ownership the majorty of land in western states is federal land. [this video] Its kind of ridiculous. how little control states have over the land within their own boarders.
Recommends closeparen · 2020-06 · on “A Guy Named Craig May Soon Have Control over a Large Swath of Utah”
You might enjoy CGP Grey's "What is federal land?" [0]. Making resources available to American industry is one of the government's purposes in owning it. There are certainly disagreements over how well that's balanced against other goals, or against the long term future. But it's not like it's inherently corrupt that federal land is fed into the economy. That's what it's for. [0] [this video]
Recommends cbm-vic-20 · 2020-09 · on “The end of dispersed camping?”
CGP Grey did an interesting video on the differences between the agencies that own federal land in the US: [this video] (Start from the beginning for more context)
Cites dangoor · 2018-11 · on “The FBI of the National Park Service”
Coincidentally, I just learned of the existence of this organization yesterday via CGP Grey's new video about federal land: [this video]
Cites AceJohnny2 · 2019-02 · on “Kodak's Discovery of A-Bomb Testing (2016)”
> [1] Bureau of Land Management - kind of like a national forest but where they care less about the land under their control. CGP Grey made a video on the topic recently: [this video]
Cites mjevans · 2019-02 · on “Oregon expected to enact first state-wide rent control law”
Rent control is a bandaid that tries to fix fundamental systemic flaws and lack of planning by society. Problems: They do mention Oregon's land use laws. I didn't see it while skimming but (for west coast states) the land that is actually "state" instead of federal is also an issue (#1). However the biggest issue is that the Supply vs Demand curves for housing are simply insane. Demand is mostly dictated by jobs, and only slightly moderated by the quality of public transit and transportation infrastructure (mass transit AND freeways/parking included). As a nation the US has been housing constrained for at least 20 years, probably longer. Worse for a generation or two housing has been used as