On Apr 14, 2006,
at 1:31 PM, thomsonhiyu wrote:
>
> If he found the need arose in the future to have more land,
he’d have
> to re-purchase what he’d sold,
(Jeff Smith replied:- ) And it'd be cheap. And
meanwhile, it wouldn't go to waste, but be used efficiently by whoever found
the site worthy.
(Joe comments;-)
But it might not be as ‘cheap’ as it might’ve been had he
acquired it earlier. Nor might it even be available. So here we have a manufacturer who buys, (or ‘rents’,
it’s immaterial which), say, 5 acres of vacant land to open a lumber
mill. In our area, under current
land-use and zoning regulations, such a (new) business wouldn’t be
permitted on less than 5 acres, which would have to have a ‘buffer strip’
of at least 100 feet wide in some kind of trees surrounding it as a noise
shield to screen out any objectionable sounds, or other potential annoyances
that might be a nuisance to adjoining property occupants. Even
if there weren’t any.
Take that off the 5 acres, and
there would be precious little room left for any ‘expansion’,
should success in business warrant it in the future. So the would be manufacturer, who is starting ‘small’,
but with high hopes for the future, is limited in what he can do if he doesn’t
acquire a site large enough for expansion.
Now under your set-up, so far as I
understand it, he would still have to ‘rent’ a larger site than he
immediately needs to avoid moving, and it would still go ‘to waste’
until he needed it. Alternatively, he’d
be forced to relocate to ‘rent’ another site that was larger and available. Which
would mean all that he’d built up, facilities which might be quite
amenable to ‘expansion’, would have to be torn down and re-located.
All at a considerable COST to the public, since all this otherwise needless
expense is going to have to be priced into, and recovered from the ‘lumber’
he going to sell that ‘public’.
(Joe wrote:- ) And, to an extent, the U S DOES keep
Weyerhaeuser and other ‘large’ forest companies out of its forests.
(Jeff replied:_ ) All those Weyerhaeuser lands
were once US Forests that they got for free or little, thanks to corruption.
(Joe replies:-
) “All”, Jeff? That’s an “all”
encompassing assertion. The ‘core’
lands that Weyerhaeuser acquired in the US were purchased from the Northern
Pacific Railroad for $ 6 per acre, that railroad having been earlier granted
them by the US government. To help offset the construction costs of that
northern trans-continental line. Hopefully through their future sale to those
who would put the lands to use, and use that railway to ship their products.
What Weyerhaeuser paid was the
going price for such timber lands at the dawn of the 20th Century. To put
that in perspective, ‘second-growth’ timber lands in our area were still
available for $ 5 per acre in the early 1950s. Their private logging company owners having
let them ‘go back to the government for taxes’, firmly convinced ‘second-growth’
Douglas Fir would never be worth anything. And that
anyone buying such properties, with the idea of ever logging them again in the
future, for any kind of timber products that would ever be saleable at a price
that could cover the costs, was nuts.
And that was the generally prevailing opinion here then.
And so it largely was with
Weyerhaeuser’s earlier acquisition of the Northern Pacific
timberlands. These properties, at that
time, contained species not generally very marketable, many of them largely
unknown or of uncertain characteristics.
Hemlock, for instance, was long considered a useless ‘weed’. Red cedar, good only for
shingles, or siding. And only
then if it was absolutely clear of any knots.
Douglas Fir, the main timber species, had very little main market exposure
in many of the later ‘high-end’, and ‘low-end’, for
that matter, products it would be made into.
And developing markets for it, in place of more familiar, and still
widely available Eastern White Pine was no easy task. Weyerhaeuser’s purchase was fraught
with considerable ‘risks’, not the least of which was ‘forest-fire’.
Which seriously
devalued a great deal of some of their most immediately valuable “Western
White-Pine” lands in Idaho less than a
decade after they’d been purchased.
(Joe wrote:-) Public timber sales in the
National Forests that were only open to small firms, from which the
‘giants’ were excluded? Many small firms, and communities, were able to
‘sensibly’ sustain themselves using forest resources secured by these
‘set-asides’ for generations.
(Jeff replied:- ) Sounds
good. It can be achieved economically besides politically via geonomics (as in Finland).
(Joe replies:-
) I’ve known many a Finlander, and several
Swedes, and even a few Swiss. They’ve
all been proud of their heritage. But
for places that are often held-up as the National ‘role-models’ we
should be following, it’s always struck me as being rather strange that
none of these countries’ former nationals seem to have any desire
whatsoever to ‘go back home’ to live.
(Joe wrote:-
) Should be in their financials on their website.
I
have
seen a breakdown of the (taxes paid)
figures, but I don’t have it at hand. It’s ‘hefty’.
(Jeff asks:- ) Then how can Weyerhaeuser be so
rich? And why take their side?
(Joe replies:-)
Frederick Weyerhaeuser, the Company’s ‘patriarch’, shared the ‘risks’,
and the ‘profits’. But more importantly, the ‘losses’. Of which there were many.
I wouldn’t particularly say
that I “take their side”, Jeff.
Weyerhaeuser, the ‘Company’, trends towards ‘monopoly’
as many other industry sector leaders do as a means of ‘survival’. They’ve bought land, they’ve sold
land. Sometimes at a
profit, sometimes not.
What CAUSES this ‘trend to
monopoly, WHY they and other firms (feel they) HAVE (no other choice but) to go
that way, is what we should be concerned with. And that is where ‘Social Credit’,
as a ‘policy’ comes in.
As regards dealing with Weyco to acquire timber they may have for sale, in
comparison to dealing with ‘Government’ for the same thing, I’d
take negotiating a deal with the Weyerhaeuser people, (or those from most other
‘big’ forest Companies), over ‘Government’ people any
day of the week! For big as Weyerhaeuser may be, they’re
still subject to ‘sanctions’ if they get too high and mighty. ‘Sanctioning’ a ‘Government’
is already difficult, and if it were to become the ‘absolute monopolist’,
would be all but impossible.
RE: [socialcredit]
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