An article at Vox today notes that the Biden administration seeks to add many, many acres to the list of “protected” lands within the United States. Protected lands are lands that in most cases were already public—usually federal—lands where human activities have been heavily restricted. The “ideal” protected land—from the hard-core environmentalist perspective is a wilderness area where nearly all human activities are prohibited.
The Biden administration wants to expand these restrictions to the point of encompassing 30 percent of land and 30 percent of US ocean areas. This would basically triple the amount of land currently under protection.
But at least this would leave a sizable amount of land in private hands. The same can’t be said about the oceans. Since the US does not allow private ownership of ocean territory, it is all directly controlled by the US government.
Mark Brandly discussed some of the implications of this in 2016, writing:
What about the submerged lands? The federal government also claims ownership over what they call the submerged lands of the US. These claims began with 1799 legislation regarding the “customs waters,” allowing the boarding of foreign flag vessels within 12 nautical miles of the coast. Over time, these claims have expanded and in 1945, Harry Truman declared US government jurisdiction and control over the continental shelf. During the next decades, governments of the world claimed increasingly larger amounts of the ocean beds. Problems occurred, however, if two governments disagreed over these claims. This became a United Nations issue in the 1970s, and in 1982, at the United Nations Convention of the Law of the Sea, the countries of the world came to an agreement regarding their Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ), whereby each country owned the sea and the sea beds out to 200 nautical miles offshore.
Due to Congressional resistance of United Nations treaties, Congress did not ratify this agreement. But Ronald Reagan, in 1983 simply proclaimed sovereign rights over the US Exclusive Economic Zone. He ratified the agreement by presidential mandate.
According to a Department of the Interior report, there are 3.9 billion acres in the US EEZ. Reagan’s proclamation was the biggest land grab in US government history.
Consider this map of the US that includes the US EEZ. The various colors highlight the regions of the EEZ.
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One point to make here is that there is over 70 percent more submerged lands in the US than the total amount of dry land in this country. That is, the federal government owns more submerged land than the total amount of land in the 50 states.
Thus, 76.9 percent of total land in the United States is government owned. There is no doubt that regarding this essential resource, land, our economy is heavily socialized.
Needless to say, the fact the feds already directly control the coastline greatly facilitates federal efforts to add these areas to a list of “protected” areas. Those who are opposed to this can thank Ronald Reagan. Consequently, there is no “market” in coastline use at all, but it is all directly owned and planned by federal personnel. It doesn’t look like there’s any significant opposition to this. Many pundits and theorists—including most alleged “free market” types have long waved off the idea of privatizing ocean lands when suggested by Walter Block, for example. But so long as oceans areas are assumed to be “public” the use of them will directly be controlled by the feds and restricted to use for whatever purposes the regime finds most politically convenient.
