Right In The Pocketbook

How morons manage a forest.

Welp, if nothing else gets through to a population where they still believe in Christian Dominion (oh, yes, they actually SAY and BELIEVE that), here's a point:

The logging industry has screwed everybody up here out of billions of dollars.

If the forests had been managed like wood, instead of corn and wood pulp, they would be healthy, beautiful, and growing for a better future for everything that lives here.

Instead, the forests are whipped down as fast as possible, sold to the logging companies for pennies on the board foot, and then sold at higher prices. Taken from State lands, subsidized out of all our pockets. 

The only thing that explains why the people up here have been serfs since the beginning of logging is - that's where they came from. Serfdom eats into the bone, and punishes for use of the head and heart. After awhile, serfs try to be proud of being the support of the king.

But since we're talking Americans, think about what would have happened if they had worked with the parks system in compromise and real land management; the trees would be getting bigger, instead of smaller, every generation, tourism would grow, property values would rise. 

But to do that, the brain has to be stronger than the back. Work smarter, not harder. That's where the money is. And that's where the money is going - into the pockets of middlemen, who work with nothing but their brains. The industries piddle a little back in the form of taxes or scholarships - but it's nothing to what they're making off the people here.

These people have been cheated, and their kids know it. Billions of dollars. Whole futures. Whole lives. The reckoning is coming - but it's probably come to late for resource workers.

And because the forests of the planet are the producers of 1/3 of our oxygen, it may be too late for us all.