I held it together until about half way through. Then it gets good.
There is a very good reason to take power and control from those most directly affected. Farmers in the Klamath are one group that is intimately and personally affected by the allocation of water in the Klamath. Yep. I bet they think about that a whole lot and understand VERY CLEARLY the costs keeping water in the river imposes on farmers. If farming were the only important priority, they would be very good people to make decisions about where Klamath water goes. I have every faith that they could operate the Klamath River to maximize farmer profit.
But, and this seems to be the part that loses libertarians, civil servants and agency staff are required to BALANCE COMPETING NEEDS. See, it isn’t just farmers in the Klamath basin. There were salmon fishers whose livelihoods were at stake. There are Karuk peoples, whose sustenance is at stake. There are sport fishers. There is the American public as a whole, who are emotionally attached to the ideas of salmon runs in the west. So the answer to your question “What do a bunch of scientists on some panel of experts know about the harm that their decisions will cost to tens of thousands of farmers?” is: probably a fair amount. You know what else they know? They know what different alternatives will cost the fish run, the salmon industry, the Karuk, the sport fishers. They have MULTIPLE INTERESTS TO BALANCE. Under those circumstances, libertarians forever emphasize how one party got injured. But that doesn’t mean that the system didn’t work. It likely means that an outside party, like an agency official, balanced the collective wishes of everyone in the conflict and the American public as a whole (usually represented by the Endangered Species Act) and chose one trade-off. Who should do that? NOT the people who are “most directly affected”, the ones who have an economic stake in the issue.
You know who else shouldn’t do it? Fucking libertarians. I swear to God, you guys act the same every single time. EVERY time I post something about a societal trade off, you instantly, passionately and irrevocably identify yourself with one and only one side. Why? WHY? WHY do you do that? I thought this one might be harder for you. I mean, two picturesque resource extractors. I thought the salmon fishers might get some love from you. Two years they lost their entire livelihood and way of life! But no. Instead you write with a fanatic dedication to the potential costs to the farmers! Why?! What did you choose on? Seriously, it was "rippling back muscles of the fisher as he winches his nets out of the sea, man on his boat against the elements" versus "his thigh muscles flexing, the grower squats to take a handful of soil, surveying the new growth on his alfalfa before whistling for his dog". How the hell did you choose?
I mean, I knew the Karuk would get no love and heaven forefend we respect the fish, who exist as entities unto themselves and not for our purposes. But WHY did you arbitrarily pick the farmers and focus exclusively on the potential harm to them? I know why Cheney did, for votes. But why did you? Justin did the same shit when I talked about flood easements in the Sutter basin farms versus entire downstream cities. What the hell is with this immediate and visceral need to identify with one side of the story, who may experience a loss in what they consider their rights, and disregard ANY LEVEL OF COSTS to anyone else or the population as a whole. Why do you do that so blindly and so absolutely? You would make CRAPPY civil servants.
UPDATE: Hi friends. I've had a few hours to think, and now I am sorry I wrote the sweeping generalizations about libertarians in this post. Jan's comment gave me some access to his libertarian perspective, which was very helpful. You guys did an amazing job raising the level of the discussion higher than the tone I set, and I appreciate that. I'll be out tomorrow, but I want to keep talking about this stuff Sunday or next week. Please be thoughtful and respectful of each other in the comments. Thanks.