In the Crosshairs

As the economy changes our ideas of the 'haves' and 'have nots,' many issues will come under scrutiny. One that caught my eye were hunting licenses in Montana. In most states there is a fee disparity for licenses. For instance, when I fish in Idaho, I pay more for a license than a resident. The flip is true, an Idaho fly fisherman pays more for a Washington license than I do. Same thing has been true for hunting licenses.

However, in Montana, which restricts the numbers of hunting licenses, there are a number of hunting licenses reserved for nonresidents that are sold through guides and outfitters. These guides and outfitters frequently take their clients to private access areas to hunt, for instance large tracts of ranch land the guide leases from a rancher.

Hunters in Montana are fed up with this system, believing the rich out of state hunters get a better deal. On the ballot this fall will be an initiative to eliminate this system and increase the out of state license fees, much like what is done in many Western states. Of course, if this idea passes, the guides and outfitters claim they will be severely hurt. Private land owners who lease out their land (think Ted Turner) may not respond by allowing unaccompanied hunters onto their lands. Their sense is that hunters usually behave quite badly (think piles of beer cans left near a smoldering fire). It's a class war if there ever was one.

More interesting, however, I think is the backlash between the perceived economic disparity. In other words, part of this initiative is based on anger that "rich, out of state" hunters get better and different opportunities for natural resources. And as our economy continues to create a larger divide between the rich and everyone else, I suspect in many other areas we will begin to see these kinds of backlashes.

Leveraged Real Estate, Leveraged Morals

In Big Sky country, a former timberman Tim Blixseth, started a luxury resort just south of Bozeman.  Yellowstone Club.  The idea was to have a private ski and golf resort where people whose "net worth" was over 1 million could hang out together behind gates.

As these things go, Blixseth got divorced from his wife, lenders it turns out, literally fell over themselves to loan money to Blixseth based on his ownership interest in the Club, the economy went south, and as testimony indicates in a bankruptcy court in Montana, the whole idea was over leveraged and essentially a ruse.

Ah, but for awhile the Blixseth's lived like millionaires, shuttling from their base in Palm Springs to France, the Caribbean, and of course, Montana in their private jets, yachts, and expensive cars.  

It seems to me one of the moral tales of this most recent boom is not to believe what you see.  Bernie Madoff, financial institutions profits, mega-mansions, Enron, all of it seemed to be based on either smoke and mirrors or lies.  And that ethic seeped into every corner of our culture: mega-church ministers deceiving their congregations, politicians assuring us there were weapons of mass destruction, manufacturers promising products which never worked...and we even deceived ourselves, thinking the real estate boom would never end, that our own homes could pay for cars, boats, tvs, granite counter tops, gorgeous appliances, college tuition.  

Now is the time to look at what was happening that made all of us go, well, er nuts.  As in "what were we thinking?"  Is greed really the dominant motivator in our culture?  Or can we find ways to restore some sense in our lives, where people don't feel the need to create private, exclusive clubs based on fake financial statements thinking that you need to live next door to someone who has an equally fake net worth?  Can we restore some sense of community to our world, where we don't think it's cool to be an investor who gets 30% returns at the expense of excluding our neighbors from the same investment (we won't even debate what Madoff's investors were thinking).  Or where employees of a company don't think it's right to jack up some elderly person's electrical rate because they can create fake power shortages?

The question really is how do we find our own moral compasses?  How do we reduce the leverage and become grounded?