Sunday, October 19, 2014

Privatization and the theft of our natural public resources (#2088)

I am all for having private businesses that serve a thriving and diverse community such as ours here in America. What I am all against is the privatization of our country's natural resources by a few wealthy souls who do not take into consideration the comprehensive necessity these resources give us. It is destructive for our government officials to sell off natural resource rights to private entities for the sake of profit instead of holding onto our natural resources and collectively apportioning them out based upon the need of our society. Government does have a role in protecting the value of our natural resources which underpin our national economy. We have little to no control when private entities base their decisions on profit concerning the handling of our finite natural resources as opposed to not allowing private enterprises the option. We can as a society protect these valuable, public resources for our own creative utility without harming ourselves and keep control of how they are utilized in a much more efficient manner. Private enterprise should continue to innovate in profitable ways but not as the owners of our public raw natural resources. Private enterprise can contract with our government to buy from our government what natural resources they need to manufacture their products but the extraction and ownership should be left to protocols that we establish through a national resource allocation board. Our public minerals should not be for sale at the source. Private enterprise has proven that they cannot provide for safe extraction of our more toxic minerals while also showing that they cannot clean up or dispose of waste properly in ways that keep our environment safe. There is plenty of evidence of pollution in the air, water and land to rationalize my concerns here and stop the sale of our natural resources at the source. Our government is here to protect us from each other and this is just another example of that necessity.

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