Why do civilizations or nations fall?  There are many specific reasons, but, in the end, they all boil down to one point – the inability or unwillingness of the majority of inhabitants to pay the price necessary to sustain that civilization or nation.

Sometimes, that inability is largely the result of factors beyond the control of the inhabitants. One can certainly argue that the fall of Angkor Wat, the Pre-Columbian Mayan civilizations, Mohenjo-daro, and the Anasazi cultures of the American Southwest were all due to massive changes in rainfall patterns than rendered physically impossible the continuation of those civilizations as they were then constituted.  That does not mean the inability to live in those areas, but the inability of that “civilization” to survive under those conditions.  A good example of that is the collapse of the Norse settlements in Greenland.  At the same time the Norse were dying off or leaving the Inuit were successfully moving in and thriving.

The classical Greek culture never reached the heights, at least comparatively, of the Periclean era for one simple reason.  The Greeks would never pay the price of political unity, or accept the need for a core of shared values.  This is borne out by the fact that until the modern era, and even perhaps now, Greece has never been united except by an outside conqueror – Philip and Alexander, the Romans, the Ottoman Empire. It wasn’t that the Greeks didn’t lack talent or ability, but they couldn’t harness either in a shared fashion.  Ironically, a huge factor in the success of the Roman Empire was the use of those brilliant Greeks.

 So why aren’t people willing to support their nation and civilization?  Because no one really values civilization per se.  We all want what we want, and so long as our nation/civilization gives us what satisfies our needs, we’ll support it.  When it doesn’t satisfy the needs of a significant majority, however… that’s where the trouble begins.  I’m seeing signs of this all across the United States, and the “range war” problem in Utah and Nevada is symptomatic of what is occurring. 

The ranchers of the southwest want to hold on to their way of life, a way of life that extends back some four generations. But that way of life was developed in the 1880s at a time when there were fewer demands on the land and greater levels of rainfall. As average rainfall has decreased, overgrazing became more common.  The federal government attempted to manage the land by reducing grazing allotments, and, frankly, little else.  The ranchers haven’t seen much active management by the BLM, but they have seen the government reduce their grazing rights in favor of protecting wild horses and the desert tortoise.  On the other hand, as I noted earlier, federal grazing fees are far lower than the fees on privately owned land.  The BLM has not lived up to its own plans in managing wild horses, and that upsets the ranchers because they believe that threatens their way of life.  The environmentalists believe that excessive grazing is destroying the environment, and that will eventually harm everyone. In Iron County, the BLM currently permits grazing rights for 21,000 cattle animal unit months [AUM], and one AUM refers to a cow and a calf.  But… there are currently slightly more than 2,000 feral/wild horses on federal and private lands in Iron County, 1,700 more than allowed under the wild horse protection laws, and the range won’t support both.  Nor does the $1.35 BLM charges the ranchers cover the management costs for just the wild horses.  But the political power of the ranch and farm lobby keeps the fees low, and from what I’ve seen, if the fees were higher, I suspect that the revenues would be diverted for more “urgent” federal programs.  So we have a threatened way of life, a threatened environment… and the majority of Americans are clearly not wanting to pay more for either… and particularly not to support ranchers who are in fact being subsidized by the government.  The ranchers don’t see it that way.  Believe me, they don’t!  That’s why almost a thousand of them turned up in Nevada last weekend, many of them armed, and why the BLM backed down and released the cattle they’d impounded because Cliven Bundy hadn’t paid over a million dollars in grazing fees.

If this were just the case here, it wouldn’t be so bad, but various types of protests are occurring across the United States because people aren’t getting what they want.  Many women are angry because Congress won’t support legislation that would make it easier for them to get equal pay.  Same sex couples want the same “marriage” rights as heterosexual couples;  religious groups see their “rights” and way of life being threatened and want those rights put into law, even if that disadvantages others who don’t share their beliefs.  Businesses want the right to maximize profits, even when that profit maximization denies workers affordable health care.  Workers want affordable health care even if that means their employer is less profitable… and may even close.

And… the thing is, that even though we have as far higher standard of living than two centuries ago, our wants have increased far more than the standard of living.  Yet, when enough of those wants aren’t satisfied, then we’ll end up losing our civilization because, collectively, we won’t pay enough to maintain it.

We’ve all seen it, over and over.  A bridge collapses, usually over a river.  Or here in Iron County, a landslide closes a state highway, and it takes eight months moving a huge chunk of  mountainside to repair the damage and re-open the road. All across the country, we have infrastructure teetering on the edge of collapse, with the potential to kill people and cause millions, if not hundreds of millions, of dollars in damage in each case. But nothing gets done until there’s a crisis, and then what’s done is often only the cheapest acceptable fix.

In the case of the landslide here, the eight-month closure was the third that has closed the highway in the twenty years we’ve lived here.  Independent engineers who’ve studied the road suggest that it should have been built on the other side of the canyon where the rock and ground are more stable.  They even suggested it after the last eight month closure and repair that added more than a 100 mile detour to the commutes, delivery routes, and local cargo haulage trips of local residents, businesses, and tourists.  The state highway department turned that proposal down, claiming it was too expensive.  Yet, if the highway had been built where the better engineers suggested, that section wouldn’t have to be rebuilt every five to ten years, and the overall cost to taxpayers would be less, not to mention the possibility of reducing fatalities.

Yet pretty much everywhere in the United States, and likely elsewhere in the world, since I doubt human nature changes that much once one crosses borders – with a few possible exceptions – the same sort of deferred maintenance or “do it cheap now” attitude prevails with regard to the basic structures of society, despite the fact that spending a few more dollars now would save more dollars and lives later.

Why?  Because there seems to be an attitude that keeping taxes as low as possible is prudent.  It’s not.  Keeping taxes as low as possible when calculating costs and expenditures over a twenty or thirty year period is prudent, but keeping them as low as possible every year and deferring every possible maintenance or construction project until something has to be done only results in higher taxes… and higher costs on the community.

There’s an old saying that expresses the point succinctly – “penny wise and pound foolish” – but sayings like that are somehow out of date, which is ironic since it’s usually the Republicans who are looking to cut government spending, even while they keep saying the support traditional values.

This past week, what amounted to a small scale range war erupted just across the Utah border in Nevada, and in a spirit of misguided “idealism,” compounded by greed and ignorance, Iron County [Utah] officials weighed in on the side of a long-time law-breaking rancher.  Now… that’s not the way the local media put it, but so far as I can determine, here are the facts.

A Nevada rancher named Cliven Bundy has been grazing over 500 head of cattle on BLM land for over 25 years without paying federal grazing fees, ever since the BLM decreased the number of cattle permitted on the federal lands that the Bundy family had used for roughly a century.  Despite previously paying grazing fees, Bundy has claimed that he and his family own the lands through their “beneficial use.”  After twenty years of contention and two recent court decisions denying Bundy’s claims, the BLM began removing Bundy’s cows this past week.  Fearing violence, BLM issued an order banning the Bundy-family from the federal lands where the cows were being removed and deployed heavily-armed agents to protect the federal-hired wranglers who were removing the livestock.  The Bundy family ignored the order and attempted to videotape the removal.  When they were ordered to leave, one family member refused and offered physical resistance.  He was arrested, and the round-up proceeded.

To make matters worse, the Iron County sheriff and the Iron County Commissioners, citing the Bundy case as another example of BLM trampling over local ranchers in favor of wildlife, offered an ultimatum to BLM, claiming that BLM’s failure to round up excessive numbers of wild horses on BLM lands was jeopardizing the health of the land and thus penalizing local ranchers, whose access to and leasing of federal lands was limited because of the poor state of those lands caused by too many feral horses.  The Iron County officials threatened to round up the horses themselves if BLM failed to come up with an immediate plan.  Late last week, BLM agreed to develop such a plan, after previously saying that it didn’t have the funds necessary for such a round-up.  Yesterday, both Iron County and Beaver County began moving feral horses off private property, claiming that, if the horses weren’t removed immediately, they would “destroy”the range in the next three weeks.

This is not a case of right versus wrong; it’s a case where everyone is wrong, and it’s a mess.

Under federal law, the Bureau of Land Management [BLM] can lease grazing rights to BLM lands in eleven western states, under a formula set by Congress, and last revised in law in 1978.

This past February, BLM set the rate at $1.35 per animal unit per month [AUM], the same rate that has been the case for the past eight years.  An animal unit means either one cow and her calf, one horse, or five goats or sheep.

This rate isn’t a bargain; it’s an absolute steal.  To begin with, according to the General Accounting Office of the federal government, grazing fees amount to less than one-sixth the cost the federal government spends maintaining those lands.  In addition, a 2005 GAO study found private, state, and federal grazing fees running anywhere between $20 and $150 per AUM, with rancher-friendly Texas charging that higher fee for some of its state lands.  According to a Congressional Research Service Report, “The average monthly lease rate for grazing on private lands in 11 western states in 2011 was $16.80 per head.”

In the Bundy case, the family hasn’t paid any fees in over twenty years – and feels that they’re the victims.  What’s more disturbing is that the Bundys report they’ve received letters of support from thousands of people across the west.

The BLM is far from blameless. According to BLM figures, the BLM lands in Iron County should only have 300 wild horses, but BLM estimates there are over 1,200, and BLM has cut grazing allotments to ranchers, claiming that the funding Congress has allowed for dealing with wild horses is inadequate – and it likely is, given that $70 million was appropriated last year for wild horse management, compared to the nearly $1 billion spent on livestock management on federal lands. How could they let these situations go on for over twenty years?  And why has BLM set the grazing fee so low at a time when the government is running massive deficits? And how could they let the wild horse situation get so bad that there are hundreds of horses on the verge of starvation and that certain lands have been badly overgrazed to the point of becoming true deserts?   As for the local ranchers, I find it hard to believe that, first the range could be totally destroyed in three weeks, but if it could be, exactly how long will it take their cows to do the same thing and why didn’t they make such a claim before things got so bad?

And finally, why are all those ranchers so indignant about federal overspending and big government – when they’re right up there with all the welfare cheats, getting huge subsidies at the expense of everyone else?

The other day, a reader commented that I’d chosen to live in the semi-sovereign theocracy of Deseret, otherwise known as Utah. In the abstract, and in the fact that we did move from New Hampshire to Utah, that’s true.  In the real world, it was far from that simple… and that’s true of many major choices most people make in life.

In our case, the facts were that my wife was teaching at Plymouth State University, in a full-time but not tenure track job, when the New England economic downturn in the early 1990s hit the state university system and her job was eliminated on very short notice. She was offered an adjunct position at less than half pay and without benefits.  I had just become a full-time self-employed writer two years earlier, and while we were making ends meet, it would have been rather difficult to do so if she had to accept half-pay, and we had to make ends meet.  In her field, there are very few jobs open or offered in any one year – anywhere in the United States – and especially for women, because singing professorships remain one of the few areas where gender discrimination is permitted, and remains.  All a music department has to do is specify that it is looking for a bass, baritone, or tenor.

So… when she was offered the position of head of the voice and opera program at Southern Utah University, because writers are portable, the choice was between a great and likely downhill financial struggle in New Hampshire or moving to Utah,and  it didn’t take much time to decide to move to Utah… a move we certainly haven’t regretted, despite certain cultural aspects we knew in advance would be difficult… not to mention a long and costly struggle to sell the New Hampshire house, and one that we only could sell at a 40% [yes, that’s correct] loss.  However… was it really a choice?  Technically, you can say it was a choice, and we made it, but most people, I suspect, when faced with those sorts of choices, decide as we did, to accept the choice that makes the most sense occupationally and financially.

While we came through this difficult time eventually better off, there are others faced with so-called choices who aren’t so fortunate.  Poor full-time working single parents with children often are faced with the “choice” of making slightly more money – and losing Medicaid health care for their children, which means that more income results in a lower standard of living.  Is deciding against working more really a choice?  Or the illusion of one?

In cases similar to ours, but unlike us, what if one spouse has a solid job in the local area, and the other spouse can’t find a new job at anywhere near the same skill and pay level in that same area, while the still-employed spouse can’t find one in the new area – and moving will result in a totally lower income?  Either choice is bad… and this is happening to more and more two-paycheck families.  Yet those who come up with the statement, “But you chose,” don’t see that such a “choice” isn’t really a choice for anyone who weighs the options carefully.

What’s also overlooked is that earlier choices in life restrict later choices.  Having children early in life restricts what a couple can do for the immediate years to come, but having them late in life may mean that you won’t be retiring any time soon.  Borrowing vast sums of money to pursue a medical career likely means long years of private practice and likely a specialty field, because those are usually the only parts of the field where the income can pay off massive student loans.  I’ve known lawyers who have turned down judicial appointments for similar reasons.

This “illusion of choice” permeates everywhere.  Although it’s one thing when executive decisions are patently illegal, does a junior executive or a field engineer with a family and large student debts loudly and persistently question executive or corporate decisions that may be questionable?  How often?  How loudly?

What’s so often overlooked or quietly ignored is that so many of the so-called choices in life are anything but the result of choosing between “equal” or close-to-equal possibilities.  I’m not so sure that the only “real” choices one has are in the supermarket, where you have at least several varieties of every product all close to the same price, not to mention the generics. 

In short, in real life, all alternatives of choices have downsides, and most “choices” aren’t between equal alternatives, and, yes, people do make bad choices… all the time.  But from what I’ve seen and experienced in life, at all too many times, no choice is optimal, and suggesting that someone who selects the least damaging choice is at fault for the downsides is disingenuous at best, if not arrogantly dismissive.  It also perpetuates the “illusion of choice.”

As a writer, for most of every day I work alone, at least in terms of human companionship, although what I do is observed by our three dogs and two cats.  Thankfully, in regard to my professional activities, their communication skills do not extend to writing, proofing, or commenting upon what I produce.  This means that I’m relatively isolated from much of the activity in that area of the United States where we live, Utah, otherwise known as the semi-sovereign theocracy of Deseret.  At times, periodically, events of such a pointed nature surface that even I cannot escape such reminders of the omnipresent theocracy.

Two months ago, it was the pronouncement by the theocrats – or one of the theocracy’s General Authorities, as I recall – that the LDS Church firmly opposed any change in the state’s highly restrictive and often ludicrous liquor laws.  Needless to say, although a number of legislators had suggested bringing the laws into the twentieth century, thus only being a century or so behind the rest of the nation, the legislature immediately decided against considering any changes.

The second reminder arrived with the Monday morning paper, the Salt Lake Tribune.  As part of the paper, there was a “32-Page Special Section,” under the Tribune letterhead, and with no indication that it was an advertising section, entitled “Commencing With a Mission,” featuring the color photograph of a good-looking male high school student who will be skipping his high school graduation ceremony in order to begin his two year LDS church mission.  Only inside the edition next to the page numbers is any indication of the purpose of the section, and there the words “LDS Conference” appear.  In short, the “Special Edition” consists of 32 pages specific to the Mormon Church and its biannual faith-wide General Conference.  The section has ads, just like the rest of the paper, and while some clearly have an LDS slant [more about those later], every story is LDS-themed.  It’s clearly not an advertising insert.

I certainly would have expected such an insert if I subscribed to the Deseret News, which is owned and operated, if through LDS subsidiaries, by the LDS Church – but because I’m anything but of the LDS faith, that is why I subscribe to the Tribune.

As for the ads, some were the “normal” types for tankless water heaters, vacation destinations, eyeglass providers, and furniture stories, etc., while others were clearly aimed at missionaries, advertising the best “missionary suits” and garb or offering “missionary discounts” on luggage, as well as a few others tailored toward church-related goods  The ad that I found screamingly objectionable was the full-page spread by Utah State University, perhaps because the lead “point” in the listing of USU’s features was that it boasts the “World’s Largest LDS Institute Program.”   I have trouble when a state-supported, state institution receiving federal funds advertises in a religious supplement about its religious capabilities… and those capabilities are limited to a single faith.

Somehow, I can’t imagine the Los Angeles Times printing, or getting away with printing, a special supplement devoted to covering Scientology, especially in such a flattering fashion, or the Boston Globe printing a similar section on Christian Science… or state universities in either California or Massachusetts advertising their support of a specific faith.

But then, California and Massachusetts aren’t semi-sovereign theocracies.