
Feds Want to Subject Every Burning Man Attendee to a Warrantless Drug Search - pseudolus
https://reason.com/2019/06/14/the-feds-want-to-subject-every-burning-man-attendee-to-a-warrantless-drug-search/
======
tomohawk
It's totally not fun when the landowner gets to impose rules on the land they
own.

Whether the landowner (feds) in this case _should_ own so much land west of
the Mississippi is a whole other thing. A strong argument can be made that the
over ownership of land by the feds is completely unfair and likely
unconstitutional.

~~~
pseudolus
Ownership of significant portions of Western States (close to 85% in the case
of Nevada [0]) has long been a complaint but is unequivocally constitutional
inasmuch as many of the Western states were created from Federal land and the
Constitution explicitly grants the Federal Government the right to regulate
and dispose of the land as it sees fit. Also, a positive aspect to Federal
land ownership is the creation of massive National Parks in many of the states
where the Federal Government is a significant land owner. Such parks would
have been unlikely if ownership of the land had been vested in the states
themselves which traditionally have lobbied to have the land deployed more
"productively" (agriculture, mining, etc). This is an ongoing issue in such
places as Utah where local state officials have lobbied, and succeeded, in
having the the size of Federal lands reduced.

[0] [https://www.vox.com/2015/2/16/8046349/federal-government-
lan...](https://www.vox.com/2015/2/16/8046349/federal-government-lan..).

