The fires of January 2025 in Los Angeles have been historic. The scope of destruction is like nothing I have ever seen from fire in my lifetime. Eighty to one hundred mile per hour winds turned the area into something that looked like an apocalyptic hellscape. A combination of man-made and natural phenomena were the cause of the fires.
A recent Wall Street Journal article identifies one factor that made the fires worse than they otherwise would have been. State and Federal land near people’s houses often remained unmanaged and uncleared of brush and other vegetation that created more fuel for the massive fires:
“Barry Josephson enjoyed a peaceful life in his hilltop home in the Pacific Palisades, save for one constant worry: the highly flammable brush that clogged the surrounding government-owned land.” (“How L.A. Bureaucracy Made It Harder to Clear Flammable Brush: A mishmash of government agencies failed to keep public lands safe from deadly wildfires, residents say”, The Wall Street Journal, by Jim Carlton, Mark Maremont and Dan Frosch Jan. 18, 2025 5:30 am ET; https://www.wsj.com/us-news/climate-environment/how-l-a-bureaucracy-made-it-harder-to-clear-flammable-brush-683f953e?st=MGTcv2&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink)
Much of the native vegetation in Southern California is prone to fire because it has evolved to use fire as a means of reproducing itself. The build-up of such vegetation is therefore a build-up of fuel for fire. The more there is of it, the worse the resulting fire. A landowner who did not clear his property of vegetation would be no different than a landowner who stored up kerosene or some other flammable substance on his property over time.
The Wall Street Journal documents how the lack of private property rights exacerbated the fires in Los Angeles, which probably led to the unnecessary loss of life and property.
Why did State and Federal land managers fail to clear out the excess vegetation on public land? In essence, the Wall Street Journal article says that different bureaucracies all had input into how public land was managed:
“In the Palisades, the city and county of Los Angeles, the state parks department, the California Coastal Commission, and the National Park Service all have a say in what happens on land surrounding residential areas.” (Id.)
The result was that basic responsibilities of landownership were often not taken because everyone, and no one, owned the public land:
“The delays were caused by a slow-moving tangle of government agencies that own or regulate Los Angeles’s undeveloped land and are tasked with mitigating wildfire risks, according to a review of public records and interviews by The Wall Street Journal.” (Id.)
Nearby private landowners often had to beg government agencies to do something about the excessive growth of public land. When nothing was done, private landowners would sometimes undertake to clear public land, despite the risk of being fined or arrested for doing so:
“Impatient with government bureaucracy, including a $150 fee for permission to remove brush from state parkland, some of Josephson’s neighbors cleared it on their own.” (Id.)
In other words, not only was the government failing to clear public lands of fuel for wildfires, but it often prohibited neighboring private landowners from doing so. (Such is the insanity of “Progressive”, Democratic California government.)
By breaking the law, and clearing out this land of excess vegetation, they may have saved portions of Pacific Palisades in the process:
“They might have saved some of their homes. Of 81 houses in the vicinity, Josephson said 54 are still standing amid the wreckage of this month’s Palisades fire, including his. It is particularly remarkable because investigators believe the blaze could have started a few hundred feet away, around a popular hiking destination known as Skull Rock.” (Id.)
The argument is often made that government is needed to solve “negative externalities” like air or water pollution. But, this demonstrates that the only entity creating “negative externalities” in Pacific Palisades was the State of California and the Federal Government. Their failure to engage in basic vegetation management exacerbated this natural disaster.
But why would government managers of public lands fail to manage public property like this? The answer lies in the nature of property rights.
In her 1965 article, “The Cashing In: The Student ‘Rebellion’”, originally found in “The Objectivist Newsletter”, Ayn Rand spoke about the use of public university buildings and facilities by “student rebels” to undercut freedom of speech. Students at Berkley in the 1960’s began shouting obscenities indoors, and “occupying” university buildings, claiming that they had the right to “freedom of movement” and “freedom of speech” on the University.
Ayn Rand noted that the waters were muddied by the fact that the universities were taxpayer-funded. In a sense, everyone, and no one, owns the public universities. Therefore, there are conflicting claims between those who want to learn in their classrooms, and those who claim the right to, for instance, obstruct the entrance to the classroom with their bodies as part of a protest. When there is a taxpayer-funded “public space”, such as a university, road, or sidewalk, such clashes and conflicting claims will be inevitable. It is only on the basis of private property rights that human beings can live together without such conflict:
“It is only on the basis of property rights that the sphere and application of individual rights can be defined in any given social situation. Without property rights, there is no way to solve or to avoid a hopeless chaos of clashing views, interests, demands, desires, and whims.” (“The Cashing-In: The Student ‘Rebellion,’”; Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal, Ayn Rand, Kindle Edition, Pg. 293 of 366; http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/property_rights.html )
This conflict on public university campuses exists to this very day. In the Spring of 2024, we saw supporters of terrorists in the Middle East “occupy” campuses at universities such as UCLA, and begin to ethnically cleanse the campus of “Zionists”, i.e., Jewish students:
“…protesters created a ‘Jew Exclusion Zone’ where in order to pass ‘a person had to make a statement pledging their allegiance to the activists’ view.’ Those who complied with the protesters’ view were issued wristbands to allow them to pass through, the complaint says, which effectively barred Jewish students who supported Israel and denied them access to the heart of campus.” (https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/judge-rules-jewish-students-says-ucla-cant-allow-barred-accessing-camp-rcna166529)
Regardless of what one thinks of the goals, motives, and desires of the “pro-Palestine protestors” on the UCLA campus in 2024, a satisfactory resolution of the issue was impossible due to the nature of so-called “public property”. Everyone is forced to pay for UCLA through their taxes, including the Jewish students and the pro-Palestine students. UCLA will either have to curtail the freedom of the pro-Palestine protestors to associate with who they want, or it will have to curtail the freedom of Jewish students to move about the campus freely without making “loyalty oaths” to Hamas. (My support of people’s freedom to verbally voice support for Hamas and dissociate from Jewish people should not be construed as my agreement with that viewpoint. I only support their right to freedom of association.)
As Ayn Rand noted in 1965, it is only on the basis of property rights that individual rights can be defined in any given social situation. The elimination of property rights eliminates the ability of people to take the actions necessary to maintain their lives. Just as the creation of a “public university” that is “public property” creates intractable social conflicts between students with differing religious and cultural viewpoints, so too does the creation of “public parks” and “public land” create incurable conflicts.
State and Federal parkland near homes and buildings was often not cleared because everyone, and no one, owned that property. Homeowners were often not permitted to clear brush, and no one at the governmental entities controlling these parks had any incentive or authority to do so.
If this parkland had been owned by private individuals, then they would have cleared the brush themselves. The owner would not want his own land to burn, and even if he didn’t care, he would have to fear lawsuits from those with adjoining land that could be damaged by keeping his property in a dangerous condition. Even if the adjoining landowner had abandoned the property, nearby homeowners could have obtained injunctive relief to abate the fire nuisance, or just done it themselves. (Since they would not be damaging the property, they would not have to fear a damages award in trespass, and if the property is abandoned by its owner, then it is subject to adverse possession law in which the neighboring landowner acquires ownership by improving it.)
Moving forward, what should be part of the solution to the problem of improperly managed public lands in California? They should be sold to the highest bidder, with the new owner(s) having full rights of ownership over the property. The new landowners would have the right to develop or do with the land as they will, only subject to the same general laws as other landowners, such as the law of nuisance.
Private owners of this formerly public land would have the right to develop it, or maintain it as parkland. They would also have the correspondent obligations to maintain it in a manner that does not facilitate wildfires. If a fire starts on this land as a result of the negligent failure to manage vegetation, then the owners would be liable in a lawsuit. (Preemptively, the owners of the nearby structures could seek injunctive relief against landowners who create hazardous fire conditions on their land through the common law of nuisance.)
There are other political and cultural problems that California would have to address to mitigate or reduce such fires in the future. This is just one piece of the puzzle. Privatization of land would at least eliminate the lack of accountability that comes from “public property”.