Glen Tenney

Common Property Is the Culprit in Land-Use Conflicts

Glen Tenney

In his recent book The Business of Commerce, Chapman University philosopher and Hungarian immigrant Tibor Machan offers a compelling truth: “In a community with a large public sector, people engaged in various projects face a constant risk of intruding on one another and having conflicting interests.” When it comes to land-use issues, Nevadans and our neighbors throughout the West understand Machan’s observation all too well. As the dispute over repairing the South Canyon Road in Jarbidge illustrates, common property is controlled not by market mechanisms but politics.