Alaskans Should Reject All State and Federal Impositions
Mr. Petta, who studied at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, is a master’s candidate in English at William Paterson College, Wayne, New Jersey. He is becoming an increasingly active voice for libertarian philosophy.
Many Americans are inspired nostalgically by a hope that classical liberalism has not been forever relegated to lonely chapters in antiquated political texts. Alaska, in particular, cultivates an optimistic vision of a political square-one, a “last frontier” that nurtures individualism as it rejects centralized control. If the liberal vision of our Founding Fathers can be realized anywhere in the United States without armed revolution, it is in Alaska. It provides us still with a peaceful opportunity to experience enlightened government because of its unique history and physical location.
Because the land is sparsely populated, the average Alaskan is free from technocratic control, an overbearing police presence, and other Orwellian social features. Yet on a comprehensive level, Alaskan freedom is a false illusion, an economic frontier that has been conquered well before its maturation by a greedy, unchecked federal bureaucracy and factionalized special interests.
Alaska’s frontier is presently under siege from outside and from within, the result of a rush to claim the respective nuggets of gold that Alaska has to offer environmentalists, Native Alaskans, newly transplanted mainlanders, anarchists, libertarians, communitarian-socialistic demagogues, the Alaskan government, and most especially the U.S. government. The intensity of these factions is fueled by an awareness that an important political cusp is approaching, forcing unlikely alliances between them. Too often, ends justify means, subverting philosophic consistency; factions simultaneously defy and beg the assistance of higher bureaucratic authorities. I learned firsthand that the average Alaskan has, like most other Americans, little knowledge of the real causal relationships between political and economic institutions.
Behind Alaska’s somewhat desperate political climate lies a pervasive federal government and a compliant state government indulged by the scores of federal mandates controlling land use. The State of Alaska is hostage to a federal policy that explicitly advocates the redistribution of wealth. At the root of this oppression is an economic climate antithetical to private property, one damaging to the future growth of Alaska, and threatening to individual freedoms.
History
Like most of the United States, Alaska was purchased directly by the federal government. Once referred to as “Seward’s Folly” in dubious honor of William Henry Seward, chief advocate of the acquisition and Secretary of State under Andrew Johnson, Alaska cost a mere $7.2 million when purchased from Russia in 1867. The sale was tepidly received by the American people.
Until Alaska was granted statehood in 1959, the federal presence there had been primarily military. During World War II, the two most distant islands of the Aleutian chain, Attu and Kiska, were occupied by the Japanese until liberated by the U.S. Seventh Infantry Division. Understandably, this campaign went largely unnoticed by Americans because of greater concerns in Europe and the Pacific. Yet Alaska’s strategic importance during the Cold War created a renewed awareness in the public conscience that this territory was, in fact, American. With statehood came the official conclusion to Manifest Destiny, and even at this point the greater part of Alaska’s history was forthcoming.
Unlike the ever-expanding and eminently more accessible mainland West, Alaska was not offered for two cents an acre to willing settlers and farmers because its lack of national political importance. Economic concerns such as gold mining, timber, and fishing did emerge during these years, bringing short-lived waves of mass influx but only trickles of permanent homesteaders. Alaska’s present social fragmentation is the result of a history of these economic booms that have historically left the frontier abandoned. Consequently, the few American communities that did develop dealt with life from a highly localized, even immediate, perspective. An intrusive jurisdiction was hardly necessary and even today seems an impossible logistic in the face of local self-governing needs.
Since there has never been a steady public interest in Alaska until very recently, the federal government became its main advocate during the relatively stagnant 92 years between purchase and statehood. In this respect only is the federal government blameless for present conditions. It was, and perhaps still is, viewed as a land to be used, not developed for long-term or large-scale human habitation.
The discovery of oil on the North Slope in 1968 replaced the days of simple freedom in a pristine wilderness with a melting pot of big business, workers, environmentalists, government agencies, and the ensuing bureaucracies. The oil pipeline which runs from Prudhoe Bay on the Arctic Ocean down to Valdez on the Prince William Sound, is responsible for the creation of many new towns and for the growth of existing communities. As Alaska became increasingly more accessible and as the quality of life improved as a result of this infusion, mainlanders looking for a new way of life, academicians, and special interest advocates followed, helping to further expand an emerging social infrastructure.
The general feeling that one perceives of not being in the United States, but in a breakaway country, is understandable from a psychological perspective. Alaskans are the victims of a rather brazen lack of respect from their fellow Americans and their federal government. Alaska is still viewed by many as a windfall asset for the exclusive use of the American common good, federal monopoly or not. Along with the recent growth in Alaska have come interest groups from the lower forty-eight, staging old ideological battles in a new land. The inevitable assimilation of “concerned” mainlanders into Alaskan society has caused the conservative Alaskan conscience to backlash, and has created more factions than ever imaginable. Demagogues from the “south,” eager to spread egalitarian precepts and advance socialistic legislation through the exploitation of ethnic and environmental issues, have forcibly moved the modern American social battleground north.
Facts
The overwhelming dependence the modern Alaskan has upon government is primarily the fault of a self-serving bureaucracy, complemented by a largely radical populace engaged in fly-by-night politics. Thus, it is easy to see why government retains so much power in Alaska today. But how did government ever become so entrenched in the first place?
In the most heavily subsidized state in the union, Alaskans welcome government-sponsored cake while rejecting it in theory. Even members of the Alaskan Independence Party receive their redistributed benefits. According to The Wall Street Journal: “Alaska’s state and local general expenditures as a percentage of state personal income are two and a half times the U.S. average. The state and local government payroll, also measured against personal income, is about twice the U.S. average.”[1] This, by residents who enjoy the highest per capita income in the United States to begin with and are the least-taxed members of the union, paying neither sales nor state income tax![2] Every one of Alaska’s approximately 540,000 inhabitants is indulged by government spending four times more than the residents of any other state.[3] This is in large part due to a phenomenon referred to, perhaps ironically, as the “permanent fund,” an annual dividend of nearly $1,000 awarded to every Alaskan citizen.
This fund is completely financed by an oil industry forced to be “generous” for the simple fact that 99 percent of all land in Alaska is government-owned, 75 percent by the federal government.[4] Moreover, a whopping 85 percent of the state’s budget is provided by oil revenues, yet 65 percent of all jobs in Alaska are government-sponsored![5] This contrast in economic efficiency need not be detailed. The only monopoly on power is exercised by the state and federal governments, forcing what little industry exists into a state of virtual slavery. How much more prosperous would the citizens of Alaska be if industry were allowed to operate unbridled, without the condescension of government?
At Prudhoe, a state land facility, twenty-five cents of every dollar in oil revenue is deposited directly into Alaska’s permanent fund, now in excess of $11 billion.[6] However, Prudhoe Bay’s output has begun to decline by 7-10 percent a year since 1990.[7] As oil production slows, Alaskans are threatened with an income tax and an alternative economic plan. The battle to open the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve (ANWR) to drilling is presently being fought, but by whom? The majority of Alaskans support drilling at the ANWR site even though the land is federally owned, which will likely result in less free revenue for the average citizen. Environmental groups vociferously denounce drilling at ANWR, even though only .1 percent of the refuge’s 19 million acres will be affected.[8]
Alaskans are violently proud of their land, what little of it is actually theirs. Understandably, there is an instinct for a citizenry so bonded to such a special region to react against the “destructive” forces of industry. Thus, the average Alaskan is also decidedly in favor of environmentalist measures. They turn to the state and federal governments to, in essence, protect these interests. Meanwhile, the oil industry is providing the aforementioned gratuities, made obligatory by a government monopoly on land! The Alaskan future is thus compromised, the consumer is burdened with the inevitably inflated cost of fuel, and special interests gain false credibility and power.
Government Tyranny
Witness a government that is seemingly both problem and solution, which renders it, in fact, the problem only. In Federalist No. 1, Alexander Hamilton argues for “the utility of Union.” He feared, as did the rest of the Founding Fathers, the tyranny that eventually follows democratic instability. Over the last 200 years, Americans have gradually become tyrannized by the over-utilization of union. There are few rugged individualists left in Alaska willing to forgo the benefits of mere residency and, so, government control over everyday life becomes insuperable. Any chance for a citizenry to benefit from a free-market where economic growth and lower consumer costs are complementary, not at odds, is conveniently disregarded. The real beneficiary of this arrangement is, of course, the state and federal governments, in terms of money and power.
Ayn Rand identifies the type of conspiracy that is highly visible in Alaska today:
Every coercive monopoly that exists or has ever existed—in the United States, in Europe, or anywhere else in the world—was created and made possible only by an act of government: by special franchises, licenses, subsidies, by legislative actions which granted special privileges (not attainable on a free market) to a man or group of men, and forbade all others to enter that particular field.[9]
The so-called economic crisis that looms on Alaska’s snow-capped horizon has been artificially created, artificially (and temporarily) quelled by government control over big business, and is being artificially intensified by contradictory government programs designed to “promote” growth. The resulting tension and confusion among Alaskans is unfortunate as it, too, is an artificial creation.
There is no real threat apparent, certainly not from industry, so government agencies have created an explosive political situation by inventing needs for their usefulness. In 1981, the Alaska National Interest and Lands Conservation bill was enacted, resuming federal control over fish, game, and land.[10] As can be imagined, the efficiency of such management has been less than exemplary. For example, large expenditures have been wasted on subsidizing agriculture because bison responsible for trampling crops are protected by federal statutes. Fishermen have been lent money to buy boats, yet are thwarted from prospering because of strict bureaucratic control over fishing permits.[11] There are dozens more such cases.
Both acts epitomize the contradictory legislative hybrids that can only be created by government; in this case, the simultaneous pandering to special interests and the forcing of gratuitous political measures to “assist” the weakening economic infrastructure. It is a manipulation on par with any textbook fascism. A motivation to fragment, and thus dominate, is veiled behind the irony of government “service.” Grossly paternal programs such as the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (1971), which mandated that Native Alaskans form tribal corporations subsidized by both the federal and state governments, ultimately failed because they were embraced only in lieu of less palatable offers from government.[12]
Solution
The one option never offered Alaskans is the answer to every chronic problem that the state suffers—the privatization of all land and the disbandment of state and federal regulatory bodies. Consequently, many Alaskans subvert inherently classical liberal values they wish for in their everyday lives by soliciting programs, agencies and legislative acts that are antithetical to their true aim of personal freedom.
There is no logical reason for private industry not to thrive in Alaska. Enjoying untapped resources that would be the envy of most nations, there is certainly no argument against potential prosperity. Alaska could be testament to the powerful quality of the individual human psyche when freed from the artificial burdens of government extended beyond its proper boundaries. Alaskans must rise to their own level of beliefs by rejecting all state and federal impositions, regardless of windfall economic benefits that are invariably less “profitable” than free market growth and individual freedom. []
1. “Out in the Cold,” Wall Street Journal, December 22, 1993, A10.
2. “Now, the diet,” The Economist, January 29, 1994; 330: 30.
6. “Hickel in a pickle,” The Economist, January 4, 1992, 322: 22.
7. “The last frontier,” The Economist, October 19, 1992, 321, 31.
9. Ayn Rand, Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal (New York: Penguin Books USA Inc., 1967), p. 73.
10. “Alaska,” Encyclopedia Americana, 1993 ed.
11. The Economist, October 19, 1991, 321, 31.
12. Gary C. Anders, “Social and Economic Consequences of Federal Indian Policy: A Case Study of the Alaska Natives,” Economic Development and Cultural Change 37 (1989), 285.
