One big sky, a sea of grass stretching from horizon to horizon. That was Nebraska before Northern Europeans touched it. Thousands upon thousands of buffalo, elk, deer, and antelope grazed it and grizzly bears, wolves and a few Indians preyed on the grazers. Property? -- the concept didn't exist.

Then the buffalo and the Indians all but disappeared and cattle grazing the open range took their place. Still the land was not owned by anyone but claimed by the new United States of America. Travelers passed through but few saw any potential. The country produced little of value to mankind and nobody cared because everybody owned it which means that nobody owned it.

John Stossel explained it in a recent column. Stossel says "It is called the 'tragedy of the commons.' The idea is as old as ancient Greece, but ecologist Garrett Hardin popularized the phrase in a 1968 Science Magazine article. Hardin described a common pasture on which anyone may graze his livestock. Each person will benefit from a larger herd but will suffer only a tiny fraction of the negative effects of overgrazing. Public Choice economists call this "concentrated benefits and dispersed costs."

"That is a recipe for depleting the resource. If a herdsman were to leave a portion of the commons ungrazed, someone else would gain the benefit, so why leave it ungrazed? Soon all the grass is gone, and the livestock die. That's the tragedy of the commons."

"There are two possible solutions. One is to put someone in charge. But that someone would have arbitrary power over the rest--he may give his friends better terms -- and one individual can't possibly know how to plan the village economy."

The second solution was exactly what the U.S. government did in the early 1800s. They made the land, all the land, available for private ownership. "Free land" was the cry and the Homestead Act brought thousands to Nebraska to claim and settle every available square foot of land.

Returning to Stossel, "Property rights unite costs and benefits. If a herdsman owns part of the pasture, he reaps not only 100 percent of the benefits of enlarging his herd but also 100 percent of the costs. Under those conditions, he behaves differently. If he undergrazes, uses pesticides and applies fertilizer, etc., to make sure that the pasture flourishes next year, he can anticipate the future benefits. So, he has a strong incentive to be a good steward of the land."

Private ownership of the land has worked well. Agriculture is the economic engine that makes Nebraska the great state that it is today. American agriculture is the most efficient in the world today and private ownership of the means of production is the reason.

The first "solution" above is also pertinent today. Less than two decades ago, Nebraska the State arbitrarily took ownership of the water both underground and surface. That is the inferior "solution" and I fear it is a recipe for disaster. Water is a mineral no less than oil, coal, or any other valuable ore is a mineral and should have been left to be privately owned. Water "rights" could then have been bought, sold, conserved or used in the most efficient way just as the land under which it lies has been so successfully cared for.

Next week the "Friends of the River" will have a hearing of a lawsuit they brought against Nebraska as a direct result of an unjust attempt to allocate irrigation water. "One individual can't possibly know how to handle the village economy" but then that fact never hampered a politician, the court or a career bureaucrat. I implore the reader to pay close attention because the whole economy of Southwest Nebraska is at stake. I fear the tragedy of us riding the Titanic and only seeing the tip of the iceberg.

That is the way I see it!