I wonder how the government is going to react when their tax receipts come in a good deal lower than in the go go days. I know in the Sacramento city and/or county government, they now have a hiring freeze.

1. They’ve become addicted to the income.

2. Low prices are the Pine Sol & Clorox to keep the party going. (ie: college party out of beer)

3. Several people’s jobs at the auction company, the BLM, and several other organizations are completely dependent upon the transaction of that land (at any price.)

4. The land doesn’t actually belong to those people, and they are going to beat it like a rented mule to keep their jobs for a while longer. (think of the college kids driving a ‘rented’ car down to buy more beer late in the night)

5. The BLM might be aware that if they don’t sell now, at lower prices, that they will continue for many years to compete for “customers” with the very builders that they sold the adjacent land to in the last couple years, at the pompous “above appraised price.”

If the builders want to / need to dump it, the BLM could have created it’s own desperate competition for land buying dollars for some time to come, and thereby violated theories # 1,2,3 & 4 above.

Of course, it could just be an example of the Number 1 priority of any bureaucracy.

To protect the bureaucracy.

Number 2 rule: Grow the bureaucracy by any means available.

I don’t like the BLM much, though, so I’m probably very biased.