In analyzing America's nineteenth century dilemma, Veblen concluded that vested interests did not bear their share of environmental costs because the "doing business" rationale of wealthy Americans caused rapid social losses for the nation at large. As an eyewitness to wasteful farming practices and to business domination of government, a situation which permitted the slaughter of buffalo and exploitation of the Indian in his time, Veblen provided a unique and penetrating assessment of what was going on in the United States. The various forms of "progress"-- the fur trading, mining, ranching, farming and oil drilling frontiers--Veblen understood as having produced huge social losses, almost impossible to calculate on a monetary basis. As Veblen wrote: "this American plan or policy is very simply a settled practice of converting all public wealth to private gain on a plan of legalized seizure." The scheme of converting public wealth to private gain gave impetus, Veblen argued, to the growth of slavery because of the development of one-crop agriculture on a large scale fueled by forced labor. Both agricultural and real estate speculation were aspects of this progressive confiscation of natural resources. The history of frontier expansion, Veblen maintained, was marked by the seizure of specific natural resources for privileged interests. There was a kind of order for the taking: what was most easily available for quick riches went first. After the despoliation of wildlife for fur trade wealth came the taking of gold and other precious minerals followed by the confiscation of timber, iron, other metals, oil, natural gas, water power, irrigation rights, and transportation right-of-ways. What was the result of such a shortsighted policy? The inevitable consequence, Veblen maintained, was the looting of the nation's nonrenewable resources to enrich the privileged few. The fur trade, Veblen said, represented this kind of exploitation and was "an unwritten chapter on the debauchery and manslaughter entailed upon the Indian population of the country." The sheer nastiness of this rotten business was such that it produced, according to Veblen, "the sclerosis of the American soul." (From Wilbur R. Jacobs "Indians as Ecologists and Other Environmental Themes in American Frontier History". This is in "American Indian Environments", edited by Christopher Vecsey and Robert W. Venables, Syracuse University, 1980. Highly recommended.) Louis Proyect
