Reply #57: dude, WHAT local economy? [View All]

[maxsolomon]

are you talking about employing the inuit at oil drilling? their native economy is not "job-based"; its hunting-gathering.

if you're talking about keeping the north slope job base employed at new fields, well, that's an artificial "local".

are you talking about the state economy? i see your point; the state wouldn't be pretty without that oil didviden everyone gets for breathing alaskan air, nor all the federal subsidies the rest of us send their way.

but my god, can't there be ONE PLACE that doesn't have to be economically productive? i mean, the idea of wilderness is that it just IS. you don't have to go there to derive benefit from its existence.