![]() ![]() There are too many mushroom pickers, using up too much time and effort to harvest the crop. In high demand situations common property ownership wastes and degrades resources. Thus some mushroom claims are asserted through gunfire, just as were gold mining claims in the last century. When competition takes place out of sight of the law there are always those willing to use violence to get an edge. Of course, not all competition was peaceful. The picker who could get to the next site first had an advantage, hence the appearance on the scene of powerful, four-wheel-drive vehicles. Sites were quickly exploited once discovered. Those who discovered mechanical trenchers could outpick those who worked by hand. If they were peaceful folk they would compete through fast picking. ![]() If two pickers happened onto the same mushroom site, neither had a legal right to exclude the other. #Mushroom wars level 30 hard free#Since the mushrooms were free for the taking, hordes of pickers rushed into the woods. Once mushrooms became a valuable resource, the familiar flaws of common property ownership came to the fore. Prices have skyrocketed, and the mushroom rush is on. But now there is a big gourmet demand for wild mushrooms, not just in the United States, but in Europe and Japan as well. The small tribe of recreational pickers could pick to their heart’s content without getting in one another’s way, and without making a dent in the mushroom population. This caused no problems so long as there was little market demand for wild mushrooms. The government administers these lands as common property, just as public grazing land was administered as common property a hundred years ago. The mushroom grounds of the Northwest are found mainly on federal land. This allowed them to get on with the business of gold mining. They speedily organized into communities which defined private property rights, and stood ready to safeguard those rights. Miners quickly recognized they were diverting too much time from the productive activity of gold mining into wasteful stealing of property and defending of property. In early gold rushes the mining frontier outran the legal establishment, and claims were first established and protected by arms. ![]() The buffalo were hunted nearly to extinction because they too were common property. They were overstocked and overgrazed until the invention of barbed wire allowed the establishment of private property rights. The grazing lands of the West were originally common property. When a person has no rights to the property or its future resources, then there will be no conservation. When valuable resources become private property through the “rule of capture,” people will try to capture them as fast as possible. When valuable resources are free for the taking, takers will rush in. The mushroom fields of the Northwest are defined as common property, open to all comers. Many of the storied conflicts of the Old West had their source in the same problem which lies behind the mushroom wars. It should not be too surprising that all this sounds like the Wild West revisited. Forest wardens now wear flak jackets in the woods. Some pickers are staking out claims, and driving rivals off with gunfire. Some mushroom sites have been so dug up and trampled down they may never be productive again, and the violence is heating up. Pickers say their incomes are falling because of the fierce competition. The Wall Street Journal (May 11, 1993) reports that some pickers have made as much as $1,000 a day and that experts estimate about $50 million worth of mushrooms are coming out of the woods every year. They dig up a mushroom field as fast as they can, then roar off to the next field in high-powered, four-wheel drive pick-ups. #Mushroom wars level 30 hard full#These days the woods are full of aggressive pickers with mechanical trenchers. Not so long ago mushroom picking was a somewhat quaint hobby of gentle folk who wandered the forests, enjoying an outing and picking a few mushrooms along the way. These are the mushroom wars in the once peaceful forests of the Northwest. No, it is not gang warfare in an American inner city. Drive-by shootings, an abandoned car riddled with bullet holes, a man gunned down before he can pull his. ![]()
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