Collapse_ How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - Jared Diamond [41]
To conclude this chapter about Montana, largely related in my words, I’ll now let four of my Montanan friends relate in their own words how they came to be Montanans, and their concerns for Montana’s future. Rick Laible is a newcomer, now a state senator; Chip Pigman, an old-timer and a land developer; Tim Huls, an old-timer and a dairy farmer; and John Cook, a newcomer and a fishing guide.
Here is Rick Laible’s story: “I was born and brought up in the area around Berkeley, California, where I have a business manufacturing wooden store fixtures. My wife Frankie and I were both working hard. One day, Frankie looked at me and said, ‘You’re working 10 to 12 hours a day, seven days a week.’ We decided to semi-retire, drove 4,600 miles around the West to find a place to settle, bought our first house in a remote part of the Bitterroots in 1993, and moved to a ranch that we bought near the town of Victor in 1994. My wife raises Egyptian Arabian horses on the ranch, and I go back to California once a month for my business that I still own there. We have five children. Our oldest son always wanted to move to Montana, and he manages our ranch. The other four of our kids don’t understand the Montana quality of life, don’t understand that Montanans are nicer people, and don’t understand why their parents moved here.
“Nowadays, after each of my monthly four-day visits to California, I want to get out of there: I feel, ‘They’re like rats in a cage!’ Frankie goes back to California only twice a year to see her grandchildren, and that’s enough of California for her. As an example of what I don’t like about California, I was recently back there for a meeting, and I had a little free time, so I took a walk on the town street. I noticed that people coming in the other direction lowered their eyes and avoided eye contact with me. When I say ‘good morning’ to people that I don’t know in California, they’re taken aback. Here, in the Bitterroot, it’s the rule that when you pass someone that you don’t know, you make eye contact.
“As for how I got into politics, I’ve always had many political opinions. The state assembly legislator for my district here in the Bitterroots decided not to run and suggested to me that I run instead. He tried to convince me, and so did Frankie. Why did I decide to run? It was ‘to put something back’—I felt that life has been good to me, and I wanted to make life better for local people.
“The legislative issue in which I’m particularly interested is forest management, because my district is forested and many of my constituents are woodworkers. The town of Darby, which lies in my district, used to be a rich lumber town, and forest management would create jobs for the valley. Originally, there were about seven lumber mills in the valley, but now there are none, so the valley has lost those jobs and infrastructure. The decisions about forest management here are currently made by environmental groups and the federal government, with the county and state being excluded. I’m working on forest management legislation that would involve collaboration between the three lead parties within the state: federal, state, and county agencies.
“Several decades ago Montana was among the top 10 U.S. states in its per-capita income; now, it stands 49 out of 50, because of the decline of the extraction industries (logging, coal, mines, oil, and gas). Those lost jobs were high-paying union jobs. Of course, we should not go back to over-extraction, of which there was some in the old days. Here in the Bitterroot, both a husband and wife have to work, and often they each have to hold two jobs, in order to make ends meet, yet here we are surrounded by this over-fueled forest. Everybody here, environmentalists or not, agrees