Travel Photography > Great Basin > Mono Lake, California

Although the Mono Basin itself comprises fourteen unique ecosystems, the lake itself is one in and of itself, one of North America's oldest lakes. Many of its species - the flies and shrimp for example, are unique in the world.

It is for all purposes a simple economy of an ecosystem; few places in the world harbor such a simplicity of balance; so few players, like a macroeconomic graph on a University chalkboard. Guns and butter, flies and shrimp.

A pipeline runs through it, and dumps into the California Waterway; a vast manmade barrier which propels in pretty much a straight line toward Los Angeles, to feed grass in the desert.

Twenty years ago, Mono Lake was imperiled by the theft of its water. A hearty ecosystem had lost its air to breathe, the lake had lowered to half its size. Salt content was rising, choking the ecosystem like a harsh tax.

I have always found it strange that the armchair proponents of free markets and healthy economies are the first to poo-poo the free market of ecology. Economics and ecology are the same. If we define economy like Milton Friedman or Alan Greenspan, economics is just the practice and study of infinite wants in a world of limited resources.

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