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David Ihde: No one owes you a place to live in Steamboat

In response to Ryan Boyd’s letter on greed, your letter reads like a true Marxist replete with all of the ignorance on economics and the true definition of greed. No one owes you a living or a place to live in Steamboat Springs. This is a second-home resort market now, and with the help of over marketing and misuse of our taxpayer dollars, has made many housing options both tight and out of reach to many.

You mentioned that it is now apparent that workers will do whatever it takes to move and live in Steamboat. It’s always been that way as long as I have lived here and thus I have been doing the 10 job, 10 roommate boogie since 1978. I even lived in my van when I couldn’t afford to live in my own home.

Why are you not doing the same if your living conditions are not what you think they should be? I have seen options in the paper and elsewhere with rents below and square footage larger than what you stated you are paying in your last letter. Why are you not taking advantage of them as opposed to complaining how everyone with money is greedy?



I don’t consider the fact that after working my tail off  to the tune of as much as 111 hours a week (that’s not an exaggeration) with multiple roommates, that has afforded me some comfort here, makes me greedy or privileged. Maybe you should try that.

Real greed in my opinion is what happened in this last election whereby the citizens voted largess on others incomes, homes and businesses to allow for people to live here more comfortably.



As for your claim that corporations and individuals are sitting on obscene amounts of money that does not move shows your ignorance on economics. The only way that money sits is if it’s stuffed into a pillow or a home safe. I’m quite sure that neither is sufficiently large enough.

Instead, that money sits in banks and gets loaned out to people who do build businesses, real estate and purchase consumer products such as automobiles. The real problem with lower-than-optimal wages paid by business stems from crony capitalism, which inhibits competition and thus gives workers fewer places to bid their services. For that, you can blame government and politics.

Having said that, most of a person’s wealth is usually tied up into the assets of their real estate and businesses, not sitting as a pile of liquidity. You act like they got this money for nothing. There is no such thing as just taking unless you are talking government largess and forced coercion.

Every successful business provides a product or service and employs many in a voluntary exchange for that money. Saving that money is called capital. That capital serves many purposes directly and indirectly and much more efficiently than government could ever dream of. None of it is required to be invested here.

If they want to buy an island, that’s their business. It’s not your money or anyone else’s to decide such things anymore than businesses and others telling you how to spend your money.

Our Constitution does not protect the collective, it protects the individual. The collective society did not create the individual or one’s wealth and companies. President Obama and those like you may believe that but our founders and those who want to protect and preserve the constitution and freedom did not and do not.

David Ihde

Steamboat Springs


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