| | Do you know how the spectrum auctions were last done as a "Nash Auction" (after mathematician John Nash). Instead of being secret one-time bids, bidding was open in two rounds, so buyers could adjust their offerings based on open information. In the movie, Beautiful Mind, it's a great scene where the four math nerds are at the bar and they see five pretty co-eds and they all want to rush the alpha, but John Nash points out that if they cooperate and go for the Betas, they all get a date, rather than one winning and the rest losing. It's cute when the girls approach and the prettiest realizes that she's been rejected. Anyway, the method is argued pro and con with the cons coming from the left. Some claim that these auctions did not raise public revenues beyond expectation, but only raised the consulting fees of game theory mathematicians.
So, there's that.
The problems I cited in the three quotes are: the potential for malfeasance, fraud, and abuse anytime the government does business with business (Teapot Domes); the tug-of-war between competing claims as the environmentalists want to subsidize the not-grazing of public lands - it's easy to dislike the Greens, but what standard measures their concerns above or below timber, hunting, or pharmaceutical firms in search of microbes in the soils; and then, the continued grazing which may or may not be cost effective for us who eat meat and pay taxes, but seems to work well for those who sell meat and get subsidies.
So, as for drilling, mining, etc., on public lands, it seems like an old problem in new guise.
And I must say that I am surprised that you worry about "energy independence" (whatever that is).
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