“… the price even a willing seller would be able to get from his property just took a huge hit. All a developer has to do now is make a lowball offer and threaten to involve a bought-and-paid-for politician to take the property away if the owner doesn’t acquiesce.”
Second, unlike the prototypical eminent domain case, in which the land is seized to build, say, a school or road, in this case the city is using eminent domain to seize property that will then be turned over to a private developer. If this new development increases the value of the property, all of that value will be captured by the new owner, rather than the forced sellers. As a result, the city will have made itself richer (through higher taxes), and the developer richer, while leaving the forced sellers poorer in both subjective and objective senses.”
I think Todd made exactly the right point about elitism being the operative problem here. Kelo represents a growing tendency of the political, business and legal elite feeling entitled to impose a creeping oligarchy by inverting clear meanings of Constitutional clauses so that some – namely what Ayn Rand once called ” the aristocracy of Pull” – shall be more equal than others.
Some of us can advertise our political opinions less than sixty days before an election and some of us cannot. Some of us can bribe and intimidate a village or town council composed of small-timers with bad toupees and unjustifiably large egos into looting the homes and businesses of their unconnected neighbors and some of us will lose our homes.
Oligarchy is a sign of civilizational decay.
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Dan tdaxp:
June 25th, 2005 at 3:40 pm
Mark,
Great post.
If after thirty years of trying to tilt the Supreme Court of the United States to the right and toward a philosophy of judicial restraint the best outcome we get is this morally obtuse and defiantly Orwellian decision by the textual-phobic moderate Justices, it is time for the GOP to throw in the towel.
The GOP is tring to take down (“weaken the independence of”) and take over the judiciary.
Ideological insurgent struggle naturally takes decades. Why quit after only three?
and we’ve tried in the West a system where the wealthy can simply expropriate land at need, reducing the non-wealthy to indentured tenants in fact if not in word – it’s called feudalism, and it didn’t work out too well, all things considered.
Similar arch-libertarian criticisms are made of the real estate tax, and for that matter the old English tradition of considering “abandoned” land “abandoned.” For more than a millennium, the Anglo-Saxon tradition has seen land as a source of wealth and viewed those unable or unwilling to monetize their land skeptically.
Unfortunately, the requirement to pay fair market value is a grossly inadequate safeguard on government power for two reasons
Nor is the pre-decision status quo. As part of a South Dakotan intra-GOP feud, a Republican Sioux-Falls fixer had the city seized and burned down the home of a Republican friend-of-Janklow. The reason? The fixer suddenly realized the fire department needed practice, and that the home just happened to fit the bill.
Was it illegal? Yup. Does the City of Sioux Falls owe hundreds of thousands in legal judgements? Of course. Did any of that put a meaningful “safeguard on government power” that the Court took away? Nope.
The case came down to states rights v. the right of the federal government to make social policy. The court decided right.
-Dan tdaxp
Mithras:
June 25th, 2005 at 4:49 pm
Oligarchy is a sign of civilizational decay.
This is something of an amusing objection, given that the Republican Party is the center of oligarchs’ political power.
Next, you’ll be telling us how dangerous wealth inequality is.
mark:
June 25th, 2005 at 6:21 pm
Hi Mithras
“This is something of an amusing objection, given that the Republican Party is the center of oligarchs’ political power”
Soros, Ford, Carnegie,,Mellon, Rockefeller, Heinz, MacArthur, TIDES etc. etc.
Given the great dynastic family fortunes that back liberal and left-wing causes I’d say I’m on target. At a minimum, elitist preference for oligarchical outcomes is a bipartisan phenomenon
Hey Dan,
I’m not inclined to give up so much as it its important to realize that the strategy has its limits as a magic bullet.
Anglo-Saxon tradition going back to the era of enclosure of the commons does take that view but that thrust was not directed at land held under the Lockean understanding of property rights but at commons land or land regarded as terra incognita.
I had a brief, rare, altruistic moment of local government service in my life that dealt with making planning & zoning decisions. What I saw, even with well-intentioned & honest individuals running the process was a system ripe for gross abuse. The last thing these guys needed was a SCOTUS green light to go completely hog wild.
Dan tdaxp:
June 26th, 2005 at 12:51 am
I had a brief, rare, altruistic moment of local government service in my life that dealt with making planning & zoning decisions. What I saw, even with well-intentioned & honest individuals running the process was a system ripe for gross abuse. The last thing these guys needed was a SCOTUS green light to go completely hog wild.
Agreed.
However, in the last few decades the Supreme Court has done far more harm to liberty than all the zoning boards in the nation. Given the choice between federal regulation of zoning boards, or local control, I’ll go with local control.
-Dan tdaxp
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