Free enterprise and eminent domain, Private property and the angry mob Options

[madchenallein]

Let me ask my fellow 'social security payers/nonbenefitees' what they think about this: Eminent Domain.

Recently the Supreme Court made a 5-4 ruling essentially expanding the guidelines for the use of eminent domain.

Fox News quote from Justice Stevens who wrote for the majority:
"Promoting economic development is a traditional and long accepted function of government,"

What trash! The federal government is a necessary evil, it's function is accepted by this citizen/voter/taxpayer on a very limited basis, not as a 'super parent' or as a babysitter, or as a cautionary and preventative to protect me against myself. I don't agree that even one, much less a primary function of the federal government's purpose is to foster economic development. You know who fosters that? We do. The people. Hungry? Find someone with food and exchange something YOU have that s/he needs or wants. No brainer. Someone else hungry too? You better team up or you better find something yon food posessor needs more than what yon hungry person #2 can provide.

So, basically they are saying that the government (your city, your county, your state, your nation) can swipe your property and bulldoze or dig up what's on it to put a new grocery store, a new road, a new stadium on it.

How do you like that? Is that fair? Is it an exercise of 'the good of the many versus the good of the few'? Or is this a slide into socialism?

HELLO! We still live in the USA! Why, in our capitalist, free-enterprise society, should a private citizen who has acquired property be required to give it up for 'fair market value'? (Ha, 'fair', should s/he have to give it up for 'fair' when they may have bought the property as an investment and could get 'optimum' value, or if it's the family farm that has been in the family for 95 years, should they have to give it up at all? Last time I checked, Kelly Blue Book doesn't have a category for sentiment.)

This is just another excuse for the greedy, money worshiping cretins in our society to create more shrines to the 'almighty dollar'.

We must stop our government from thieving our rights in exchange for 'safety' and 'the good of everyone', a more socialist statement I've not heard. We don't live in the Star Trek universe.

[ComradeRed]

The bad of eminent domain mathematically outweighs the good.

Let's say the government or a business has a project that is worth $1,000,000 and they need a piece of land that is owned by a private person.

If that private person valued the property at less than $1,000,000, then there is no problem--the government or business offers to pay the person some amount between what the person is willing to sell for and $1,000,000 and both sides are better off (the person would rather have the money and the government/business would rather have the property).

Now let's say the person values the property at more than $1,000,000. Then eminent domain is needed because the person values the property at more than the government does. But this means that the bad of eminent domain is more than the good (since the loss to the person is what he values the property at minus the "fair price" while the gain to the government is $1,000,000 minus the "fair price" -- since we know that the person's value of the property is more than $1,000,000, his loss outweighs the government's gain--so the net gain to society is negative).

From a purely utilitarian perspective, eminent domain is a bad idea. The whole idea of a free market is that the highest bidder gets the property--this is the most efficient way to allocate resources because the people who have the best use for or get the most happiness from things get them. But eminent domain makes it so that a lower bidder gets the property than the person who wants it more.