Comment by perl4ever | Hacker News Reader

Comment by perl4ever | Hacker News Reader

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Eminent domain often seems unfair, but in any situation where everyone must agree to a plan, being the last holdout gives a person power that they really didn't do anything to deserve either. I'm not sure anybody believes that getting everybody to agree on something should always be required to make progress.

Something that comes to mind are the bondholder holdouts that objected to Venezuela's debt restructuring. You may side with the people being bullied by the rich and powerful in any circumstance, but that doesn't uniformly lead to defending holdouts.

My point is, no, paying any price is not how things work in capitalist societies or anywhere, because it's not practical, regardless of how unfair this particular instance is.

Edit: Wow, fastest downvote ever. Wonder if it is automated somehow. I don't think the ability (and prevalence) of downvoting opinions you disagree with contributes to the professed goals of HN. I appreciate strict moderation for civility, but given the ability to downvote rather than engage with (or ignore) a polite comment, people tend to abuse it.

I guess it depends on your definition progress. As far as being the last holdout, they did do something to "deserve" the power... They held out. And sometimes that backfires (see the Up house) you shouldn't be made to give up your property, because someone else wants to use it to make money.

I think there are times when eminent domain should be used, but building a stadium, or a mall, is not one of them.

These are peoples homes, land, and likely history. Demolishing that without the blessing of the owners is ridiculous.

I just can't see how that is comparable to bondholder holdouts.

It's not morally comparable, which is an essential part of my point. I think perhaps my comment is inspiring kneejerk reactions as though I was defending this instance of eminent domain, but it was a response to the direct parent, which was attacking something much broader than this instance.

Coordination problems preventing people from making collective progress are real, and mechanisms for eminent domain exist to deal with those real problems, is all I'm saying.

That is independent of whether some holdouts are righteous or not in particular circumstances.

To repeat, please interpret my comments in the context of what I am responding to, not just the article link.

I think the issue is that people think they actually "own" property, when in fact they merely rent it from the state.

It's dressed up with fancy words and paperwork, but when the State has a better use for it than you having it, they will find a way.

That’s the natural conclusion of an individual rights based economy though. There are rules, and the rules lead to concentrations of power, but the rules apply the same to everyone and anyone can take a shot at trying to get that at that concentration of power.

Of course, capital is used to bend the rules, and that becomes unfair, but that’s a whole other topic...

There are places where there is no presumption of rules uniformly applied.

If Oakland were in China, for example, they might decide that East Oakland is a little shabby and has a crime problem, and so they’re just going to raze the whole area and build a new high density eco-city to provide housing for San Francisco offices.

Heck, they might do that to the Sunset!

But that’s not how America works. The people in East Oakland bought the rights to that land. They own it, and so long as they obey the statutes of the city it doesn’t matter how valuable the driving-out of those people might be, if it’s less than the buy-out cost it’s not legally feasible.

The entire system relies on this principle. If I can’t rely on my land being sold at a price I set then I can’t make complex plans based on land use and prices. I have to add in a “government force” slush factor to every calculation and many delicate plans become too risky to try.

As per the top comment in the thread, this is something ameica frequently does to other countries. really, it's the basis of America: the argument is still that it looked shabby under the native Americans, so the Americans were right to take it from them without compensation

Very true. We absolutely don’t apply our laws or values outside our borders or citizens.

Robin Hanson has a recent post[0] that says this relating to eminent domain, and I thought it is pretty interesting in the context of this discussion:

"Last October I posted[1] on Eric Posner and Glen Weyl’s proposal to generalize self-assessed property taxes. For many items, such as land and buildings, you’d pay an annual tax that is a standard percentage of your self-set sale-offer price for the item. This would avoid administrative property valuations, discourage people from sitting on stuff they don’t use, and make it much easier to assemble property into large units. Eminent domain would no longer be needed. They have a new book, Radical Markets, coming out in a few weeks, that I will review soon.

Some libertarian types disapprove on the grounds that this weakens property rights. Which it can, relative to a simple absolute property right. But simple property and liability have long been two quite different, and extreme, solutions to legal problems. Neither one is always best. In this post I want to point out that this alternate approach can be used not only to change traditional property to be more like liability, it can also be used to change traditional liability to be more like property. It is an interesting intermediate form between traditional property and liability. One I expect libertarian types to look on more favorably when applied to liability."

[0] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2018/04/between-property-and-l...

[1] https://www.overcomingbias.com/2017/10/for-stability-rents.h...

This is an interesting idea.

And so the idea is that anyone can then buy the property from you at that price at anytime and you must sell? Or just the state?

From my understanding of Hanson's posts and references, anyone.

It's not automated, it's because the article specifically details how a type of blight designation is being misused as an attempted end-run around a state law that specifically prohibits use of eminent domain for this purpose. The area is not blighted. The crime rate does not meet the legal requirement. The scheme is illegal.

Why isn’t is practical, exactly? Disney World managed to pull it off, and I’m sure there are a ton of other examples. Eminent domain for private projects is the exception, not the rule.

The person who is the last holdout has no more power than any other landholder.

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