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Comment by throwaway290 | Hacker News Reader

IMO the problem is why such stubborn holdouts exist and why can't the government work with them (are those holdouts being paid or otherwise motivated to hurt public good? organized? do they have pathological distrust to the government, how can that be worked out? etc.) rather than the governments not having the crazy power to just do anything they want if they think it is "public good". The latter is horrifying, I fail to see how it is ever desirable (even if it occasionally leads to positive outcomes, it cannot be trusted to do so reliably).

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Usually they're trying to profit by being the last holdouts, hoping they will be able to get more money this way. It may not be worth paying everyone 3X, but if everyone except one person agreed to X, then paying the last holdout 3X is not a huge expense and gets the project going. At least that's what they're hoping for.

There was a case in my city where they wanted to build a shopping mall and offered the people who owned homes on the plot a deal. Only 1 person refused and asked for much more money (in his words "Who accepts the first offer??"), and since this plot wasn't critical for the project, they never even contacted him after that and just built it without his plot: https://www.vecernji.hr/media/img/38/97/a9f29b9fca44602d5b41... (the lone house in the "corner"). He got mad, sued them, etc.

This was a private company; I'm not sure why the government would have this problem, since they can exercise eminent domain for stuff like infrastructure, it's literally why it exists.

Because government abuses its power, and the US still as a bit of anti-totalitarian DNA.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kelo_v._City_of_New_London

> why such stubborn holdouts exist and why can't the government work with them (are those holdouts being paid or otherwise motivated to hurt public good? organized? do they have pathological distrust to the government, how can that be worked out? etc.)

A highway extension here in Ontario was blocked for years by homeowners who, as far as I can tell, just didn't want their community bulldozed to put in a highway. An entirely reasonable position to hold, regardless of whether the highway is to the public good. There is no reasonable incentive you could give to get some people to give up land they have been on for their whole lives. When one is talking hundreds of properties as in the case of that extension, you will absolutely find a stubborn person who will say no.

In this particular example can't the holdout see how it would benefit the economy (as roads do) that they're part of, possibly reduce emissions into the environment they live in, etc.?

If the government provides them with replacement property, why would they object so strongly?

And doesn't the fact that everyone else agreed make them consider that perhaps it would be public good for some reason?

> In this particular example can't the holdout see how it would benefit the economy (as roads do) that they're part of, possibly reduce emissions into the environment they live in, etc.?

Zou are trying to use logic here, but the simple truth is that a lot of times people don't care about that. They are emotional beings. They simply do not care about any of the points you made, they want to keep their house/property/whatever. They don't care.

Smoking is bad for people and the people around them, yet many don't quit. Wearing masks is great for the public good, yet many do not. One could go on about vaccines and other topics but the simple truth is: They do not care.

That is why laws exist to take these properties from them. If they are absolutely opposed to the offers made, unwilling to sell and can't be moved then you take the property, hand them what others agree is a fair price (or at least the fairest they can come up with), and go through with it anyways.

I disagree that this is acceptable status quo. Emotion has roots, and people can be reasoned with. Lack of care is a threat to democracy.

It looks like if underlying issues are resolved, then there would not be a need for such overreach.

Please don't miss understand, i do agree with you. In an ideal world one should be able to reason with others, people should care about their surroundings and the society that they are a part of.

However, in the world that we live in you also need to keep in mind that we want to get things done. In my experience things such as eminent domain are only used after quite a while of failed negotiations.

The simple truth is that we expect our institutions and governments to get things done. We want them to eventually build a road, not argue with people for years on end whether or not they should sell their property. In many jurisdictions around the world eminent domain or similar is also tied to court proceedings, making it truly the last option.

The current status quo is a compromise nobody is happy with:

* People expect governments to actually get thing done * Some people cannot be reasoned with in a timeframe that is acceptable to society

So they came up with the easiest solution: Negotiate with them until it's clear they won't budge or it takes too long, then force it your way.

If there was a way to get everyone to see reason in a reasonable timespan we might not need the status quo. However, as of right now nobody around the world has achieved that. If anyone manages to do so then we might be able to get rid of things like eminent domain, but until that's the case we are stuck with it, for better or worse.

If you don't feel strong emotional attachment to some particular property, I'm not sure I can explain it to you. There is no monetary value that can replace the living room where you watched your kid take their first walk, or the field where your grandparents are buried, if you happen to be that kind of person.

An analogy: why not make taxes voluntary? (Eminent domain is conceptually most similar to taxation, after all.) Surely after you explain that it's to the public good, you won't have any holdouts, right?

I understand emotional attachment to property. I also understand that nothing is permanent and it may be necessary to let go.

Since I was a child, family moved and sold previously used estate/flats more than once. Yes, there are memories and my grandparents built and lived there. Now other people build and live there. Life goes on.

We are not talking about somebody persuading you to sell your property to satisfy their fancy. It is a cause that will have positive effects on the region and the country.

And you personally, meanwhile, get a free chance to move and find an even better spot that doesn't have the shortcomings of the previous one. I recall that's sort of how USA started.

Framing emotional attachment as an overriding motive and purpose strikes me as an excuse for complacency, aversion to change, laziness.

The cool part of that story is where they seized property with eminent domain, built the toll highway with tax money, then sold the whole thing at a discount to an international conglomerate, to be a toll highway for the next 100 years.

What’s wrong with toll highways. The tax money is still needed to build it, the company operating it isn’t making so much money as to negate that, and eventually the money is replenished through usage fees. By making it a toll way, the people who use it will pay for it eventually, and it discourages low value usage of the road.

> why such stubborn holdouts exist and why can't the government work with them

Because if the government can't exercise eminent domain then those people are incentivized to extract maximum value from the government over the land. They may not want to sell it, or they may charge an exorbitant price.

It's kind of strange how the law recognizes that land ownership is a source of power yet does absolutely nothing against it. If the government has to override the law, just imagine how much they distort the private economy, where there is no easy way out. So many apartments couldn't be built and so many people could not be housed.

Land value tax would solve this.

There's a host of problems. A simple example is a holdout who sees they are the only remaining obstacle to a project, and demand ten million dollars for a fifty thousand dollar plot of land the government needs for the project. A very capitalist mindset! But poison to public works. There's no "working with" someone who thinks they are sitting on a winning lottery ticket.

Another simple problem is that of guarantees. If the government is certain to be able to secure the land in a reasonable timeframe, they can structure the whole project on top of that certainty, planning from start to finish, establishing financing, signing contracts... If acquisition is an open-ended negotiation in which the holdout can linger for decades, either nothing can be done until every last square foot of land is secured, or else you risk suspending everything halfway (very expensive).

This problem wouldn't exist with a land value tax because he would get a $200k tax bill every year (2% LVT).

It's not that simple when the plot of land is developed, because you can't build an expressway without also buying whatever structures sit on that land, which aren't rateable for an LVT and may genuinely be worth much more. Holdouts argue the lot is the same low value land it always has been for LVT purposes but they want $10m to sell their beautiful ancestral family home that sits on it...

A traditional property tax rating encompassing the value of the lot and everything that sits on it works much better for compulsory purchases.

IMO the problem is why such stubborn holdouts exist and why can't the government work with them...

I suspect the legal system is one of the reasons. Judges and precedents carry more weight than in other countries, where parliaments can just pass a law that's unassailable.

On the other hands I read here news about authorities summarily seizing (not just freezing) assets from people that are only accused. That's unconceivable in other jurisdictions.

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