Nevada has tried allodial titles but they are largely a sham you basically pay your property taxes ahead, and yes, you can win if you start developing the land quickly, and then don't get into an accident and die somehow.
Basically, the land belongs to those who have the military power to defend it from others who might come and take it. Then that owner leases /doles/rents/sets-up-a-title-system+tax to whoever it wants. This is not different from the Medieval times. It is just wrapped in nice (or not so nice) laws and terms and so on, but at the bottom it is what it always was.
So in some state or countries, government can and will take your land away. Sometimes it will let other come and extract natural resources from it. In some places it will take it and give it to bigger companies to build malls or factories.
> to make this guy's job easier?
The road is not built for this guy to use, it is built for everyone else to use. One can turn that question on its head and say why can't all the citizens drive in a nice straight direct way saving time, gas, money because someone's farm is in the way? Talk about a sense of entitlement...
Things aren't perfect but I think individuals (in-duh-viduals :-) ) have more power than ever.
I'm also not sure that making straighter roads is the most important problem facing humanity. More often than not, governments will take that farm in the way (and they just did this over here in British Columbia for a new road they've built). The sense of entitlement is really that guy out in the suburbs who thinks it's his god given right to drive his SUV to the city every day on the straight or not so straight road and the people who want that cheap piece of plastic from China in their local shop driven by trucks on some straight or not so straight road...
It is true but at least there is no legal cover and language that make me think that I "own" it while I really don't. They would have to march in, beat me up and take my hammer. It would be rather unambiguous what is happening. Land "ownership" doesn't work that way. There are enough legal ways for one to be deprived of the "owned" piece of land.
Property taxes, land ownership is veiling in "ownership" language but in reality to me it seems if you have to pay someone yearly "rent" for it then you don't really own it.
> The sense of entitlement is really that guy out in the suburbs who thinks it's his god given right to drive his SUV to the city every day on the straight or not so straight road
Alright, what if the road was a bike path? Would that make it better ;-)
The general argument is whether something that is a public good should trump the needs of land owners. And I was just pointing out there are a few hairy details the way I see it.
You can buy exclusive exploitation rights to this sovereign property but the state can get it back upon your death if it's not passed onto anyone or otherwise accounted for.
And then there's eminent domain, which is actually specifically provided for in the U.S. Constitution so it's about as legal as things get in the U.S.
Your perspective seems very specific to California's tax structure. I wonder how you incorporate "use tax" into your theories.
The distinction is that to seize my hammer they would have to turn violent, attack, assault or threaten. In that whoever did this would basically expose what is really at the heart of the issue. With land there is a legal framework to disguise pretty much the same thing but using "ownership" language. In reality, to me it seems, it is not much different or not much different from land owners in medieval times giving land to their subjects.
> Your perspective seems very specific to California's tax structure.
I think it pertains to most states in this country. I don't know of many states that don't charge property taxes. Most countries have something similar.
In Great Britain (from what I understand from marginal discussions I've had) this is more obvious. All land belongs to the Crown and it doles it out to tenants who dole it out to sub-tenants and so on. These are often Lords and Ladies from medieval times and their heirs still collect "taxes" based on that ownership.
I mentioned the use tax, and that California does not have one. Do you know what a use tax is?
You talk like there are these super wealthy land lords with nearly unaccountable real estate not willing to yield an inch.
The reality is, its some ones home. Just like I and you have. If you are destroying that, you better pay up good compensation. Which in most cases never paid. In my country(India) compensation paid is some thing like 5% of the actual land value.
Imagine some one just walking up to your home in full police gear, bulldozers and then just asking you to leave or get killed in the process of demolition. They will have the necessary legal documents and police support. You will be given some peanuts while you watch your property razed to ground. All in the name of 'public good'.
In New Delhi, the son of a judge used his connections to first acquire a land to build a mall inside a area which had very narrow roads. He built the mall, then figures out no one wants to visit the mall due traffic and parking problems. Guess what he does next? He further bribes officials and gets them to demolish a lot of homes to broaden roads, so that traffic and parking issues go away to help his real estate grow.
There was a massive uproar, as to how the whole system works. The supreme court of India, has now said no land can be acquired unless the owners of the land give a explicit permission and agree that fair compensation has been paid.
You talk like they are not. My hypothetical people in front of the future straight highway are richer than your hypothetical people in front of your hypothetical highway. I set up my hypothetical situation the way I want, sorry ;-)
> The reality is, its some ones home. Just like I and you have.
We have a home? That is still more than a lot of people have.
> Imagine some one just walking up to your home in full police gear, bulldozers and then just asking you to leave or get killed in the process of demolition. They will have the necessary legal documents and police support.
Ok, imagining that. Wasn't that my point? One doesn't really own the land unless they can defend it from violence. You'd have to be a country with military in order to have a proper allodial title. In countries with lots of corruption the abuse is worse, I can see that, it is obvious. I was pointing out that even in "law abiding" countries that law is written to hide the underlying brutal fact that people don't really "own" the land. Someone else owns it and they just pay rent (disguised as "property taxes" in our case).
> He further bribes officials and gets them to demolish a lot of homes to broaden roads, so that traffic and parking issues go away to help his real estate grow.
Well there are 2 issues. Bribery and corruption and taking from people to build roads. Well the first one seems more pressing. It covers all areas of life not just imminent domain.
> All in the name of 'public good'.
Isn't there or shouldn't there be a 'public good'? What is your alternative to say everyone just building on top of all the public roads that access the city so there is simply no way to enter or exit the city because there are buildings in the middle of the road? Is that acceptable.
Yes, but why does that always have to be at some one else's expense or by making some one suffer?
>>What is your alternative to say everyone just building on top of all the public roads that access the city so there is simply no way to enter or exit the city because there are buildings in the middle of the road?
Sound city planning.
It doesn't take much to make this happen. In my city atleast(Bangalore), I can tell you so many areas of the city that are developing even now don't have sound planning. Its totally reckless, and chaotic at its best. Absolutely no space for public parks, lots of open drains, narrow roads, badly planned water supply and sewage lines.
If you know for sure something is really going to grow, you might as well plan for it. Nothing really prevents governments from enforcing regulations even for private builders.
This is where contract law comes into play, to protect vulnerable citizens from large entities with good or bad intentions. You are correct that how / whether such contracts are honored and the legal system is fair is quite variable from country to country.
As we're also seeing with this project, roads are not just for cars. The pre-negotiated right-of-way is also used for utilities, mass-transit and who knows what else in the future? It has negative effects on safety, the economy, work efficiency and other factors.
Because somebody doesn't want to be inconvenienced by a move that they'll have years of notice to make, or some farm doesn't want to shave off some fraction of their road-side property, lives will be lost, work will be wasted, pollution will increase, maintenance costs on keeping the roads and other right-of-way inhabitants will be magnified and more.
A new road isn't about just going someplace you've never been a minute quicker. Most roads are about making the time it takes from getting to a place I already go faster or at higher capacity. It drives development, decentralizes and spreads around economic activity, increases national productive output, stimulates the economy, it can increase educational and employment opportunities, make consumers of productive output more accessible and efficient to reach. A good road can be the difference between abject poverty for a region, or a new city.
If you are in the UK, consider the debate raging over HS2, or the Heathrow expansion.
If giving up my land for these projects will have such positive results, I should be compensated well above the market rates for otherwise similar properties, no?
And in most places there is nothing like the seller even agreeing to it. A court order is passed, you are paid some peanuts and asked to evacuate.
:-)
The high-speed rail system on the other hand, minimizes the amount of disruption. (and is also a proven technology)
We're looking at a (theoretical) $8 Billion system... that is probably grossly underestimating costs at that... that can only support 1120 passengers at a time, max. On the entire system.
Hyperloop may be fast, but it transports very very few people. A single-train will transport more people. Frankly, when looking at mass-transit, the #1 concern is moving people, lots of people and quickly.
Just like people today care about the "bandwidth" of their internet connections, I guarantee you that city planners are more interested in the "bandwidth" of a high-speed system.
At an 80min round trip running 20hr a day that's 15 trips per pod per day. So we have 40x28x15 = 16,800 daily round trips.
The Acela holds 360 people per train with 16 round trips per day. That's 360x16 = 5,760 daily round trips.
A high-speed system with dedicated track could run more often, and you could use longer trains than the Acela does, so the potential maximum bandwidth of high-speed rail is higher. But 16,800 daily round trips is large enough to be taken seriously.
(Why do I say "if it were possible"? http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/loopy... )
Really, Hyperloop needs to be compared against the entire Northeast Corridor... a single rail-line between Washington DC and Boston... but this single-rail serves many many more trains than just the Acela.
Or at very least, the comparison needs to be against Northeast Regional, a much slower train but is the one that your typical consumer is going to take. After all, Acela trains share its tracks with Northeast Regional... and most people prefer the cheaper prices.
(Between Boston and NYC, the link I'd most likely take, the Acela is only marginally faster than the Regional. The improvements planned in CT look like they would help, but actually cut similar amounts of time off the two routes.)
IIRC, Northeast Regional is considered to be at capacity around NYC (where it services on the order of 100,000+ daily commutes).
Anyway, the reason why this is being compared to railroads, is that the investment here is not measured only in dollars. When you build ground-based transportation of any kind, it necessitates blowing over some people's property... period. That is a real cost in people's livelihood, as the government forces people to move out of their homes to make room for the new road / railroad / hyperloop.
So when we're talking about an entire "Hyperloop" system that can only service ~16k / day in theory (and probably much much less in practice), these numbers have to be weighed against the costs.
True, both Railroads and Hyperloop suffer from this problem. But I bet you that the proposed California rail system will have significantly higher capacity... especially when the Rail system is going to connect up to the local metro systems.
In fact, the High-speed rail system goes directly to Union Station in the heart of LA. Hyperloop doesn't have such plans.
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Airplanes are magic stuff though, because they don't have these costs associated with them, and in practice Rail isn't much more efficient than Airplanes anyway. But the airways are crowding up between the cities, so building alternative means of travel is necessary now.
When you have two garbage estimates, you cannot compare the two systems. The solution is to ignore the bad estimates, and recalculate the costs more realistically.
The fact that Hyperloop is modeled as a three-pylon design, and totally ignores some basic physics (such as Thermal Expansion: http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/08/hyperloop/). So it is clear that the Hyperloop cost numbers are just straight up irrelevant garbage.
Granted, that is to be expected from an unbuilt, untested system. So I don't want to hate on Musk on this one. The nature of proposing an experimental design is that you won't have good data on it: costs, problems, theory... etc. etc. No one really knows how Hyperloop will _really_ work.
The benefit of High Speed Rail is that the systems have been built around the world. They have a better grasp of how much it is going to cost by nature of building their systems in other locations... and having experience with the problem.