Posted on 02/14/2003 9:59:06 AM PST by Willie Green
Typically, throughout history it has, and that's why we have laws in the first place - to attempt to create a level playing field for everyone. Never quite works as planned, but it's still better than the alternative. You are correct that large concerns become adept at manipulating laws, but if the laws were not there, many large organizations would just apply those efforts to running roughshod over smaller landowners. I think your approach should be read by governmental and NGO concerns, you have a lot of good ideas, but the best approach is to apply a smorgasbord of approaches to balance out the tendencies of a given group or organization to exploit singular points of control. That's exactly why the founders created multiple branches of government, and why land use planning should in turn reflect multiple, messy layers - to prevent a single interest group from acquiring too much power over the process.
That's exactly why the founders created multiple branches of government, and why land use planning should in turn reflect multiple, messy layers - to prevent a single interest group from acquiring too much power over the process.
The legislative branch of our republic has Constitutionally limited power to effect direct claims upon the use of property. It is to these mechanics that the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution addressed uncompensated takings. For without a check on the exercise of democratic power to lay claims against private property, such claims proliferate until private property eventually ceases to exist.Unfortunately, government has every power to enact laws regarding discharge of transformation products across property lines because the concept of property as ONLY consisting of a social contract for use of bounded processes is poorly understood. Once a civic agent has the power to control transformation products in commons, then that agent has full control of how property can be used.
Once an economic factor has been rendered into a democratized commons, claims against uses producing transformation products can then be effected through the courts. These claims can be brought by anyone and focus exclusively upon controlling negatively valued transformation products without consideration of the total integrated impact of the contested use. (Since when did anybody sue in order to pay for a positive externality?)
As concentrations of transformation products in process outputs approach zero, minute reductions in pollutants can greatly increase the cost of treatment. As the cost of compliance consumes a higher fraction of the sale price of the economic good, the return on the original use approaches zero. Once the return on assets goes negative, investment in improving technology to reduce production of negative externalities becomes negatively valued as well. Few would develop new control technology because few could pay for it. If there is no return on the use of the asset, that use of the property will be abandoned, as it has become a zero-priced good. Negative investment return destroys the market value of the use.
Both claimant and agent are thus motivated to focus upon those transformation products that are most difficult to control, because it is those properties that are most likely to convert the use of the asset to that which they prefer. The fight between landowners, regulators, and activists then degenerates into increasingly trivial arguments regarding specifications, measurements, and enforcement that have increasingly large financial consequences for the owner. Remedial measures thus structurally diverge from an objective assessment of the total impact upon environmental health because that was never the claimants' primary objective.
Rarely does either acquiring interest consider the possible unintended consequences of their actions, among other reasons because they have little experience in actual operations and no accountability for the consequences. The legal process is thus alienated from its purpose to establish justice, just as the regulatory process is directed away from ecological health. There is little civic accountability for maintaining a successful balance among competing interests, indeed, very likely the contrary is true. Problems are sources of civic claims by which to control the entire economy, a motivational structure antithetical to the very purpose of regulation.
As claims proliferate, the legislatures and courts are overwhelmed with cases that are technical and difficult to prove. They rely upon opinions from supposedly disinterested experts regarding the impacts of transformation products. Neither legislators or courts have the power to enforce a judgement; that power lies exclusively with the executive branch of government. The demand for expediency seduces legislatures and the courts to default upon their Constitutional responsibility, to the only civic agency with relevant expertise and police power. Control of use and, thus ownership of that use, is effectively transferred to the executive branch of government.
When taking land out of production profits the financial sponsors of a claim, it is cheaper to control the target use than to compensate the owner or buy the property. All it takes to manipulate a resource market by democratic means is to buy out the competition by manipulating majority perceptions about the risk of ecological harm associated with that target use. The few who can profit by taking competing resources out of production then have reason to sponsor the investment in political or legal action. They focus the first case against a weak target or obvious problem (which is why most such takings appear as local actions).
Established precedent then extends the applicability of cited legislation and lowers the cost successive claims. Property owners gradually lose their ability to finance the cost of compliance or legal resistance. Absent a profitable use, the market value of the target use approaches zero. After repeated exercise of external controls, purchase of the residual asset value concludes any remaining claim by an owner.
When a rival owner produces a competing or substitute good, the financial advantages of such tacit property acquisitions can be enormous. For example, if a developer funded public concerns about the negatively valued transformation products of farming to render the use of farmland non-economic and ripe for development, the land becomes less expensive to purchase.
This politically-sponsored dissolution of the Separation of Powers Principle, combines all three branches of government into one, that can derive power and funding by manufacturing claims on the use of property. The more externalities are regulated, the more power accrues to the agency to control the use of the producing asset to turn its use to corrupt purpose. When agency control is sufficient to alienate the interest of the agent from the democratic majority, the asset has then degenerated into a socialized commons.
Amen and Hallelujah.
I used to think zoning was the cat's meow. "It keeps people's property values up". Actually, it only keeps certain people's property values up, the others can eat cake.
Why don't the snobby elitist types have a gas station built in their effen neighborhood for a change. Do they sh*t gold or something? I can't put a 1 x 2 neon in my business because some asshole who plays cards with my county commissioner doesn't like seeing while he's driving his BMW?
My parents have about 5 acres they've been improving right across the street from a raggy looking orange grove. By the time they're done with it it'll be worth several million and will market for about 10 times what they paid. Raggy orange grove and all.
Gee, all without the help of pandering or bribed fatso officials. Imagine that, we don't need them pushing all the buttons after all.
There is a time and place for not putting a strip joint next to a school or whatever, but for the most part zoning sucks the big one. I'd like to see the "it's what's best for everyone" lie debunked big time.
I wouldn't move in next to a sewer plant but I would also not move next to land that was owned by a government entity for fear that it would be the site of the next sewer.
You're a wise gal. Caveat Emptor is our friend.
A Guest Editorial by Mark Vande Pol
I need to get James Tetreault to read it as well. If I had the money, I would buy one for every Legislative Director we have.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.