[coloradan]

According to the Fifth Amendment, takings must be (1) justly compensated, and (2) for public use. A Pfizer factory is not a public use. What do property rights even mean, if someone can convince the local city council that they could provide more tax revenue from their use of my land - or your land - than I or you can, and therefore, the government can and should seize it and sell it to that person? If every parcel of land is up for the highest bidder, what do property rights, as described in the Constitution, even mean?

[Outland]

I think that this whole mess results from the misconstruing of the Public Use clause of the Fifth Amendment. The Public Use Clause refers quite clearly to "public use", meaning quite literally that it is for the use of and access to by the public. (You can't use what you can not access.)

How did public use ever get misconstrued to mean the same as "public benefit" or "public purpose", the vague meaning of either not being inclusive of "public use"?