[Alberta's Child]

It is not your property if a third party can determine the price and the timing of a sale (or confiscation).

Forget about that. I would contend that it is not your property once you connect it to public services such as streets or utilities. If we want to talk technicalities here, then the people in question have the right to do whatever they want with their land, but then the municipality has the right to close off all the streets that access the land. It's difficult to argue about property rights in an age when most property (especially in a state like New Jersey) has zero value without a substantial amount of "public support."

[forester]

Forget about that. I would contend that it is not your property once you connect it to public services such as streets or utilities. If we want to talk technicalities here, then the people in question have the right to do whatever they want with their land, but then the municipality has the right to close off all the streets that access the land. It's difficult to argue about property rights in an age when most property (especially in a state like New Jersey) has zero value without a substantial amount of "public support."

First of all, this passage offends me because it implies that government bestows the right of access to your property. I would contend that this is an "unalienable right" that we are all born with. How do you know that what is now a city street did not start out as a common dirt road in which the adjacent owners granted each other reciprocal easements to use? This paragraph is dangerous because it confuses god-given rights with the road maintenace function of local government. If you don't like a developer getting his own freeway off ramp, then expose it for what it is ... corruption. But don't reduce the rights of the majority to protect us all from the excesses of the minority (tyranny of the majority).

[Beck_isright]

It's interesting because this power of eminent domain is being widely abused in Florida. Now it's being used against farms which have existed for over 100 years in South Florida for "environmental" reasons. The reality is that because the citizens of our country have never fought hard for property rights since the Civil War, no one has seen a need to. Now it's too late. All it takes is one Dept. of the Interior flake alleging a rare cockroach lays it's eggs on your property, or a developer paying off a state politician then whammo. You've lost your property. As our nation continues down this road the capitalist system will collapse. The basic premise of a free nation using the capitalist system is the concept of "private property". Since only about 10% of us care about this issue, I can see a major change happening in my lifetime. That's a shame too, because soon, after the next major hurricane, I can see all of the private homes which were on the coastline of Florida decades before the mega condos and hotels were developed, being declared "environmentally sensitive zones" after they are destroyed. Then of course suddenly a developer will buy the property back from the state of Florida for a song and build an "environmentally friendly" resort on the same piece of land. Welcome to Amerika my friends.