Let’s talk ownership for a minute. Pretend you have a dog. Let’s say you buy a shirt for your dog and he goes around town wearing it. A few days later some suits knock on your door from the CAA (Canine Apparel Agency) and you’re informed that you’re going to be fined $1,000 because the shirt clashed with the dogs collar.
Seems pretty ludicrous, no? After all… it’s your dog, your collar, and your shirt. You own all of them. The government shouldn’t be able to tell you what to do with your stuff, should they?
Well, the EPA can. They can fine you or press charges for any number of stupid things like, for example, laying sod on an island (which you own) that happens to be in a wetland (read: swamp).
Now, the silly leftists will argue that the swamp is important to “the people” because it contains wildlife, etc. But that doesn’t change the fact that the swamp is Mr. Willis’ private property.
There are two reasonable, just, and capitalist ways to handle this situation that don’t involve the hijacking of private property.
The first is to prevent the private ownership of the land TO BEGIN WITH. Make it illegal to own, buy, or sell. The government owns it, since it’s so important, and the government maintains it. Current land belonging to individuals is bought from them, if they’ll sell it (by choice, not eminent domain).
The second option is for the EPA to pay the owners of the land NOT to destroy it. It might seem a bit counter-intuitive at first, but it makes sense. Instead of just writing laws telling people what they can and can’t do with private property, why not sign some contracts and pay them to do what “the people” allegedly want.
Of course, none of that fits in with the liberal view that nobody really owns anything unless the government doesn’t want or need it. In fact, if you propose this to a hard-core leftist they’ll probably get offended, but won’t know quite why. Hint: it’s because they’re offended at the notion that people should have the choice to do what they please with the things they own. (Provided that they don’t infringe upon the rights of others with them)
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August 28th, 2004 at 7:05 pm
ya, half *my* property is a saltmarsh. i can’t really do anything in terms of new construction because of the whole “wetlands” thing.
bleh, i say. bleh.
btw, the shirt dog analogy was quite a stretch imo.
August 28th, 2004 at 11:39 pm
How was it a stretch… it’s a government agency telling you what you can/can’t do with your private property.
August 29th, 2004 at 1:34 am
This type of thing actually happens all of the time. While the government may not completely deprive a person of their property, they will do things which will render it to be of a substantially lesser value. This will consist of things like telling a person they cannot build a house on beachfront property because of environmental regulations (Lucas v. South Carolina Coastal Commission), telling people they can’t sell things they legally obtained (Andrus v. Allard), and mandating that a private body of water be opened for public access (Kaiser Aetna v. United States).
At the end of the day, the government can take away any “twig in the bundle” of your property rights so long as they stop short of that fine line of depriving you of Due Process. I don’t like it, and (for now) as a layman in this area I think the Supreme Court has been far too generous to the “public good” in asking individuals to give up their property rights. Maybe law school will turn me to the dark side and I’ll understand the necessity of this, but for now; I do agree that private property (in most cases) is messed with far too much by the Courts.
As far as the idea of buying land for the purpose of protecting it, that’s a really interesting idea. Nature Conservancy actually does this. Not sure how successful it is, but it’s an interesting concept for sure.
August 29th, 2004 at 10:11 am
there has been a ban on new construction in my town for over a year now. apparently a big box store wanted to move in a while ago and it threw our local government into a tizzy trying to hammer out laws to keep such things out of our quaint little CT shoreline village. unfortunately, the result was that land owners who wanted to improve their property have been unable to do so until the town concil lifts the ban on new construction. they can’t touch their own land, but they still have to continue to pay property taxes or risk forfeiture.