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The Biggest Crimes Continue to Be Committed by the Government: A Look at Eminent Domain

Way back in mid-2005, I wrote a pretty emotional post called Stealing, But Getting Away With It. It was written soon after the American government decided to pass a bill allowing eminent domain. If you don’t know what it is, read up on it. It might affect you one day. While my perspective about certain issues has changed since the time of writing that post, I am still very much against the government stealing your property, for whatever reason.

Reason.tv has a couple of interesting and fairly informative videos about eminent domain that Drew Carey hosts in; they’re about 20 minutes, all total. (Thumbs up for Carey.) Take a look:

As one can see from those videos, and learn from most articles regarding eminent domain, government initiatives to take land are not appropriate, even when there is compensation given to the original owners. Firstly, the government rarely performs as well as the people. It is a lethargic, money-guzzling behemoth that is given to corruption and, quite often, mistakes. Secondly, the government shouldn’t decide things for the market. If someone wants to buy or sell property, it should be their right to do so, but it should be a transaction held between the buyer and the seller, according to their terms. The government should not come into it as much as it does.

For the bar owner in the second video, he had to give up something that he was not ready to give up. For him, not only was his bar something he had put a lot of effort into and still wanted, it was also a source of major, if not all, income. Because a bigger corporation had more money to persuade the government, which in turn could help hike up the taxes in the area, they were given a right to land ownership before he was. When someone takes something that you’ve bought and paid for, worked diligently to build up and see as a source of your income, one-time government compensation just doesn’t cut it.

A search for eminent domain articles on Google News shows how restless such legislation makes people. The articles are a constant ebb and flow of information regarding abuse of governing power and the struggle of the people to own what is rightfully theirs.

While I personally struggle with eminent domain on the whole, if the government were taking property for development of public use buildings, roads or parks, it would be a different matter, as pointed out by the youth center owner in the National City video. Instead, more and more the government is using its power to take whatever it wants and boss whoever it wants in the process. Surprise, surprise that it isn’t the big corporations that are lobbying and lining the pockets of supposed representatives that are struggling.

This is not how capitalism works. This is controlling power, such as that found in Communist or dictatorial regimes, giving way to corruption and corporatism, something quite different from free market capitalism.

While the government continues to take your income through taxation, control information available to you through traditional media, humiliate you and strike fear at security checkpoints, and, of course, take your property through measures like eminent domain, it also has the audacity to try to suggest it knows what’s best for the people. This is perhaps true when you live in a smaller country where your government is made up of fairly normal, everyday people, but few and far between do those places exist, if they even exist at all. I question that, personally.

So, the next time you read about your local criminal who’s stolen a sign and done community service or read about a case of embezzlement, think about your government. Not even Enron could top our governments for corruption and injustice.

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