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In Racine County, houses are being designated ‘blighted’ to make way for Foxconn
- brooklynrob 9y agoThis happened where I live in Brooklyn to make way for the Barclays Center. New condos, without so much as the paint dry, as well as townhouses and commercial buildings, were labeled as blight to rationalize the crooked eminent domain process. Check out the movie "Battle For Brooklyn" for more on the story.
- ada1981 9y agoI'll check it out. I live in Park Slope. What a joke. How about if you want to buy land, you make offers people can't refuse - that's suppose to be how capitalism works.
- tehlike 9y agoOnly when it benefits the capital.
- mikestew 9y agoIf you’re going for “offer you can’t refuse” in The Godfather sense, that’s what this, without the messing horse butchery.
- ada1981 9y agoI meant more like 2-5x market rates.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- DoofusOfDeath 9y agoAhem, the offer that couldn't be refused took place before the horse incident.
- perl4ever 9y agoEminent domain often seems unfair, but in any situation where everyone must agree to a plan, being the last holdout gives a person power that they really didn't do anything to deserve either. I'm not sure anybody believes that getting everybody to agree on something should always be required to make progress. Something that comes to mind are the bondholder holdouts that objected to Venezuela's debt restructuring. You may side with the people being bullied by the rich and powerful in any circumstance, but that doesn't uniformly lead to defending holdouts. My point is, no, paying any price is not how things work in capitalist societies or anywhere, because it's not practical, regardless of how unfair this particular instance is. Edit: Wow, fastest downvote ever. Wonder if it is automated somehow. I don't think the ability (and prevalence) of downvoting opinions you disagree with contributes to the professed goals of HN. I appreciate strict moderation for civility, but given the ability to downvote rather than engage with (or ignore) a polite comment, people tend to abuse it.
- figgis 9y agoThese are peoples homes, land, and likely history. Demolishing that without the blessing of the owners is ridiculous. I just can't see how that is comparable to bondholder holdouts.
- perl4ever 9y agoIt's not morally comparable, which is an essential part of my point. I think perhaps my comment is inspiring kneejerk reactions as though I was defending this instance of eminent domain, but it was a response to the direct parent, which was attacking something much broader than this instance. Coordination problems preventing people from making collective progress are real, and mechanisms for eminent domain exist to deal with those real problems, is all I'm saying. That is independent of whether some holdouts are righteous or not in particular circumstances. To repeat, please interpret my comments in the context of what I am responding to, not just the article link.
- ada1981 9y agoI think the issue is that people think they actually "own" property, when in fact they merely rent it from the state. It's dressed up with fancy words and paperwork, but when the State has a better use for it than you having it, they will find a way.
- communalist 9y agohow capitalism works. Not really, but okay.
- jt2190 9y agoThe abuse of eminent domain to make way for the new Dallas Cowboys stadium in Arlington, Texas was so bad that they amended the state constitution to prevent it from happening again.
- s2g 9y agoHuh, well at least the billionaire owner paid for a stadium that brings in revenue locally right? oh right. https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/texas-business-report-how-taxpayers-subsidized-construction-of-cowboys-stadium/ https://www.texasmonthly.com/articles/texas-business-report-...
- ada1981 9y agoThis is terrible. I did my grad work at Madison in Urban Planning no less.
- stevenwoo 9y agoDo the owners have any recourse that may work? If the state can do this here, why can't cities do something similar when they want to have higher density housing?
- rootusrootus 9y agoThey probably can, but I doubt the incentives are nearly as lucrative.
- ada1981 9y agoThe owners can try to sue or challenge it, in this case it may work. In other cases it's not so good. Check out the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and the fight that went down.
- dqpb 9y agoThe second amendment?
- mkempe 9y agoIf only Jefferson had kept the right to property in the Declaration of Independence, maybe the Bill of Rights would have had it too, "eminent domain" would be an archaic device reminiscent of royal tyranny, and we would all be a lot freer and wealthier. The future belongs to us, so we could get rid of such tyrannical power, ourselves.
- kelnos 9y agoEh, I'm not sure I agree. I think eminent domain is useful, if not essential, in cases where land is needed for public infrastructure projects. But allowing its use in order to give land to a private company is going too far.
- mabbo 9y agoA large corporation arriving in a foreign country, manipulating the local government into forcing people out of their homes so that the corporation can take the land for their own purposes. Sounds familiar, doesn't it? I'm not saying it's right or good, but I am saying that America's success in the 20th century was in part due to these exact tactics used on other countries around the world. And based on history, I would say you need to stand up and fight this sort of thing because it only gets worse.
- rayiner 9y agoDoesn’t sound familiar what are you talking about?
- oblib 9y agoWell, for an easy start you might look into our military bases in foreign nations. From there you can look for US based corporations that have mines, factories, etc, in foreign nations.
- kalleboo 9y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#History_in_Central_America https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#History_i...
- ajross 9y agoEminent domain abuse is much more than just multinationals. Far more people have lost their homes to politically desirable highways and reservoirs than to Evil Foreign Actors. Most of the time, even, it seems like a good trade in hindsight. I don't know anything about this particular situation. But personally, as long as there's a reasonably justified need (a new factory seems like it would qualify) and the evicted are appropriately compensated ("fair" can be hard to quantify, of course), I don't see that this is something we need to be outraged about.
- mikeash 9y agoWhy would a factory qualify as a reasonably justified need? Unless it produces weapons in wartime, it’s a private entity engaging in private business and the government’s role ought to be limited to making sure everyone plays by the rules. If the factory needs a bunch of land, it should have to buy that land just like you or I would. If it’s not practical for some reason, then the factory should be built elsewhere, or not be built at all.
- saudioger 9y agoI put a lot of work into my house, they'll have to bulldoze me in it
- icebraining 9y agoThey'll just arrest you: https://www.apnews.com/525a1ba9c9234ce0843cdd88146a517e https://www.apnews.com/525a1ba9c9234ce0843cdd88146a517e
- fenwick67 9y agoThis whole thing is just a huge sham, very reminiscent of building a sports stadium. But instead of a sports team, it's a manufacturing company that had to build nets around its buildings to catch people attempting suicide.
- nosympathy 9y agoVoters wanted jobs, did they not? Politicians promised jobs, did they not? The people of Wisconsin made their beds, now they must lie in them.
- bb88 9y agoI actually wonder about this a bit. Wisconsin gave huge tax breaks to get that company in. So now in order to buy the land, they have to evict the land owners by marking the property as "blighted", because apparently they can't afford the actual market price of the land.
- ams6110 9y agoHas anyone said they aren't making fair market value offers to property owners?
- throwaway2048 9y agoclearly they deserve to be forced off it without compensation if they dont accept.
- kelnos 9y agoThe article mentions that many (all?) of the landowners, except for some owners of farmland that has already been purchased, haven't received any offers from the county, despite the fact that the assessment process has been completed for some time. It's... fishy, to put it mildly.
- erikpukinskis 9y agoHow do you establish fair market value except by negotiating until you close a deal?
- pontifier 9y agoI've completely lost faith in our judicial system. Judges do whatever they want, and even when things are blatantly corrupt nobody seems to care. Laws are twisted to suit their purposes and a Judges decision can't be questioned.
- erikpukinskis 9y agoIsn’t that what the appeals process is for?
- kirykl 9y ago“And the Creuziger family, with 420 acres the largest landowner in the Foxconn area, has turned down the village’s $50,000 an acre offer for open land.” https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2018/02/20/eminent-domain-may-used-acquire-land-foxconn-holdouts/355213002/ https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/business/2018/02/20/emi...
- hvs 9y agoSo? Why should the state be able to decide if I should have to move if I don't want to just because they decided they wanted to handout tax breaks to company?
- kelnos 9y agoThat seems like a pretty generous offer. For comparison, that comes out to around $1150 per square foot, which is what a lot of (developed) real estate is going for in SF right now. Still, though, I think it's disgusting to use eminent domain in order to turn land over to a private company.
- HeyLaughingBoy 9y agoThat's a really good price. I live in a fairly desirable area in MN and $10,000/acre is considered high in these parts.
- marze 9y agoBlighted? Give me a break. They should buy nearby land and relocate the actual houses if families want to keep their house.
- awakeasleep 9y agoThis is the libertarian dream of freedom. The freedom of the strong to do as they please with the weak.
- 411mrc 9y agoHardly. https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/federalism-and-libertarians-on-eminent-domain/ https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/federalism-and-libertar...
- misja111 9y agoNo, the Libertarian dream would not contain much of a government, let alone one that was reposessing houses.
- s2g 9y agoRight, the libertarian version would be Foxconn coming in and strong-arming people into doing what they want while the government does nothing.
- misja111 9y agoDepends which Libertarian you talk to, there are left wingers who are opposed to private property altogether and on the other side there are the ones that think the right of private property is one of the greatest goods. Since there would be no government to enforce this right, the latter category is strongly in favor of the right to bear arms.
- PeterisP 9y agoThe right to bear arms alone isn't sufficient to maintain the right of private property, since it means that anyone who's weaker than the locally strongest group of armed men de facto doesn't have any rights at all. I can't possibly imagine how the right to bear arms could prevent Foxconn from taking their land, as Foxconn could definitely afford to violently remove anyone resisting, no matter how much arms they could realistically have; and it would be the cost-efficient (and thus preferrable) way to solve this issue - e.g. as an alternative of offering $50000/acre for 420 acres, you can hire a lot of mercenaries with heavy hardware for half that amount and simply take the land for free.
- s2g 9y ago> “I’m a tax-paying citizen and I deserve better than this, to just be kicked to the curb and thrown out of my residence.” oh but you don't understand. The jobs will be so plentiful. We sacrifice you at the altar of our corporate overlords and the jobs will just rain down from the heavens and fix everything.
- xab9 9y agoI probably miss something here, but why are American citizens kicked off from their land for a Chinese firm on American soil? Is this how you make your country great again? By selling yourself to the highest bidder? In the country I live in the ruling party is actively destroying high level education so that we may give even cheaper work force in the future to the foreign (mostly Chinese) companies (along with huge tax cuts) - we also have a program where we decrease unemployment by forced governmental employment (for something much much lower than the minimum wage), but the system is abused in a way that people are fired and then taken back to their original workplace for the lowest possible wage. And my friends don't understand why I feel totally disgusted by politics and why I think politicians are worse than criminals.
- Hasz 9y agoI believe the apathy you express is more dangerous than words can describe. What we see in the article is the most healthy, highest functioning form of government -- disparate interests working through the system to resolve their interests. If the pervasive and infectious apathy your posts contains were more widespread, the whole system would break down, as one party dominates an apathetic counterpart. This is why they must fight, if not to promote the highest form of government, then to protect their homes. That being said, not sure where ya live, so maybe it's different around there.
- xab9 9y agoProbably you're right - I think they must fight, it's just a shame that it had to come to fighting that this cold hearted exploitation can happen in the 21st century. I live in one country of the Visegrad Four and our whole region is shifting to right wing populism with an unstoppable acceleration; if you mix this political climate with the resurgence of "wild capitalism" the end result is either hatred and fear or apathy on a massive scale. I'm not sure if Trump is making America great - to me it seems that he's unchaining a capitalist machine and kicking Iustitia to the curb in the process, feigning stupidity and ignorance.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]