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I know the NYTimes thinks its charming, but this plaque embodies the arrogance and greed of wealthy landowners in NY who have opposed the construction of mass t

• deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
• cafard 8y ago
  Was it the mass transit they opposed, or the condemnation of property for an avenue above the subway?
  • jandrese 8y ago
    The article makes it sound like the problem was the buildings were demolished so they could construct a cut and cover subway under them. Then buildings were built over the subway--a smoke shop now occupies the space where the original building stood. The tiny parcel is the result of a survey error.
• driverdan 8y ago
  Plenty of people fight against violent confiscation of private land. You don't have to be arrogant or greedy to resist.
  • InitialLastName 8y ago
    There is no private land in the United States that was not confiscated either by direct violence or through the threat of violence. In fact, private land can only exist thanks to the threat of violence against those who would use it outside of the "owner's" intent.
    • ColanR 8y ago
      > In fact, private land can only exist thanks to the threat of violence against those who would use it outside of the "owner's" intent. Kinda like what makes your wallet 'yours'.
      • InitialLastName 8y ago
        Exactly. The key difference, though, is that my wallet is unlikely to be directly useful for the creation of a public good. Some portion of the contents are frequently used to that end though.
    • arethuza 8y ago
      "There is no private land in the United States that was not confiscated either by direct violence or through the threat of violence." I hardly think the United States in unique in that respect - just that it perhaps happened more recently than a lot of other places.
    • mikeash 8y ago
      Wasn’t Manhattan purchased peacefully from the natives?
      • InitialLastName 8y ago
        All (admittedly cursory) evidence points to: - Purchased from a tribe that didn't have credible control over the area followed by - 20 years of skirmishes/wars with the tribe that actually controlled the area.
  • sbuttgereit 8y ago
    Since we aren't really discussing anything in this part of the thread and merely advocating viewpoints on the subject... Every year I give financial support to civil liberty organizations such as the Institute for Justice (https://ij.org https://ij.org) and the Pacific Legal Foundation (https://pacificlegal.org https://pacificlegal.org). Because, after you demonize certain people as a justification for treating them any way you want, you find some of them aren't really that bad and are just trying to protect what they worked hard to get in the first place. So, rather than try to fire up the mobs with appeals to emotion, I'd much rather fund those organizations which are fighting for individual rights in the courts and with the law.
  • PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    Was violence actually used, or is this "violence" meaning "anything the government does that someone doesn't like"?
• oh_sigh 8y ago
  No, it doesn't. > And then a surveyor made a mistake. Somehow, after the distances and angles were calculated and recorded on the tax roll, the Voorhis lot did not disappear completely, as the city expected it to. The tiny triangle survived. > “Some versions of the story say it was overlooked by the city,” Mr. Berman said. “Others say the Hess estate refused to give up the property from the beginning. From most of the writing I’ve seen about it, it seems that it was a mistake on the city’s part that the city tried to correct” by asking the Hesses simply to donate the triangle. The plaque embodies a surveyor's mistake. The plot is what remains after the city already took the land for public purposes. It's existence has not affected mass transit at all.
• PascLeRasc 8y ago
  Yep. In a hundred more years there'll be a tear-jerking piece about how NIMBYs in SF resisted new housing being built.