Assuming the "fair market value" clause is honored (to the extent such a thing is possible!), it's not quite as bad as explicit theft. Nonetheless, I take your

Assuming the "fair market value" clause is honored (to the extent such a thing is possible!), it's not quite as bad as explicit theft. Nonetheless, I take your point. While I can imagine a number of public works projects that are painfully difficult to achieve through only voluntary coordination[0], it's also clearly an easily corruptible mechanism. That said, I can actually imagine such a practice being more valid for intellectual property, given that IP law is a purely artificial construct of the state (as opposed to natural law governing land and physical property). Perhaps the "eminent" part is unnecessary, and the government could simply negotiate a price for certain IP and/or data to be bought and put into the public domain? Just spitballing. The trend to consolidation based on Metcalfe's Law[1] represents a very real conundrum for vibrant competition of products and services whose primary value is the network itself. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_anticommons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_anticommons [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law