3 ms·

>Paying 2x-4x for some piece of land is still waaaaaaaay cheaper for society than drowning in decades-long quagmire while infrastructure falls apart everywhere.

>Paying 2x-4x for some piece of land is still waaaaaaaay cheaper for society than drowning in decades-long quagmire while infrastructure falls apart everywhere. Eminent domain is not only used to acquire owner occupied homes for infrastructure. In some cities it is used to purchase poorly maintained properties from slumlords. Landlords get what rent they can and don't invest anything in upgrades because they know they can cash out with the city government or public land bank. Promising to pay 2-4x may make the problem worse. If a building is nearly fully depreciated, and has $0 building value, and the landlord invested closed to $0 in maintaining it, but the land is worth $200K, why should they get 4x whatever they claim the gamed comparables are and $800K from the public for doing nothing? Maybe 150% of the building replacement cost for owner occupied homes makes sense, but ideally absentee investors holding depreciated properties and vacant lots wouldn't get paid a dime for the land value.

technobabbler 5y ago
Because otherwise it'd be a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good? That scenario would happen anyhow even at market rate. As a taxpayer I'd rather see some money wasted, and some progress being made, rather than nothing getting done ever. Corruption and waste are tolerable to some degree, IMO. "Government wastefulness" is too often code for not letting the government do anything at all. I just don't think our current societal bottlenecks are due to a budget or GDP crisis. There is so much wealth locked away, I'd rather it be spent on public works even if it means losing a few cents on the dollar to corruption along the way. It's not like the private sector is risk free, or that the government doesn't waste money on wars and questionable foreign aid already. There is such a backlog of infrastructure to build, whether roads and bridges or prisons and schools and climate change mitigation or renewables or nuclear... we gotta do something about that. If that means a slumlord getting rich, I guess it's a cost of doing business? Or what's a better alternative?

technobabbler 5y ago

Because otherwise it'd be a case of the perfect being the enemy of the good? That scenario would happen anyhow even at market rate. As a taxpayer I'd rather see some money wasted, and some progress being made, rather than nothing getting done ever. Corruption and waste are tolerable to some degree, IMO. "Government wastefulness" is too often code for not letting the government do anything at all. I just don't think our current societal bottlenecks are due to a budget or GDP crisis. There is so much wealth locked away, I'd rather it be spent on public works even if it means losing a few cents on the dollar to corruption along the way. It's not like the private sector is risk free, or that the government doesn't waste money on wars and questionable foreign aid already. There is such a backlog of infrastructure to build, whether roads and bridges or prisons and schools and climate change mitigation or renewables or nuclear... we gotta do something about that. If that means a slumlord getting rich, I guess it's a cost of doing business? Or what's a better alternative?