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Perhaps the reward isn't enough if it is that difficult to get permission. Landowners near me compete for cell tower leases because it is absolutely worth it. I
by eppp 4y ago
Perhaps the reward isn't enough if it is that difficult to get permission. Landowners near me compete for cell tower leases because it is absolutely worth it. I suspect profit sharing on the electricity sold through the line would grease the wheels a bit.
- epistasis 4y agoPerhaps landowners have unreasonable negotiating leverage when a small number who have little to gain or lose can stop a project that is worth billions to society as a whole. If you need to get permission of thousands of people, and any single one can hold up the entire endeavor, then the economically rational thing to do is to be the last holdout, as you will get paid a lot more. Everybody loses in that scenario except the holdout.
- MichaelZuo 4y agoNegotiations can be done en bloc but the downside is that it may take decades to do anything big.
- biomcgary 4y agoIn the US, class action lawsuits allow multiple entities to be rolled into a class to sue another party. Is there an equivalent in the other direction (i.e., could a utility company roll everyone into class)? I see lots of possible problems (i.e., class participation allows opt-out).
- mindslight 4y agoThe dynamic of class action lawsuits isn't about the quantity of class members, but rather that they're unenumerable. As such they don't really make sense to apply to defendants, and would have terrible results if they were. A plain old suit with many enumerated defendants would work for this topic though, assuming there was a cause of action.
- eppp 4y agoThat is exactly my point. Everyone gains massively except the poor guy who has to live with the problem. You don't see something terribly wrong with dumping your problems on random people just because they happen to live out of your sight? If society gains billions then surely you can spare some percentage of that gain to lift up the rural areas and people. Instead the coasts look at us like rubes and treat us with distain while we feed them and get our land forcibly taken. It seems like such an attitude would eventually cause a political rift in such a society.
- epistasis 4y agoThe problem isn't that the little guy has too little say under the current system, but far too much.
- bluGill 4y agoThat cost comes out of the pocket of everyone else who has to pay more for electricity. As such it isn't good for society to allow high prices. Land owners do need compensation, but we need to be careful to not let that compensation be any higher than it must be.
- thomasjb 4y agoIs it really not good for society to allow high prices? A high price on electricity would lead to consideration of alternate solutions, such as just not doing the thing which requires it or local power generation. The problem we have is that negative externalities aren't priced into fossil fuel alternatives An advantage of increased awkwardness in dealing with local landowners would be that local organisations are incentivised to arrange a solution voluntarily, strengthening the local community, such as community owned and administered infrastructure that was constructed without government having to use eminent domain
- eppp 4y agoThey pay one time pennies for land and run billions of dollars of value across it. It is insulting.
- bombcar 4y agoPower companies have done this in the past; there still exist farms that have perpetual free power from an agreement back in the rural electrification days; we get a right-of-way for the power lines, you get free power. It's often much easier for the power companies to just negotiate with the city/state to use the already existing road right of ways, even if that's longer.