The aftermath of the Kelo decision is a an excellent time to renew my call for Wal-Mart to quit using eminent domain to obtain store locations.
It's wrong; it violates the very essence of a market economy, and it does your image no good to use the force of law to evict people from their homes and businesses.
Let me be clear. A Wal-Mart store is NOT a "public use" of land, even if the store does (in the eyes of its owners, employees, and shoppers) serve a public purpose. Wal-Mart should cease and desist from this practice...
I could be taking this too far, but I'd argue that in fact, Kelo means two things for readers of this blog:
1) A city council controlled by Wal-Mart and developer interests will have an easier time of taking private property to put in new big-boxes and strip malls.
2) A city council controlled by anti-sprawl activists and anti-boxboxers will have greater power to shut down megastores if they're considered by the council to be against the best development interests of the area.
Eminent domain as tool just got easier to justify. In other words your private real property is really on loan to you by the city council. You do not have the final say to how it is used; at one time, as long as you agree on a remedy to the harms your uses and your neighbors uses presented to one another, nobody else had any say except for very limited takings.
Now a city council can tell you (by calling in a crank economic "expert" with his predetermined "economic impact report") that the local grocer will "make people better off" by "keeping money in town", and Wal-Mart and Wegmans and other stores can be forced to sell their land and buildings. Or the city council can call in a different "expert" who opposes big-boxes, insisting that they destroy neighborhoods, and should be gutted in order to create a new urban landscape.
This is not a good outcome for anybody, really, except local politicians who can now bid up their demands for political support.
Pathetic.
Posted by Kevin on June, 24 2005 at 11:48 AM
