[parineum]

> In short, if private property has absolute veto power, you can never get big public projects done. (This is why eminent domain exists)

I wish they'd modify the language of eminent domain to reward double, triple or even quadruple market rate. I want people being _happy_ to have their property seized.

[BHSPitMonkey]

This would be a great way for corrupt politicians to funnel large sums of real estate money to their friends and donors (or to trigger wild speculation bubbles anywhere people think eminent domain is likely to be applied).

I do think these payouts need to be well in excess of market rates (in order to properly compensate people for inconvenience / related expenses / opportunity costs, but tripling or quadrupling property values is a bit far fetched.

[technobabbler]

Whatever, pork-barrel corruption is already an everyday part and parcel of our system. 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.

Any time you have a massive building project you're going to get corruption. If you can't even eminent domain it through useful areas, you're just going to get developers buying land in the middle of nowhere and selling it back to the government as the only remaining viable route.

[randbox]

>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]

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?

[DennisP]

I used to know a former state senator, who would say "the road to riches in this state is cheap land and cheap politicians."

She had a background in forensic accounting, was instrumental in getting a particular state senator convicted of corruption, and lost the support of the state party in the process.

[technobabbler]

> She had a background in forensic accounting, was instrumental in getting a particular state senator convicted of corruption, and lost the support of the state party in the process.

You point out a different, and arguably way more important, problem in our politics: we have no real pathway for domain experts to become powerful representatives and provide meaningful oversight. Instead you just have corrupt lawyers vouching for other corrupt lawyers, writing corrupt laws and appointing corrupt judges, all with the active approval and participation of the two major parties. It's just evil all up and down the chain.

[ip26]

Blessing graft & corruption is weirdly popular on HN.

[technobabbler]

I think it's just an acknowledgment and acceptance that the system is thoroughly fucked, and there's no public will to overthrow it or clean it up, so seeking incremental gains where possible is better than nothing.

If you do nothing, there corruption will still be there, but nothing will improve.

If you try to push things through, the corruption will still be there, but maybe small things will get built here and there.

What do you think is a better solution to corruption? Starve the state? We've been doing that for decades and that just further empowers private interests, the same people who've benefited from and furthered corruption in government. shrug No easy fix. Every country has corruption, but the highly functional governments tend to have less of it because they attract more well-intentioned career civil servants instead of powermongers.

[tinco]

You could make it conditional on some things. The goal is to compensate for discomfort, not to compensate lost income. So you could say you only compensate primary residences and self operated businesses, both occupied for 3+ years.

Or you could approach it from a different angle and compensate each resident and business operators with $10,000 relocation cost (in addition to buying their property with a 5% extra). That has the added benefit of eliminating more of the market price risk from projections.

[datavirtue]

I think the optimal course is to have a very painful eminant domain process that pays a crappy above market rate so that government is incentivized to offer actual market rate (big project wants your land so market rate is vastly increased as a result). I have seen corn fields sold for millions because a state college wanted it for a new campus. The market rate was well under $1MM. For that land eminant domain would have been a nightmare because of the particular politics and unimproved nature of the site....so they had to offer actual market rate...which is the rate demanded of someone when they know it's a monied developer that wants it.

[icelancer]

Exactly. "Market rate" is ridiculous, and justifiably private property owners should be able to hold out sine market rate doesn't factor in switching costs, both financial and emotional.

I think 3x market rate is a decent starting place.

[notreallyserio]

I think the amount paid should be based on the average market rate of properties where the person must move to have the same commute and amenities. If the government wants to destroy the poorest area, at least folks there can move somewhere nicer without much inconvenience.

[zdragnar]

That is an incredibly easy way to waste money.

Political donor: Hey Mr. Politician, I am going to buy some massive apartment complexes. Do me a favor and put a road through them, would you?

Politician: Sure thing, there's an election coming up and I do so love helping out our citizens! holds out hand to receive wads of donations

[p20z]

The current model enables the same behavior and makes it harder to track. Stalled projects have ongoing costs that make the project developers real money in exchange for no real effort. The same donor simply says “hey mr politician, give my company the exclusive contract and never mind that my aunt owns a building in our way. I’ll only charge you 30% for each year we are stalled.”

We burn money on these projects either way. A good windfall to property owners gives regular families a chance at enjoying some profits… and makes donors who block progress just a little easier to track!

[technobabbler]

This is in fact how many projects get built today, even without eminent domain.

[zdragnar]

If graft is a problem, the answer should not be "make graft easier and more common"

[technobabbler]

Graft is just one problem out of many though. Lack of public investment in public institutions, I'd argue, is another, bigger problem.

I'd like to see graft tackled by more competitive elections (multi-party, ranked-choice, easier voting processes, etc.) rather than simply gutting the government so it can't do anything at all... I think the conservatives call that starving the beast? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

That just puts government in a death spiral and drags huge swaths of society down with it.

By comparison, a small degree of graft is an inefficiency inherent in any large organization. As a taxpayer or customer, it doesn't necessarily matter to me whether $20 of my $100 goes to a politician's vacation home or the CEO's yacht, as long as the shit gets built effectively. If it gets to $50 or $80 of that $100 though... yeah, shit's broken.

[rootusrootus]

Given how the sheer amount of money wasted when even one property owner holds out, it shouldn't be terribly difficult to justify a serious premium on the amount paid to those whose property is seized. In most cases I imagine it's just a small part of the overall cost of the project.

[IggleSniggle]

Don’t want them to be TOO happy to have property seized. Creates a bunch of perverse incentives

[scarface74]

What happens historically that if a government has a choice between destroying wealth in a minority neighborhood or destroying wealth in a non minority neighborhood, it’s usually the minority neighborhood.