[epistasis]

Perhaps 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]

Negotiations can be done en bloc but the downside is that it may take decades to do anything big.

[biomcgary]

In 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]

The 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]

That 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]

The problem isn't that the little guy has too little say under the current system, but far too much.