City Pays to Move Building 40 Feet (!) and other Absurdities in Planning

Originally published on http://www.denverlibertarian.com/

Imagine if you will, an all knowing entity, one that can predict future development, future needs and can predict the desires of independent actors. You don’t know these entities and they don't know you, but rest assured, they have your best interests in mind. Granted, there is no way to remove these entities, they carry on from year to year, from administration to administration, regardless of which flavor of ruling establishment is in office. You will find them, from the Federal to the local level, lurking in grand buildings adorned with granite and marble, with ornate detailing and gold dome roofs. They surround themselves with statues of their predecessors and phrases etched in stone, in an attempt to imply their importance and gravitas. With their suits and ties on and their security apparatus in place, they look official and intimidating, carrying on the supposed will of the people. The language that they use is deliberately crafted and invoked to assure you that what they are doing is good, right and moral. Ultimately, that language amounts to nothing more than a clever way to say that theft good, so long as we do it for the people. It’s rather dystopian and unbelievable when you think about it, yet somehow we are convinced that this is normal.

Let us take the term eminent domain: who defines this term? Certainly, not you. It varies based on the whims of bureaucrats. In one case it could mean government approaching a property owner and ultimately confiscating the property, in another case, it could mean government approaching a property owner and giving them a completely reconstructed building on new plot of land. In both cases, there is overreach, waste and an ignorance of economics. The following examples lay bare the absurdities of the central planner.

Often times, I find myself saying that government should just do nothing when presented with a problem to solve, see this previous article but in the situation that follows, government ended up doing just that and I am livid, let me explain. Imagine if you will, a legal battle dragging on for ten years, culminating with a Supreme Court decision, in which property was forcefully taken from one private owner and transferred to another private owner. Imagine this transfer being enforced by a government entity at the behest of private company. Cronyism is nothing new, of course, but rarely is it so explicit and out in the open. In this instance, I am referring to the Kelo v. City of New London Supreme Court decision which ruled in favor of allowing a local government to transfer property from one private owner to another private owner without consent, as chronicled in the film, The Little Pink House. This gross overreach has crossed the typical party lines as there is no one party at which to point the finger: a Republican governor trying to redevelop a waterfront and city Democrats working hand in hand with a private redevelopment company. The usual “this-would-never-happen-if-my-guy-was-in-office,” argument just doesn't fly in this situation, this is one that everyone can see through.

Most will fall back on the public good theory in defense of eminent domain, but even if you buy into that theory, you have problems on two fronts. First, in theory, eminent domain is to be used for the public good, which, generally speaking, has definable terms, but this particular scenario involved a transfer of property without any commonly referred to public good amenities (i.e. the usual suspects of utilities, roads, bridges, and trains, etc.). On the contrary, the alleged improvements were to be directly used by a private company. The second and more important issue is that the value of your house is inherently subjective. Ask yourself, is it right for someone else to determine the value of your property? There wouldn’t be much of a debate here if the company (Pfizer) had directly negotiated with individual homeowners and secured rights to the properties, but they chose to use the force of government to do their dirty work. That may be bad enough, but it gets worse. In the end, due to all of the negative PR surrounding the situation, Pfizer pulled out of the proposed redevelopment and the property now sits vacant. And the dagger? Many years on, a sign proudly sits on the vacant property declaring: “Open For New Development Opportunities!” All this because the planner knew what was best and fought several individuals all the way to the top, all on the taxpayer dime, all for your benefit, all for what amounts to absolutely nothing other than a home and a life, destroyed.

Forgive me for quoting at length, but I’m reminded of a passage from Adam Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments: “The man of system...is apt to be very wise in his own conceit; and is often so enamoured with the supposed beauty of his own ideal plan of government, that he cannot suffer the smallest deviation from any part of it… He seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chess-board. He does not consider that the pieces upon the chess-board have no other principle of motion besides that which the hand impresses upon them; but that, in the great chess-board of human society, every single piece has a principle of motion of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chuse [sic] to impress upon it.”

Meanwhile, in Denver, Colorado, the city is currently in the process of a massive highway reconstruction project. Sixty years ago, it was the central planners’ grand solution to elevate the freeway, now, the plan is, naturally, to sink it underground. Caught up in the middle of this project lies a rather decrepit old building (see the image at the top), one that to any outside observer would be ripe for demolition, but has been deemed by the collective as historic and the decision has been made to move the building, brick by brick, after a whole building digital laser scan, no less than forty feet. That is not a typo: FORTY feet. Mind you, this digital laser scanning process, with millions of points of data, is rarely used anywhere due its cost, but when money is no matter, why not? The building is in such a sad state of disrepair, it clearly had not been a priority for the neighborhood until open-ended government money was involved.

To be sure that you understand my position, let me clarify: I take no issue with the neighborhood independently coming together and determining the historical and cultural value of the building. By all means, start a campaign to raise funds to keep the building where it is. Fight the government if they try to steal or move the property; get the word out to everyone and let them know the importance of the building. But, to use the force of government because the money is there for the taking is quite the opposite, this is no more than cronyism in broad daylight. Isn’t this what those on the left usually decry? You cannot cheer on government in once case for saving and moving a building and denounce it in the other case for steamrolling an owner and forcibly taking property, they are two sides of the same coin. Sadly, the public is silent, everyone has given in to the planner, who will take care of the project and associated money because only the government knows how to complete a complex project like this. Alas, one puff piece evening news story and the discussion is over, the project rolls on.

I can hear the typical objections: representative democracy, the voters approved it, we vote for big picture things and then unelected bureaucrats fill in the blanks for us, on and on, ad nauseam. There is no way this particular project gets approved if it was a single line item to vote on; not a chance. However, that isn’t even the point, economics is the point. Here’s the kicker, to top it all off, once moved, there is no planned use for the building, no tenant and no pro forma business plan, just another vacant building. All the money to move it, all the money to debate the merits of the building and why it is so important to the neighborhood and no way to pay for it, other than theft.

In the end, it’s a battle between liberty and tyranny at the master planning level. It’s the same from the Federal all the way down to the local level and it’s no different than war. Bear with me and let me leave you with a passage from Lew Rockwell’s The Left, The Right, and the State, to hammer it home: “Imperialism and war are forms of planning, as much as any domestic variety. They presume knowledge over time and place that is ultimately inaccessible to planners. In order to achieve the plan, they do not depend on consent and exchange, but on taking resources by force and imposing their use against the will of their subjects. The manner in which resources are used is dictated by the will of bureaucrats and politicians, not markets or consumers. They end not in wealth creation and improved livings standards - as with market exchange - but in the usual symptoms of governmental control: debt, destruction and even death.” (p.92)

Let us move on from the mentality that the government must do everything for us. Let us forge our own path. Let us conceive of a life unencumbered by regulation and debt. Let us plan for ourselves. Let us avoid the planner’s assured destruction.