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Politics : Libertarian Discussion Forum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Neocon who wrote (2113)	3/11/1999 2:52:00 AM
From: Dave Reed	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13060

I personally find zoning particularly noxious. People think that when they buy a piece of property, they are simultaneously buying the right to keep everything around them the same. In fact, they are not and couldn't possibly afford to pay the true cost of that. I remember a conversation I had with a friend a number of years ago -- she was complaining about all of the people moving in to her town and ruining it. The irony, which was lost on her, was that she herself had only moved in 6 months before. By the way, like Neocon I also don't believe in "anything goes" when it comes to the use of property. I agree that property rights are not absolute. If a person uses his or her property in a way that causes trespass upon their neighbors -- for instance if they expose them to toxins or unusual risk -- this is a situation that can and should be remedied. Zoning laws go much further than to prevent trespass. They actively seek to engineer a particular outcome. Historically, this doesn't seem to work very well. I also disagree in this one instance with MeDroogies. He seems to be justifying zoning based on the fact that people can freely choose where to live based on which zoning laws cover the property that they buy. This works only if the government already owns the property that they pass the zoning laws upon. Otherwise, some property owner is being impacted by zoning laws that were not of his or her choosing. In the case where the government already owns the land, I would agree with MeDroogies that zoning is just fine. As Neocon points out, this is more like a restrictive covenant than zoning. In the past, I lived in a townhouse community with very restrictive covenants. I liked the character of the neighborhood and freely choose to live by the rules of the townhouse association. I even got fined a couple of times when my tree trimming wasn't up to snuff. How non-libertarian you might say! Not at all. I made a free decision to live by those rules; I would never insist that my neighbor trim his trees to suit me, now that I live in an unplanned neighborhood, nor would I expect him to complain about mine. However, my neighbor was forced by the government to come beg my permission when he wanted to add to his kitchen. I don't think when I bought my house, I also bought the right to tell my neighbor what he could do with his. Dave

To: Neocon who wrote (2113)	3/11/1999 3:14:00 AM
From: Dave Reed	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13060

By the way, if it were not for the government, there would probably be no Internet, and certainly the present one exists only due to government research. Since government at all levels consumes about 40% of the economy, they're bound to do some good, if only by accident. I'd give up the Internet to have my 40% back. How about you? By the way, it's equally true to say that if it were not for the government, we wouldn't have a multi-billion dollar superconducting supercolider hole-in-the-ground in Texas. I think they filled that one back in. Years ago, when I read about a $500,000 paper airplane contest that was being underwritten by the federal government (sometime back in the early '80s), I decided to mentally earmark all of my taxes for the rest of my life to pay for that worthy event. Hey, but the Internet is pretty cool. Dave

To: Neocon who wrote (2113)	3/11/1999 4:03:00 PM
From: MeDroogies	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13060

ARPAnet was indeed a gov't (defense) project. However, it was an outgrowth of an earlier education-based project run between a number of universities. That the gov't stepped in to run its defense structure has nothing to say about whether the Internet would have existed or not. It simply says the gov't saw something it liked and acted on it. As Dave said, when you spend that much money, you're bound to get something right. That said, they practically screwed it up when Clinton decided he wanted to spend XXX billions to "build the information superhighway" in 1992. Surprise! Commerce beat you to it! Thing is, commerce would've likely built it anyway.

To: Neocon who wrote (2113)	3/11/1999 6:25:00 PM
From: Daniel W. Koehler	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 13060

<<One doesn't have to think ill of the citizenry, or even particularly well of government, to think that there should be mechanisms to represent community interests, and to adjudicate competing interests>> Neocon There is still a very elegant mechanism extant even in lo these savage times! It is called a contract. Have a referendum and compensate those who wish to opt out pursuant to a contractual arrangement. Let those who desire to change a neighborhood put their money where their mouths are to compensate those who must change their behavior if zoning changes do detriment to their interests. No need for government to intervene with an iron fist in matters of private property. Ciao, Daniel