Read Atlas Shrugged if you have not already.

If you have already read it, read it again.

Badnarik’s Constitutional Class videos, mostly in the 1st one, go into how gubmint gets away with this, and true property ownership under ALLODIAL TITLE, and other such non-land property problems.

He’s a very smart guy… I’d reccomend voting for him for President.

“I get the feeling that this was done specifically to prevent a particular development project or kind of development project (mall or big-box store development), but is worded is such a way that it covers pretty much everyone.”

Unfortunately no — check their site. They’re pretty ecumenical in their advocacy (and sociopathy) — here’s just one sample:

“1000 Friends of Washington has changed the shape of land use across the state. We have successfully challenged all (SIC!!!) of Snohomish County’s illegal attempts to expand urban growth boundaries and redesignate hundreds of acres of rural and agricultural lands for commercial and residential development. We have reversed every (SIC!!!) major land use decision the Snohomish County Council has made in the last three years.”

Gives new meaning to the term “scorched earth policy.”

You can only develop 10% of the land.
You must leave 65% in the natural state.

What of the other 25%?

Love to see the enviro’s faces if a few land owners did this. ;)

They might have been thinking of developers who want to buy hundreds of acres and pave it all, but unthinkingly written a law that covers Bob’s quarter acre.

It just kinda has that smell about it. The numbers 65 and 10 involved probably resemble numbers involved in a particular development project.

It’s kind of the inverse of when a law is passed that covers only “companies incorporated on, say, March 5th, 1990, operating in the automotive industry” in order to create a law that applies to one particular business, despite rules against doing exactly that.

ASTM and ASHRAE put out basics and fundamentals so that people don’t build shit that harms them or others. There are building codes for what you can safely build and design so that you don’t do anything to hurt yourself or another human being. I think there should be codes so that you don’t wind up hurting another human being or his/her property through our biospherical media, the environment. Blunt force 65-10 regulations like this one? Maybe a little extreme. Requiring LEED consultation seems a better solution, a happy medium even.

On the other hand, there are codes and regulations for density, setbacks, etc, that are ludicrous! That lead to the sprawl and quite honestly degradation of farm and wild land.

What about brownfield development?

“take a walk in central park”

The land where Central Park is located was the crappiest land on the island of Manhattan — so bad that only blacks and Irish lived there. It was BUILT, just like any other construction project — it was most certainly not “preserved” on “conserved” in any sense of the word.

And it was built because the
“enlightened” central planners, working for the “public good,” forgot to allow for appreciable park space when they implemented Manhattan’s famous “grid plan” in the first place.

And besides — King County, Washington, is hardly the island of Manhattan.

As for ‘nobody giving you the right to ruin an ecosystem’, well, we could go deep into the philosophical depths of human ownership of land, but I’d rather not, at least, not right now. I would rather stay within the legal constructs of the Constitutional Republic, which was built on NEGATIVE rights, not positive ones. IOW, it’s not as if the government retains all rights, and doles them out as it sees fit. No, instead, the Constitution determined which rights the government was bound to protect. Thus, we were afforded inalienable rights to life, liberty and the persuit of happiness. Later, the Bill of Rights spells out other specific rights which we are inextricably endowed, and which the government may not abridge. It was more a way to protect US from the GOVERNMENT, and from each other, and from outside aggression.

However, by saying that “you have no right to develop your own land”, you are effectively abrogating the idea of negative rights, and installing the idea of positive rights; in simpler terms, you are saying that the government, or, the “majority”, is the keeper of all rights, and shall dole them out as it sees fit. This is a slap in the face to the Constitution of the United States, and is precisely what the Founding Fathers sought to prevent.

As I said, I support environmental laws that conform to the unprovoked harm principles of private property law. If I pour toxic sludge in my stream and it flows into your proerty and hurts it, then I am liable. I shall be taken to court for said offenses and be at the mercy of a jury of my peers.

However, laws such as this, which are not reacting to any actual destructive or harmful action, but instead, are a result of the aesthetic, emotional and reminiscing whims of the majority (or, even, the active majority who has the backing of socialist government officials). If I build a huge development on my property that fouls up my neighbor’s stormwater systems, then yes, I should be liable for the damage that I cause. But for the state to seize control over 65% of my private property in the name of some sort of subjective “common good” is against what the republic is built on: property rights. If you can prove that it is “ruining an ecosystem”, and thus, bringing harm to your property, when I develop 50% of my land, then you may personally sue for damages in a court of law. But land development is not inherently harmful to people, therefore, it should not be inherently illegal. You have no government-protected right to look at a hillside and see no houses, unless it is your property. And the measurement of “harm” should be decided by the courts, not by environmental extremists who wish to control the actions of everyone around them, because “they know best”.

(puts on green hat)…..

…it’s not a question of loving the environment more than people, it’s more a realisation that our fates are inextricably though assymmetrically bound (we need our planet more than it “needs” us”)…

Posted by: wade on June 29, 2004 06:03 AM

Capice?

I got involved last summer in fighting a PUD that would have trashed our community. I did this because I could – the owner of the property couldn’t do the awful things he wanted to do WITHOUT a change in the zoning. So I could fight the zoning. If the zoning were all ready for him though, I wouldn’t have had a leg to stand on and I wouldn’t have participated with my socialist neighborhood association the way I did. I guess I got lucky.

I haven’t participated in anything they’ve tried to do since, because it’s a bunch of nannyist, liberal crap that infringes on business and transportation.

Not that I like to see this sort of thing happening anywhere. . . but it makes me feel better knowing folks like me aren’t alone :)