51–60 of 64 posts
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Isn't it rather antisocial to pave over someone's home?
Not if you pay them accordingly. Moving is not that big a deal. I am talking about projects for public benefit. Some things have to be built somewhere, after all.
I'm going to venture a guess that either you've never moved or if you have, you just threw nearly all your possessions out and started completely anew.
I had Tibor Gergley's "Great Big Book of bed time stories". There is a story in it called "Make way for the thruway" by Caroline Emerson. It is about an old lady who refuses to vacate her house so that they can make a highway. It has a happy ending when sympathetic construction workers build the road around her house, and she becomes the famous old lady with the pretty house next to the highway. My favorite quote: "Y…
Isn't it rather antisocial not to sell for public building? I don't understand why everybody sides with the holdouts. Also I feel sorry for everybody who lives next to a highway.
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I remember a holdout situation in my old home town that was resolved... differently. The developer offered way above market rates to the last holdout, who still refused. A few weeks later, while the holdout was out shopping, the developer had a "miscommunication" with a construction subcontractor, who drove a bulldozer through the building. Obviously, the homeowner sued the developer, but wound up only winning the no…
Sometimes the law seems incomprehensible. How is it that you can knock down somebody's house on purpose so you can essentially steal their land and all you have to do is pay for the house?
Forgive me for making a somewhat philosophical tangent. It has been said that naming things is fundamental to our abstract thinking. The ability to not only group some concepts together, but to give a single label to this group that is further composable, enables us to do more complex, more advanced things with those concepts. To present a very clear example: > In China, (...) they call their holdout houses “nail hou…
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Sometimes the law seems incomprehensible. How is it that you can knock down somebody's house on purpose so you can essentially steal their land and all you have to do is pay for the house?
The difficulty would be in proving malice. If all you can prove is a bulldozer accident, then paying them the replacement value of the house seems reasonable.
Let's say that my neighbor has a window that I don't like, so I go smash it with a hammer. When questioned, I say, oops, sorry, I meant to smash my window with a hammer! Just an honest mistake, officer! I was going to replace that window, but you know, got pointed the wrong way.
I'm certain that I would still get hauled off to jail at this point.
So, why the difference?
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Not if you pay them accordingly. Moving is not that big a deal. I am talking about projects for public benefit. Some things have to be built somewhere, after all.
"Not if you pay them accordingly." And so it came to be, that money was the measure of everything. I hate to border on strawman-building, but... what if I told you that you have to renounce your laptop, your telephone number, all your social media accounts, all your pictures, everything you've ever hold dear, right now, "for the good of the community"? Of course I'll pay you "accordingly" (up to a point, i.e. just en…
It still seems selfish...
In any case what is the point of the discussion if I say "if they pay accordingly" and you say "but they won't"?
Money as a measure for everything - it is just a convenient proxy for talking about the value of things. What is so bad about that? Should these people be paid off in other things? Like what?
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"Not if you pay them accordingly." And so it came to be, that money was the measure of everything. I hate to border on strawman-building, but... what if I told you that you have to renounce your laptop, your telephone number, all your social media accounts, all your pictures, everything you've ever hold dear, right now, "for the good of the community"? Of course I'll pay you "accordingly" (up to a point, i.e. just en…
Well helping people has a price tag. If they don't care for the money, they could still accept it and donate it to cancer research or food donations for starving children. It still seems selfish... In any case what is the point of the discussion if I say "if they pay accordingly" and you say "but they won't"? Money as a measure for everything - it is just a convenient proxy for talking about the value of things. What…
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The difficulty would be in proving malice. If all you can prove is a bulldozer accident, then paying them the replacement value of the house seems reasonable.
And yet, I'm virtually certain that this would not apply to me personally. Let's say that my neighbor has a window that I don't like, so I go smash it with a hammer. When questioned, I say, oops, sorry, I meant to smash my window with a hammer! Just an honest mistake, officer! I was going to replace that window, but you know, got pointed the wrong way. I'm certain that I would still get hauled off to jail at this poi…
This sort of stuff happens all the time. A backhoe driver misreads a site plan and digs straight through a utility trench. A civil engineer miscalculates bearing capacity, puts a piling in the wrong place and causes an adjacent building to collapse. A debt collector mistypes a license plate number and the wrong car gets repossessed. People make honest mistakes at work that cause damage and inconvenience; No just system can treat that as criminal behaviour without evidence of malice. It's a tort of negligence, no more and no less.
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And yet, I'm virtually certain that this would not apply to me personally. Let's say that my neighbor has a window that I don't like, so I go smash it with a hammer. When questioned, I say, oops, sorry, I meant to smash my window with a hammer! Just an honest mistake, officer! I was going to replace that window, but you know, got pointed the wrong way. I'm certain that I would still get hauled off to jail at this poi…
If (for whatever bizarre reason) your job is to go from place to place smashing a list of windows, then you might have a legitimate defence. No reasonable person could confuse their own house for that of a neighbour, but someone could reasonably enter the wrong house number into a database or misread a job sheet. This sort of stuff happens all the time. A backhoe driver misreads a site plan and digs straight through…
I don't smash your window with a hammer, but I hire a guy to do it for me. Afterwards, I claim it was a mixup, and that I meant to hire him to smash my window. After a long history of attempting to pay my neighbor to replace his window, and complaining about how much I dislike his window, and how I really really want it gone, would this not be sufficiently clear that this wasn't an accident?
Is "revenge by contractor" really a viable, punishment-free approach available to me? Can I break people's stuff with no consequences beyond paying for the items if I hire a professional to do it for me? I don't think it would work.
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Isn't it rather antisocial not to sell for public building? I don't understand why everybody sides with the holdouts. Also I feel sorry for everybody who lives next to a highway.
This is why the concept of eminent domain exists. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eminent_domain
I'd rather it didn't exist, but I can see the need in the most extreme examples.
See for example:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_for_Billionaires
Edit: keeping on topic, there was a holdout when building a mall here in Uruguay, and they built the parking lot around his house:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Geant/@-34.8667764,-56.023...
there's a controversy in my country (Uruguay) because the state wants to apply Eminent Domain to a supposed landmark, because a study said 200 years ago it had been a campsite of the national hero:
http://www.diarioelpueblo.com.uy/destacados/el-hervidero-una...