September 11, 2017
By: Bobby Casey, Managing Director GWP
The total disregard for private property rights from both the left and right sides of the isle is very disturbing. This is what happens when you have a system totally structured around buying people off. Politicians buy off the poor vote with little welfare crumbs like food stamps. They buy off richer donors through regulations and pay to play; and sometimes with programs that funnel money to their industries.
Whatever the case may be, the constant promising of other people’s money is usually passed off as essential or benevolent when in fact it is anything but those two things.
Take the mayor of New York, Bill de Blasio. He thinks, “What’s been hardest is the way our legal system is structured to favor private property.”
“Look, if I had my druthers, the city government would determine every single plot of land, how development would proceed. And there would be very stringent requirements around income levels and rents. That’s a world I’d love to see, and I think what we have, in this city at least, are people who would love to have the New Deal back, on one level. They’d love to have a very, very powerful government, including a federal government, involved in directly addressing their day-to-day reality.”
Those pesky private property rights getting in the way of him orchestrating his altruistic utopia! I hear ya, Bill. Must suck to be so restricted in what you can do with other people’s stuff.
But if you look at the differences between Tokyo and San Francisco, you will see the difference in what respect for property rights versus a disregard for it can bring. San Francisco is so controlling with its zoning laws and ordinances, it’s created a housing crisis. It desperately tries to blame the likes of Air BNB for that, but let’s be honest: people letting out their flats and rooms isn’t why people can’t find housing. That’s how people are affording to KEEP their heads above water.
The simple fact is that the development isn’t allowed to keep up with demand in San Francisco. You have the “Not In My Backyard” (NIMBY) folks who refuse to allow further development upward. Not Tokyo. Their property taxes are assessed by the width of the development. So you can go as far back and as high up as you want and the taxes don’t change. For as bureaucratic as that country CAN BE, it’s seems to understand what is entailed in meeting the housing needs of its people.
You won’t see the same radical fluctuation in property values in Tokyo as you have in California either for that same reason. The supply and demand balance hasn’t been disrupted enough to warrant it.
The same thing is happening in Los Angeles. De Blasio’s ideals are being realized, plain as day. They have various regulatory mandates for housing development. Those regulations were so cost prohibitive, the affordable housing that was meant to be built couldn’t be built affordably! One of the biggest critics of the LA measure – JJJ – was Habitat for Humanity! The long standing housing charity could only shrug once it all played out.
And that’s exactly what NIMBY’s do. They pull a Cinderella: Oh sure! You can go to the ball! IF you can fulfill this impossible list of requirements.
SURE! You absolutely should build affordable housing! But you have to meet all these impossibly expensive regulatory requirements first… for safety… and the environment… and what-have-you.
So who ends up winning and losing? Do the poor actually get their affordable housing? Of course not. These liberal hubs have the least affordable housing in the US! And while I’m certainly no Republican, red zones tend to have the MOST affordable housing. I’ll let you juxtapose Dallas and Los Angeles. Examine the human migratory patterns between the two, and draw your own conclusions.
The irony that this fiendish and controlling desire for centrally planned order leading to utter chaos isn’t going unnoticed.
On a national level you have the likes of Jeff Sessions… one of the last holdouts for the ridiculous DARE program… celebrating the asset forfeiture program. Again employing the social engineering tactic of abusing property rights to control the behaviors of others.
Get a load this:
“Attorney General Jeff Sessions welcomed the restoration of the practice of asset forfeiture Friday in a speech at a law enforcement conference in Alabama.
“’I love that program,’ Sessions said. ‘We had so much fun doing that, taking drug dealers’ money and passing it out to people trying to put drug dealers in jail. What’s wrong with that?’”
I’m struggling to see what’s RIGHT with this! You have local police departments looking to this program as a means of supplementing their funding. It’s like having a small base salary and then being bonused on top of that. Only the city budget is the base, and federal asset forfeiture is the bonus.
The problem with this is multifold. The first of which is what we have covered extensively on this site: property is seized without as much as a charge or indictment against the owner. So the owner could very well be innocent, while their property is deemed guilty. It’s nearly impossible for these people to get their property back since the only way to do so is by proving the innocence of their property. You try proving that the money you just withdrew from the bank, or the cash you earned and are depositing wasn’t involved in a crime prior to you getting it! Good luck with that.
The second, and equally disturbing problem is that there are over 20 states that have either outlawed or drastically restricted the practice of asset forfeiture. If we take this democracy at face value, then we accept that those states’ policies against asset forfeiture reflect the will of their constituents. (I can’t imagine they wouldn’t in this case!)
What Jeff Sessions essentially did was override the will of those states’ people, with his desire for an escalated war on drugs, and bribed the local departments with laundering funding through his department instead. You won’t be seizing for your local departments. No, that would be illegal. But you can work in cooperation with the federal Department of Justice, and launder the money through us. We’ll profit share with you afterward.
Again, I have to ask: What is RIGHT with this?
The only argument the DoJ has in defense of this reinstatement is that it will help fix the opioid problem in the US. Really? You know what else would help? Getting the hell out of Afghanistan. You know what else would help? Not prescribing OxyContin to everyone who claims to have a boo-boo… or renewing the script in perpetuity.
I’m not an advocate of heroin, but I’m not so Machiavellian about keeping people OFF that drug that I’d turn a blind eye toward innocent people losing their houses, cars, and savings for the cause. That’s outrageous!
As you can see, liberals and conservatives alike seek to control their perceived vices. Property is their direct line into that control. Liberal property right control doesn’t help the poor. Never has and never will. Conservative property right control doesn’t help the addict. Never has and never will.
What really needs to be put down is policy through emotion and fear and a return to logic and reason. I don’t see that happening any time soon. You can protect your assets from some of this through proper structuring and relocation of assets. I did it and I can quantify how glad I am that I did.
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