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Florida city considers eminent domain
Florida's Riviera Beach is a poor, predominantly black, coastal community that intends to revitalize its economy by using eminent domain, if necessary, to displace about 6,000 local residents and build a billion-dollar waterfront yachting and housing complex.
And later you responded w/
it would seem it is logical that eminent domain might be used in cases like this when we believe the increase in economic prosperity in the region is of a net benefit to those who lose their land
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And what net benefit do you think poor black people are going to get from a multi-billion dollar waterfront yachting and housing complex?
I'll answer, NONE. The people who will benefit are, in order:
1) the developers who get to build on the land and sell the results.
2) the politicians recieving kickbacks to invoke eminent domain
3) rich people who want a new yachting and housing complex.
The problem with emminent domain as it is lately being invoked, for commercial improvement of an area. Is that land which is potentially quite valuable is being seized at reduced rates so that it can be improved. This seized land is being put into the hands of a commercial interest at this very reduced rate so they can make a profit.
If they were really interested in improving the plight of those people -- an idea would be to do the following:
Create a corporation which will be granted the seized property, but each individual who owned the seized property will be given ownership in the corporation. This corporation will then contract with other companies to complete the rebuilding process. Then upon selling the property the owners of the corporation will recived the generated income.
Of course this won't work for the following reasons:
1) there will not be enough money to make it worthwhile for the people who are currently begging for emminent domain to be invoked.
2) and won't leave enough for the politician's kickbacks.
3) the business men who gain control of the corp will find many way to overpay the contracts and leave nothing for the original property owners.
Emminent domain for commercial purposes is a completely and utterly flawed idea.