[The Congress shall have power] To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian tribes;

-U.S.Constitution (Article I, Section 8, Clause 3)

Here is a great segment from Reason.tv discussing the history and expansion of the federal power through more modern understandings of the interstate commerce clause.

The ultimate question here has more to do with how you view the Constitution. Is it a legal contract written specifically to limit the power of government – or was it just some basic guidelines for setting up a government system?

This is a fundamental question that American’s each must reconcile. It may not seem important, but rest assured – your rights and liberties will look very different, based on your answer.

For instance, I may choose not to drive a car, or purchase gasoline – but I may not choose not to pay my taxes, which are used to build and maintain our roads. (This is not an argument for privatizing roads, just an example of choice vs. force.). The principal is simple: If I am unable to simply say one word, “No” – then I am being forced to act, forced to work, forced to serve someone else with my mind.

A common criticism of this discussion is that it is too abstract or, for instance “doesn’t feature a single word about policy.” I would simply argue that a philosophical understanding of why government exists, how it functions, and what its role should be is far more essential than any policy discussion. In fact – it must pre-empt policy discussions. Policy is decided long after people have already made assumptions about what government can and should do.

Many people have written about the proper role of government in the past, but sadly, their ideas are substituted in favor of chatter about this or that policy. For the person who perhaps hasn’t taken a moment to think about the core issue, “What is the role of Government,” allow me to present two arguments about the proper, and improper use of force (Government being an institution of force).

The following is an excerpt from John Galt’s speech toward the end of Atlas Shrugged. It highlights some important points about the use of force that must be considered when talking about government functions, since (in America at least), Government is the only institution granted the monopoly use of force. This is a bit of a mild spoiler if you have not read the book – so if that is the case, you may wish to come back to this after reading the book. The video clip is just an excerpt, so be certain to skip to the text below. I have added emphasis.

“Whatever may be open to disagreement, there is one act of evil that may not, the act that no man may commit against others and no man may sanction or forgive. So long as men desire to live together, no man may initiate-do you hear me? no man may start-the use of physical force against others.

“To interpose the threat of physical destruction between a man and his perception of reality, is to negate and paralyze his means of survival; to force-him to act against his own judgment, is like forcing him to act against his own sight. Whoever, to whatever purpose or extent, initiates the use of force, is a killer acting on the premise of death in a manner wider than murder: the premise of destroying man’s capacity to live.

“Do not open your mouth to tell me that your mind has convinced you of your right to force my mind. Force and mind are opposites; morality ends where a gun begins. When you declare that men are irrational animals and propose to treat them as such, you define thereby your own character and can no longer claim the sanction of reason-as no advocate of contradictions can claim it. There can be no ‘right’ to destroy the source of rights, the only means of judging right and wrong: the mind.

“To force a man to drop his own mind and to accept your will as a substitute, with a gun in place of a syllogism, with terror in place of proof, and death as the final argument-is to attempt to exist in defiance of reality. Reality demands of man that he act for his own rational interest; your gun demands of him that he act against it. Reality threatens man with death if he does not act on his rational judgment: you threaten him with death if he does. You place him into a world where the price of his life is the surrender of all the virtues required by life-and death by a process of gradual destruction is all that you and your system will achieve, when death is made to be the ruling power, the winning argument in a society of men.

“Be it a highwayman who confronts a traveler with the ultimatum: ‘Your money or your life,’ or a politician who confronts a country with the ultimatum: ‘Your children’s education or your life,’ the meaning of that ultimatum is: ‘Your mind or your life’-and neither is possible to man without the other.

“If there are degrees of evil, it is hard to say who is the more contemptible: the brute who assumes the right to force the mind of others or the moral degenerate who grants to others the right to force his mind. That is the moral absolute one does not leave open to debate. I do not grant the terms of reason to men who propose to deprive me of reason. I do not enter discussions with neighbors who think they can forbid me to think. I do not place my moral sanction upon a murderer’s wish to kill me. When a man attempts to deal with me by force, I answer him-by force.

“It is only as retaliation that force may be used and only against the man who starts its use. No, I do not share his evil or sink to his concept of morality: I merely grant him his choice, destruction, the only destruction he had the right to choose: his own. He uses force to seize a value; I use it only to destroy destruction. A holdup man seeks to gain wealth by killing me; I do not grow richer by killing a holdup man. I seek no values by means of evil, nor do I surrender my values to evil.

“In the name of all the producers who had kept you alive and received your death ultimatums in payment, I now answer you with a single ultimatum of our own: Our work or your guns. You can choose either; you can’t have both. We do not initiate the use of force against others or submit to force at their hands. If you desire ever again to live in an industrial society, it Will be on our moral terms. Our terms and our motive power are the antithesis of yours. You have been using fear as your weapon and have been bringing death to man as his punishment for rejecting your morality. We offer him life as his reward for accepting ours.”

“This is John Galt speaking.” – Atlus Shrugged

Frederick Bastiat also illuminated this idea much earlier in The Law:

What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?

If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.

Clearly, Force in itself, is not an evil thing, just as guns in themselves, are not evil. However – applying force against an individual’s will is a violation of that individual’s basic human right to liberty. As Rand’s fictional character John Galt put it, to force someone to substitute their own will for yours or another’s, is to deprive that person of choice, or the proper use of their mind.

This brings us back to the core question: What is the proper role of Government? Or in other words – how can the collective force be used, in a manner than does not violate the rights of individuals? This question can be applied to all manner of topics: From National Defense, to Education, to Universal Health-care – the first question, the question that is more fundamental to every situation is – does this policy fall within the bounds of the proper application of force. How are we to determine this? Bastiat again helps with this quandary:

See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

As soon as government breaks out of its proper boundaries (its limits, which I believe were the very purpose of our Constitution), each individual’s mind is in grave danger. No – this isn’t some “black helicopters and tin-foil hats” nonsense, but you simply have to apply what you know about human nature, and add in the power of coercive force without proper function or limit. The bigger and more centralized a government program becomes, the greater number of individual wills are overrun by the relatively tiny will of the elected body. This is exactly the reason that conservatives favor smaller, more local initiatives (if they favor them at all). Programs and policies that claim to represent everyone, more accurately represent no-one. The closer a representative is to the people whom they represent (and the fewer people they represent), the more likely that their choices will align with the wills of the represented.

This is also the reason conservatives reject socialism and other collectivist philosophies. Not only do these philosophies have a history of mass atrocity, at their very core, they fundamentally act against the individual. Given human nature’s fatal tendency to dominate (by force) other human beings – it is easy to see the dangers of setting up systems which encourage and enable this ability.

Self-preservation and self-development are common aspirations among all people. And if everyone enjoyed the unrestricted use of his faculties and the free disposition of the fruits of his labor, social progress would be ceaseless, uninterrupted, and unfailing.

But there is also another tendency that is common among people. When they can, they wish to live and prosper at the expense of others. This is no rash accusation. Nor does it come from a gloomy and uncharitable spirit. The annals of history bear witness to the truth of it: the incessant wars, mass migrations, religious persecutions, universal slavery, dishonesty in commerce, and monopolies. This fatal desire has its origin in the very nature of man — in that primitive, universal, and insuppressible instinct that impels him to satisfy his desires with the least possible pain.

-Frederick Bastiat, The Fatal Tendency of Mankind -The Law

Back to the concept that conservatives being “short on policy.” There are people who believe that if only the “right policy” (the right application of force) were implemented, then everyone would benefit. This sounds like a nobel idea (and is classic among collectivists), but the ends do not justify the means. You cannot confiscate work, to encourage work. You cannot enslave, to set free. This is contradictory. Historian and Communist Howard Zinn penned the popular “A people’s History of the United States” (though I take huge issue with his use of Presentism) which catalogs the suffering and horrors of underdogs and people trampled by force throughout history. And yet – all the while, he supported the idea that “the right government” could wield force, or if “the right people” controlled the levers of power, it would benefit “the people.” Zinn spent his life demonstrating the destruction that the use of force wreaked on people, and yet never arrived at the idea that force cannot be initiated against the unwilling, even if done with noble intentions.

And this truth is the core of my argument. Firstly, I reject the group classification of “the people.” There is no such thing. There exist only totally unique individual human persons. Therefore, there is no way for any policy to be “right” for each individual person. Economist Thomas Sowell put it this way: “The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.” To take this question away from a person, and hand it a third party, is to remove the choice from the person with the best knowledge to make it. I think each person needs to decide what is best for themselves, their family, their children, etc. Not some elected group of “experts” claiming to act in the individual’s best interest.

This is why true conservatives advocate ideas that increase liberty. We don’t believe that if we only had “the right government,” or the “right policy” every societal ill could be corrected. We believe that each human being is an individual person, and thus do not address nameless, faceless groups, and classes of people. We do not create political mascots out of groups, such as “the rich,” “the middle class,” or “the poor” so that we can pit them against one another. Nor do we have the audacity to proclaim ourselves so above society that we can fix their problems with our magical policies, if they would only surrender us the power.

By advocating more liberty, given the dismal history of the human condition, conservatives are the true progressives. Liberty is the only situation where each individual is truly a person, capable of making the maximum amount of choice about their own life. With Liberty, the individual has rights and is not demanded by threat of imprisonment or death to surrender his mind, his choices, or his work to the will of another. A free man offers the product of his choices (or his mind) in exchange for something else of value. He determines what he judges to be a fair trade – not a third party. He offers true charity out of his own desire to help another person, not by edict imposed from the desires of a politician. He is not forced to work for someone else, neither does he force another to work for his benefit. In doing so – his rights do not necessitate the destruction or sacrifice of anyone else’s. The choices in his mind, do not command the minds of others.

Thus, the proper and only role of government is to protect human rights, or men’s minds from being violated by force.

“…That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

Let us stop proposing policies which are destructive to this end. Let us not regress into soft-despotism and servitude. Let us progress, as a nation, with ideas that free individual’s minds.

Finland has become the first country in the world to make broadband internet access a legal right for all citizens.

The legislation, which came into effect Thursday, forces telecom operators to provide a reasonably priced broadband connection with a downstream rate of at least one megabit per second (mbs) to every permanent residence and office, the Finnish government said in a statement.

“From now on a reasonably priced broadband connection will be everyone’s basic right in Finland,” said Finnish communications minister Suvi Linden. “This is absolutely one of the government’s most significant achievements in regional policy and I am proud of it.

via edition.cnn.com
“Reasonably priced” …That sounds like a really solid and objective base for just law…

Think of what is really going on here. Imagine if it were my legal right to force you to provide me a service at whatever price I determine is “reasonable?” You don’t have to imagine this if you live in Finland. The Law, better described as the collective force, is being directed by the vast majority of Fins, against a minority group (telecoms). The Law, which is supposed to be an instrument of justice and defense, is perverted into on offensive weapon of plunder.

And the Finnish government is an utter disgrace, promoting this concept as a “significant achievement.” It is a digression and perversion of the high concepts of Rule of Law, Individual Rights, and Justice for which generations of men have struggled and died to advance.

What is next? “Reasonably priced” computers? Automobiles and Fuel? Food? Clothing? As soon as the law ceases to be  just – where do you draw the line?

But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.[...]

But how is this legal plunder to be identified? Quite simply. See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law — which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system.

The person who profits from this law will complain bitterly, defending his acquired rights. He will claim that the state is obligated to protect and encourage his particular industry; that this procedure enriches the state because the protected industry is thus able to spend more and to pay higher wages to the poor workingmen.

Do not listen to this sophistry by vested interests. The acceptance of these arguments will build legal plunder into a whole system. In fact, this has already occurred. The present-day delusion is an attempt to enrich everyone at the expense of everyone else; to make plunder universal under the pretense of organizing it.

-The Law, Frederick Bastiat

First of all – to whoever reads this, I could care less which way you decide to vote on these measures. I think that assumptions of ill intent by anyone on either side of Measures 66 and 67 are foolish, and distract people from carefully weighing the issues logically. 

As anyone who knows me might have guessed – I’m not exactly enthralled with the two ballot measures, 66 and 67, which are currently facing Oregon’s voters. I have been trying to think them over for a while now, but I tend to think most clearly when I force myself to write my thoughts. Of course – before you read any further – you should read the actual bills yourself. Here is Measure 66, and here is Measure 67.

At this point, you have probably heard the talking point arguments from either side of the issue. Namely, that your choice is between hurting schools, teachers, and students (by voting against 66 and 67) or hurting corporations, jobs, and the rich (passing 66 and 67). Both arguments may be true, but I think there are some deeper concepts to consider.

“The most basic question is not what is best, but who shall decide what is best.”

 -Thomas Sowell

In my opinion, all political and legislative ideas should be judged by two key factors.

1. The vision they are built on
2. Their practical seen and unseen results

In this post – I am going to discuss the vision behind Measure 66. It is important to understand that by ‘vision,’ I do not mean the stated goals or intent of the policies. In fact – whatever the stated goal of policy happens to be, is almost entirely irrelevant to whether or not it is a good policy which would achieve that goal. When I say ‘vision,’ I am referring to the actual fundamental assumptions about society, law, and justice that the policy is built on.

Measure 66

Measure 66 raises taxes on a certain group of people who earn above a specified amount of income. In my view, there are several problems with the vision behind this bill, primarily, the vision of Law. Firstly, this tax is progressive in nature, as it singles out a specific group of people to be taxed at a higher rate than another group. From the way I view law, I believe progressive taxes are unjust.

The Law (including tax law) is meant to be an instrument of justice. Here the definition of “just” is especially helpful: 

“Equitable: fair to all parties as dictated by reason and conscience; “equitable treatment of all citizens.”  

A just Law then is the application of force against the inequitable treatment of citizens, or the violation of individual natural rights, such as life, liberty, or in this case, property. Friederic Bastiat wrote far more eloquently about this concept in the 1800s (Please excuse the long quote):

What, then, is law? It is the collective organization of the individual right to lawful defense.

Each of us has a natural right — from God — to defend his person, his liberty, and his property. These are the three basic requirements of life, and the preservation of any one of them is completely dependent upon the preservation of the other two. For what are our faculties but the extension of our individuality? And what is property but an extension of our faculties? If every person has the right to defend even by force — his person, his liberty, and his property, then it follows that a group of men have the right to organize and support a common force to protect these rights constantly. Thus the principle of collective right — its reason for existing, its lawfulness — is based on individual right. And the common force that protects this collective right cannot logically have any other purpose or any other mission than that for which it acts as a substitute. Thus, since an individual cannot lawfully use force against the person, liberty, or property of another individual, then the common force — for the same reason — cannot lawfully be used to destroy the person, liberty, or property of individuals or groups.

Such a perversion of force would be, in both cases, contrary to our premise. Force has been given to us to defend our own individual rights. Who will dare to say that force has been given to us to destroy the equal rights of our brothers? Since no individual acting separately can lawfully use force to destroy the rights of others, does it not logically follow that the same principle also applies to the common force that is nothing more than the organized combination of the individual forces?

If this is true, then nothing can be more evident than this: The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense. It is the substitution of a common force for individual forces. And this common force is to do only what the individual forces have a natural and lawful right to do: to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.

- Frederick Bastiat, The Law

I can think of many rationalizations for a certain group of people to be forced to turn over a greater percentage of their earnings to the State, but not one which is just. Some people argue that the wealthy actually live on a different percentage of their income, than say, a poorer middle-class person, and are less affected by higher taxes. Whether or not this is factually accurate, it hardly justifies the majority deciding what percentage they actually need to live on, or what shall be taken.

“The smallest minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities.”  

-Ayn Rand

Essentially, Measure 66 and all progressive taxes, agree that it is right for third parties (lawmakers or the majority of voters) to determine for other individuals (first parties) what constitutes ‘enough’ income to be taxed at a higher rate. Of course I believe in representative government, but only one which represents the whole equally as individuals, and not one group of citizens vs. another based on class criteria.

Furthermore, I cannot think of a real justification for choosing $250,000, other than the assumption that this amount of money is high enough that a) the taxed party doesn’t need the money, or can ‘afford it’, and b) it won’t effect the majority of people voting to pass the Measure. The first reason subtly agrees that a progressive tax is unjust – but then attempts to rationalize it. And the second is nothing more than shrewd politicking.

The unfortunate consequences of Measure 66 passing or failing are real, and shouldn’t be minimized. If it passes – I believe that it will have an unseen negative effect on jobs (which are already in terrible shape) throughout the state. But there is no doubt – if it fails, it will certainly have a seen negative effect on teachers and schools. As with most government policy – we are left to vote on a loose-loose measure. If anything – this illustrates another simple truth about life:

“There are no solutions; there are only trade-offs.”

-Thomas Sowell

As I mentioned in the beginning – in no way could I judge anyone for voting one way or the other on this measure.  The trade-offs of Measure 66 (as well as 67) are difficult to judge, but neither are without negative consequences. I can only state my own judgment and reasoning. Personally, I think 66 represents a deeply flawed vision of society and law. I am not arguing that people who vote for 66 are necessarily approving this vision. However, I believe that American society should be ‘progressing,’ or moving away from laws which divide citizens by class and set up one group against another. I think Bastiat again rightly illuminates this issue:

“But, unfortunately, law by no means confines itself to its proper functions. And when it has exceeded its proper functions, it has not done so merely in some inconsequential and debatable matters. The law has gone further than this; it has acted in direct opposition to its own purpose. The law has been used to destroy its own objective: It has been applied to annihilating the justice that it was supposed to maintain; to limiting and destroying rights which its real purpose was to respect. The law has placed the collective force at the disposal of the unscrupulous who wish, without risk, to exploit the person, liberty, and property of others. It has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder. And it has converted lawful defense into a crime, in order to punish lawful defense.”

- Frederick Bastiat, The Law

I realize that this opinion may seem grandiose and/or ideological. But I simply believe that the greater trade-off in the long-run is not just “education vs. jobs”, but a free people, and a system of just laws. And I think it is a serious problem that we have lawmakers who write policy of this nature. 

Part of me laughs, and part of me cringes whenever I see these signs….because they are absolute rubbish. This sign is based on the assumption that we the public are either too lazy, or just too ignorant to think beyond what we immediatly see.

Whenever we are presented with this concept: that the government can “put people to work,” the question must be asked, “How?” 

When a non-state entity creates a job, it does so either by taking out a loan on the investment bet that the job created will produce enough value to repay or exceed the loan taken, or by reinvesting its own existing capital with a similar goal.

The State “creates jobs” or “puts people back to work” either with existing tax revenues, or by taking on debt to be funded through future tax revenues. I used quotes above because anyone with a grasp of elementary mathematics would realize that this is neither “creating jobs” nor “putting people back to work.” It is nothing more than shifting work around.

Ask yourself, what would the tax revenues taken by the state to ‘put Oregon back to work’ have been used for otherwise? What of the things the tax-payers would have invested their money in, had it not been taxed away?

The answer is: jobs.

Perhaps the tax-payer was planning on buying some new shoes (a shoe salesman’s paycheck), going out for an extra nice dinner (a restaurant worker’s wages and tip), a kitchen remodel project (construction material producers, contractors, cabinet makers, plumbers, etc) planning to add to their payroll at work to hire a new employee, or even donating money to their favorite charity. But these things will never be seen because some politician had the nice, though deceptive and false idea that they had the ability to “put Oregonians back to work.”

It is important at this point to understand that money is nothing more than a representation of labor, or work. We choose to work and earn money because money allows us to trade the value of something we are good at (in my case, web developement), for something we value that we aren’t good at, or couldn’t possibly create on our own (e.g. a ticket to football game. I neither play football, nor do I have the knowlege or ability to coach a team, let alone build a football stadium. Heck, I even suck at Madden…).

The point is that the sign above is clearly hogwash. It is based on the flawed notion that governments create things. To accept this idea, is to throw out the economic concept of opportunity cost. Government is force. The government is the only entity that we allow the power to involuntarily take our money and re-appropriate it. In this case – it is the opportunity for the tax dollars to have been spent elsewhere – that the government is forgoing so they can be assigned to this road project. If the sign was actually honest it would read: Taking a portion of your work, and directing it to someone or something else. Or perhaps simply, Making Oregonians pay for this road project.  

But telling the truth doesn’t matter to politicians because when there is a problem (such as a down economy) they must be seen as doing something to fix the problem. The perception that they are doing something to ‘put Oregon back to work’ is far more important politically than the actual truth, that they just moved work to a project that the voters will see. What the voters won’t see is all of the jobs that were sacrificed to make that particular road project possible.

It is important for me to mention that here, I am not necessarily arguing against road or other government projects. I am however calling out the hack politicians who think that tax-payers are dumb enough to fall for the ludicrous idea that government can create jobs by simply spending them into existence. From here, you can draw your own conclusion on whether the ‘stimulus’ bill will actually stimulate anything, other than some politician’s delusion of grandure.

Oh, and here’s the real irony of ironies: This sign is on a road leading up to the city Amtrak station. Amtrak is in business today, and its employees have jobs, only because they are subsidized with money taken from tax-payers. I suppose a sign for that could have read: Putting Amtrak back to work – which of course actually means, Forcing you to pay for Amtrak, rather than whatever else you valued more. 

“In the department of economy, an act, a habit, an institution, a law, gives birth not only to an effect, but to a series of effects. Of these effects, the first only is immediate; it manifests itself simultaneously with its cause – it is seen. The others unfold in succession – they are not seen: it is well for us, if they are foreseen. Between a good and a bad economist this constitutes the whole difference – the one takes account of the visible effect; the other takes account both of the effects which are seen, and also of those which it is necessary to foresee. Now this difference is enormous, for it almost always happens that when the immediate consequence is favourable, the ultimate consequences are fatal, and the converse. Hence it follows that the bad economist pursues a small present good, which will be followed by a great evil to come, while the true economist pursues a great good to come, – at the risk of a small present evil.”

-That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen -Frédéric Bastiat, 1850

Posted via email from Andrew Colclough

This is an outstanding economics talk from the Mises Institute, by Art Carden. Carden uses everything from LOST, to WALLE, to Walmart to illustrate core economic concepts like scarcity, opportunity cost, comparative advantage, firms, capital, and voluntary trading (just to name a few).

Sounds dry, right? There are probably more coherent and logical thoughts covered in this relatively short lecture than in every political speech given in the last 10 years combined.

I think this story from the Register Guard brings up a great point about private property rights.

Autzen Stadium South

Complaint takes aim at big ‘O’ on Autzen

The city will hold a hearing on a permit issue involving the tall, bright yellow letter
A Fairmount Hill woman is trying to get a three-story “O” removed from the south side of Autzen Stadium.

And she’s spurred action from city of Eugene sign regulators because the university didn’t apply for a building permit before putting the sign up — or for an exception that would allow the sign to be eight times larger than city zoning rules allow.

This wrestling over the big yellow “O” has gone on behind the scenes for more than a year. Fairmount Hill resident McKay Sohlberg lost in the first round in March when the Eugene planning director said the sign could stay. But Sohlberg has appealed and will take her case before a hearings officer on May 13.

The “O” sign rises like a neon moon over the tops of deciduous trees as seen from Sohlberg’s high, south-side home.

[...]

After receiving complaints, the city gave the university two choices: Immediately take the sign down or apply for an exception to the city sign rules and get a belated building permit — and pay double permit fees as a penalty for not applying in the first place. The university won an initial round in March when the Eugene planning director ruled the sign did merit an exception to the code. But Fairmount resident Sohlberg hired an attorney and filed a next-level appeal to a hearings officer.

The hundreds of pages of documents submitted by the university and its agents to the city do not include an explanation for why the university would hang a three-story-tall sign without addressing the city’s sign code or obtaining a building permit. The UO’s sign contractor, ES&A Sign and Awning Co., is a 44-year-old company with a West Coast reach and a reputation for top-flight work, including putting up signs for Sacred Heart Medical Center at RiverBend, Market of Choice and Hayward Field.

[...]

“The huge lemon-yellow sign is a beacon on an already impressively large structure,” she wrote in a letter to the city. “I love the ‘O’ on my sweatshirt, am a Duck fan, but I don’t want to stare at this immense sign from my house. … Just because the community likes the ‘product’ being promoted in this case, doesn’t mean that the sign should be allowed to stay.”

Sohlberg, a UO associate professor of communications disorders and sciences, declined comment for this story.

Her neighbor, Babette Jones, shares Sohlberg’s concern that the view is getting cluttered. Right now, two cranes associated with the basketball arena construction are in view.

“I certainly understand the neighbors,” she said. “They bought these homes and have nice views to look at. I don’t particularly think the ‘O’ is a nice view,” she said.

Read the whole article

Now, wait just a minute.

First of all – consider all the silly hoops that the Stadium had to go through to do something with their own property. This is exactly the kind of legal nightmare you get when you start letting the City determine what someone can do with their own property.

Secondly, I agree that Sohlberg bought her home. I’m also fairly certain she did not buy Autzen Stadium, nor did she buy a guarantee that Autzen Stadium wouldn’t do something with their own property that she might not like very much. Neither did the rest of the people in Fairmount Hill. They are certainly free to do so, if they choose. I don’t see anyone stopping them.

How the majority of people feel about the ‘O,’ shouldn’t really factor into this story. The over-arching question here is, why should Fairmount Hill have the right to decide what Autzen Stadium chooses to do with their own property?

Her initial complaint mentioned: “If left unchallenged, the “O” could set a precedent for future out-of-scale signs on other UO building projects.” Why does Sohlberg’s vision override the vision of the University, or Autzen Stadium? Also, I would counter that if Sohlberg wins this case, it will set precedent that a majority opinion gets to decided what a private entity can and cannot do with it’s own property. What happens when the majority of other neighborhoods determine that Fairmont Hill should be flattened in the name of some ‘noble vision?’ And if, in the end, it’s just a majority vote, does Autzen Stadium only get one vote on what it can do with its own property?

Thomas Sowell took this issue on concerning his own home with a view (be sure to read his entire article):

When I was house-hunting, one of the things that struck me about the house that I eventually settled on was the fact that there were no curtains or shades on the bathroom window in the back. The reason was that there was no one living on the steep hillside in back, which was covered with trees.

Since I don’t own that hillside, someday someone may decide to build houses there, which means that the bathroom would then require curtains or shades and our back porch would no longer be as private.

Fortunately for me, local restrictive laws currently prevent houses from being built on that hillside.

Also fortunately for me, my continued criticisms of such laws in this column have not made a dent in the local authorities.

But suppose that someday either the courts will strike down land use restrictions or local officials will respect property rights. Maybe I will be long gone by then and the new owner of this house will be angry at the diminished privacy — and consequently the diminished value of the house, caused by the building of houses on the hillside.

Would that anger be justified?

The fundamental question is: What did the homeowner buy? And would a change in laws deprive him of what he paid for?

Since the house and the wooded hillside are separate properties, the homeowner never paid for a hillside wooded in perpetuity.

If whoever owns the hillside finds that his property is worth more with houses on it, what right does the adjacent homeowner have to deprive the other owner of the benefits of building on that hillside or selling it to a builder?

True, my house was worth more because of the privacy provided by the wooded hillside. But there was no guarantee that the hill would remain wooded forever. Whoever buys the house buys its current privacy and the chance — not a certainty — that the hill will remain wooded.

If a homeowner wanted a guarantee that the hill would remain as is, he could have bought the hill. That way he would be paying for what he wanted, rather than expecting the government to deprive someone else for his benefit.

Read the rest

I’m no lawyer, but it seems to me that the dispute over the Autzen ‘O’ is basically the same argument. If Sohlberg and the residents of Fairmount Hill dislike what Autzen does with its property – perhaps they should consider purchasing the Stadium, rather than trying to strong-arm them by force of government.

Not to mention, I’m absolutely certain we wouldn’t hear the end of this if the owner of Autzen Stadium was trying to get a City ordinance to bulldoze Fairmount Hill…

UPDATE: Here is a screenshot of the view from Fairmount Hill, hat-tip KEZI (click image to watch their video coverage of the story):

McKay Sohlberg's view of Autzen Stadium

UPDATE: This just in from the Register Guard:

A Fairmount resident has withdrawn her appeal of a city decision allowing the University of Oregon to place a large “O” on the south side of Autzen Stadium without first meeting government requirements. The O is eight times larger than the city zoning rules allow.

The UO did not apply for a building permit, or an exception to the zoning rules, before putting the letter up, and Fairmount Hill resident McKay Sohlberg filed a complaint with the city.

Eugene’s planning director ruled in March that the sign did merit an exception to the rules. Sohlberg filed an appeal to that decision, which was to be heard today. The city planning department said the appeal had been withdrawn and this afternoon’s scheduled hearing cancelled.

With the withdrawal of the appeal, city officials said, “The planning director’s decision approving the Autzen Stadium sign variance is effective.”

Allow me a victory image:

Glad that the city basically sided with Autzen on this one, though it would have been nice for them to give more reasoning. Otherwise – the stadium could just remove the sign and paint the same sized ‘O’ on the stadium. Makes you wonder what does or does not merit an exception to “the rule”. What is the rule, and who decides it?

Go Ducks!