Eminent Domain's Reverse Robin Hood

The recent Supreme Court ruling allowing local government to take and redistribute private property to non-government entities is surprising on the surface. Yet, it follows a deeper, long-term trend, and is really no surprise. The powerful, the rich, the influential and the connected have simply tightened their grip on the property and rights of individuals, with the aid of a misguided court.

This decision really boils down to economics; i.e. buyers, sellers and supply and demand. When it comes to the so-called “free economy”, the rules continue to be tipped in favor of the powerful. We have watched as the corrupt and crooked have stolen from America (i.e. Enron), with reluctant prosecution focusing only on accounting fraud. What about the infamous ripping off of “Grandma Millie”?

Collusion and monopolization are everyday fare now. We have watched anti-monopoly and anti-collusion/anti-trust laws be discarded and ignored. The government and popular business media encourages trusts and mergers. And it is not to the benefit of the consumer, or the shareholder, only the elite executives and their friends. The foundation of a free and capitalist system is competition. Why has competition been removed from the equation?

When we return to the basics, supply and demand should set the price. In many cases, we don’t have any true competition or selection. The elite industries set the price, and it is final. The game is biased towards the powerful, not the individual.

If a consumer had a choice, they might add up the production costs, and decide that they would offer a fair market value of $1 per gallon for gasoline. Or they might offer $2 for a new music CD, partly based on the fact that the actual plastic materials are only worth pennies. Needless to say, it won't work. The consumer will pay the price set by the mega-companies. That is the power of monopoly, collusion and price fixing.

Now back to the real meat of this recent Supreme Court ruling. Let's put the shoe on the other foot. An individual is the “seller” (voluntary or otherwise). The powerful are now the buyers. They will buy that property at the "fair market value" price that they set. The seller has no choice, thanks to the Supreme Court. This is regardless of the fact that the demand for the property has obviously gone up, and thus the price should also go up. To really make this unconstitutional, the property is not going to the government, as is the basis for eminent domain. It is going to a more powerful non-government entity. A reverse Robin Hood, where we take from the poor, and give to the rich. And the basis for taking private property by force is a vague and dubious new interpretation of “public use”.

So in the end, the Supreme Court has followed the same trend that has been going on for years: a Constitutional interpretation that protects the rights of the elite, and removes the rights from the people. They will still claim it protects the common people, and swear on a bible to defend it. But to understand the new interpretation of the Constitution, you need to get out your Orwell, and learn to doublethink. Many of our leaders are certainly experts at it.


Doublethink - "the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one's mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them. ... To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality which one denies — all this is indispensably necessary." - Orwell