Articles by Andy Brett

Eminent domain was strong enough for good urban planning already.

As promised, I have been thinking further about the Kelo decision, and I have fallen pretty decidedly into the dissent camp. My ambivalence before fell into a few main categories:

• The government can already take property if it deems it necessary and hey, economic development does help a lot of people out.
• There's a market distortion that takes place because of the fact that often it's "all or nothing" for the developer.
• If a city planner wants to make her city more "green," this decision could help -- a private company could essentially be given this task and the city would allow them free reign over a certain chunk of land.

I will refute these below the fold but I want to put this up here: The ruling doesn't prevent states or cities from passing laws against this sort of thing. Check out the Castle Coalition if you are not in agreement with the ruling and want to do something.

Reason number 5,233,294,049 …

... why it's great to be a vegetarian.

Beyond Econ 101.

The ongoing Euro-spat has pushed the debate over agricultural subsidies to the forefront. While the US does not quite have the highest ratio of farm subsidies to GDP, it's pretty close.

When it comes to subsidies, I'm of the opinion that there had better be a very good reason for them, and I don't see a good reason for farm subsidies in the US or any other developed country. I believe it was this article that led me to my current position; there are many other arguments that take the Econ 101 approach to subsidies -- they're an unnecessary distortion of the market.

Tom Friedman today resorted to calling us all French because both the US and France are clinging to these outdated subsidies.

But setting these traditional arguments aside, I think there is a distinctly environmental line of argument against farm subsidies:

Supreme Court extends eminent domain powers

If I had an adamant opinion about the Supreme Court's decision today to extend eminent domain by determining that "economic development" qualifies as "public use" and its implications for city planning, I would certainly be posting that right now. But it's only been about eight hours since they released their opinion, and if I could come up with a well thought out opinion on such a complicated issue that fast, I'd probably be on the Court itself. I have been further convinced that these are nine of the smartest and most well-read people on the planet, though.

So instead of that adament and definitive opinion, I'll just outline some of the issues I was thinking about as I read through Stevens' opinion and the dissenting remarks of O'Connor and Thomas. (Kennedy also wrote a concurring opinion.)

I'll do it below the fold though.