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  • Posted by 2 years, 10 months ago
    Thanks for the comment. The case seems to raise one of those questions about Objectivist absolutism. Can government ever legitimately invoke eminent domain? For one of the legitimate functions of government in policing, the courts, and defense? Are property rights an absolute principle that does not apply, in the same way, to the defender of property rights: government? If government has the exclusive right to retaliatory use of force in its geographical area (but, actually, does it? What about urgent individual self-defense?), does it have the exclusive right to demand to purchase property essential to carrying out its functions? What I think that the Vermont story tells us is that taking property is taking life. Many adapt to it. They are wounded. But sometimes to take property is to take life itself. And that reflects not on the victim, but those who presume to act in "the public interest," which knows nothing about how life, work, creation, savings, planning, and hope are ONE. And yet, still, if there is an objective requirement to protect all that, as must government, are property rights cast in a different context? As Ayn Rand said, again and again, NOTHING can be understood out of context.
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    • Posted by j_IR1776wg 2 years, 9 months ago
      I think a strong case can be made for an individual having an absolute right to ownership, control, and disposal of property he has earned or inherited, albeit, in a fully laissez-faire capitalist economy. No such case can be made for the people working in government whether elected or hired. The only two sensible functions for these people are prohibition and confiscation.

      As James Madison wrote in Federalist 51, “If Men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and the next place, oblige it to control itself.”

      The only way for the people in government to “control itself” i.e., control themselves is for honest men to agree to the limitations imposed by the Bill of Rights. Absent this honesty, in a society made dumb by government education, is to open the doors to unlimited taking of lives and property – the absolute state. This is, unfortunately, the road America is on today in 2021.
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