Freedom: Property ownership and eminent domain

Please note: I searched for related topics but was unable to find any. I apologize if a similar thing has been posted. I also apologize if this is in the incorrect forum. I attempted to find a more suitable forum and was unable to, so I posted it here.

Recently it has occurred to me that the United States is not a particularly free country. For this post I'd like to focus mainly on property ownership and also eminent domain, which relates to property ownership.

Property ownership is a pretty big thing in America. We're proud of the fact that we can possess our own property. Once you pay off the bank loan and the ownership is fully transferred into your name, it's yours. You own it. But is that ownership really worth anything? You still have to pay property taxes, which is essentially a rent on your own property. If you stop paying property taxes, you get fined. Eventually, the government will take the property from you.

How is that ownership? If it's yours, that means it's yours to do what you want with. You shouldn't have to keep paying the government to let you use it. I'll follow up on this momentarily with eminent domain but first...

...I should interject here that I am not necessarily opposed to all taxes. The country probably needs certain reasonable taxes to continue functioning. But I digress...

Eminent domain is defined by Wikipedia as "the power of the state to appropriate private property for its own use without the owner's consent." Traditionally it has been used for such things as roads, city parks, baseball stadiums and other things the government deems "for the public good" (although I'd say roads are the only things in the above that are really for the public good) and has been often used when property owners don't want to give up their property, regardless of the money being offered to them.

More recently, however, it was ruled that property can be taken if the government thinks it can be better used by someone who will have a greater chance of giving them a higher tax profit. That is... unbelievable. I don't have any other words for it. I actually just read an article on a similar case a few minutes ago, which prompted me to write this. In this case, the land was actually seized before this new ruling - it was going to be used to construct a public building but now that the government owns it they decided to sell it back to another business. One that makes campaign contributions to the city leaders. Here's the article.

So now we're back to where we were above. If the government can decide on a whim that they're going to take your property and give it to someone else, then it's not yours. It's their property and they're renting it to you. So they need to stop pretending it's ownership or start acting like everyone else. If they want to build a road through my property and I don't want them to, there's nothing they can do. They can make an offer and if I refuse, they walk away and can't do a damn thing other than build the road around it. If it's any other way, then it's not ownership and we are not free, and it's as simple as that.

Originally posted by LoganCale

Property ownership is a pretty big thing in America. We're proud of the fact that we can possess our own property. Once you pay off the bank loan and the ownership is fully transferred into your name, it's yours. You own it. But is that ownership really worth anything? You still have to pay property taxes, which is essentially a rent on your own property. If you stop paying property taxes, you get fined. Eventually, the government will take the property from you.

On that, I think you're misinterpreting things a little. A property tax is just another measure by governments to take financial contributions from citizens to finance services, projects and the government itself. They are imposed on people's head -and with not much legitimacy by the way- based on the fact that they are CITIZENS and that they must give a financial contribution each year for benefiting from government services. The government is actually defending your property, because since property is based on nothing else than arbitrary power over landmass (or everything else that we can put a property tag on) and this landmass was first taken over for redistributing as property, then you're paying for the retroactive service the government made to pick a piece of land for you and defend it on your behalf.

In a sense when you rent an apartment you are renting from an owner who thus rents the land from the government. When you "own" land in America in many ways you rent your land from the US government eliminating the middle man. Unless you own land in allodial title, which I believe isn't an option in just about every single state, you don't really "own" the land. You own everything on top of the land, but I'll guarantee you, you'd find yourself in a mess with the government if you tried to drill for oil in your backyard. This applies to motor vehicles as well. When you register your car the state becomes the co-owner.

[edit on 15-1-2006 by deadatdusk]

You know those cute little impressions of your footprints that are taken right after you were born ?, The ones people think are so cute , .............
The true nature of the act of making those imprints is to claim ownership of YOU!!! , control of the serf before his feet even touched the land kind stuff.... these are not even the original footprints, the government has the original document , as for your birth certificate , look at where your mother signed it , if you have a certified copy of the original , it will read "informant" , right next to your mother's signature...informing who ? , of what ? , for what reason ? / ,,where is the original document????, why would your parents not be in possession of this document ?.....
If you really want to understand , you may as well head down to your friendly neighborhood shrink and get on medication, because if you don't already know , the truth just may be too much for some people to handle , because if one really wants to know the truth , they would have found it themselves already.
balbalalbbla, I ranted therefore I is , NOT!,,,./

Originally posted by Echtelion

Originally posted by LoganCale

Property ownership is a pretty big thing in America. We're proud of the fact that we can possess our own property. Once you pay off the bank loan and the ownership is fully transferred into your name, it's yours. You own it. But is that ownership really worth anything? You still have to pay property taxes, which is essentially a rent on your own property. If you stop paying property taxes, you get fined. Eventually, the government will take the property from you.

On that, I think you're misinterpreting things a little. A property tax is just another measure by governments to take financial contributions from citizens to finance services, projects and the government itself. They are imposed on people's head -and with not much legitimacy by the way- based on the fact that they are CITIZENS and that they must give a financial contribution each year for benefiting from government services. The government is actually defending your property, because since property is based on nothing else than arbitrary power over landmass (or everything else that we can put a property tag on) and this landmass was first taken over for redistributing as property, then you're paying for the retroactive service the government made to pick a piece of land for you and defend it on your behalf.

Oh, I understand the reasoning and I know it's not literally a rent - however, if they can take the property from you when you don't pay, it's not much different, really.

And I understand that taxes are needed to keep the existance of the country, the problem is that there are just too many of them. Nearly everything is taxed these days. I wholeheartedly support working on cutting government spending and then establishing a single, unified tax (I haven't decided yet if sales or income would be a better thing to tax) in addition to a few sensible "optional" taxes - the money from licensing your car should pay for the road maintenance in your area, commercial imports/exports should all be taxed, and so on.

Originally posted by LoganCale
...commercial imports/exports should all be taxed...

Oh, trust me, there are! Some times when I order online across the border, the Customs taxes are getting higher than the total price of the product I ordered. This is crazy, I tell you!

Well, again, I think it should be within reason. And I'd like to refine my previous statement which you quoted. If you, an individual, order something from a company in another country, I don't believe that should be taxed. You end up essentially paying tax on an item that has already been taxed in its country. Your country just wants their cut as well, which is wrong.

Where I think it should be taxed is when a company is purchasing supplies or importing products for sale in this country. Not on the individual level.

So suck it up people..................... The one thing you can bet on....... that's death and TAXES
I live in Florida and on the cost. To me with what I think is going to be a war zone from the hurricanes this year I pray that I am so very wrong on this to!
My Taxes a year are around $6,000.00 a year now I payed $98,000 for this place 35 years ago. They say it is now worth $500,000+ on the open market. To bad with land being what it is now. $500,000 might get you a small lot someplace.