elbertcounty.net

"Just the facts M'am, Just the facts." -- Sgt. Joe Friday

You are here: Home / Archives for Zoning

concentrated interest vs. distributed interest

By

ASI – The problem with technocracy

Once again we see the basic problem with technocracy:

Adults will be told it is fine to drink in moderation in new guidelines on alcohol intake unveiled by the govern­ment — in a slapdown of Britain’s top doctor.

The rules, to be announced soon, will set the recommended weekly limit for both men and women at 14 units, a reduction of seven for men, and explain that every drink comes with a small health risk.

The dangers of alcohol, like the dangers of rather a lot of things in this life, come on a curve. No booze at all leads to shorter lifespans than some, too much to shorter again. Where those curves are is of course an empirical matter but the too much, leading to the same dangers as none, is well out beyond 14 units a week for men. Up more at 30 to 40 units in fact.

That this is true of much of life is obvious – no food is not known to be good for us, 5,000 calories a day plus a sedentary lifestyle similarly not all that healthy. A diet of pure sugar won’t keep you going all that long but an insistence on “no refined sugar” is to make the opposite mistake. And on the larger scale of course a tax rate of zero percent raises no money from that particular tax while there really is a rate which is “too high” in that raising it further will produce ever less revenue.

It’s superficially attractive that we have experts who decide how these curves work and then tell the rest of us. Certainly we think that pointing out that the peak of the Laffer Curve for UK income tax is somewhere around 40% or so, less than 50% or so, is an empirical result which we think experts should mention.

And yet there’s a problem with such technocracy. It’s akin to the trade protection and tariffs problem. The people who will end up as the technocrats on any particular subject are going to be those with a whole hive of bees in their bonnet about that particular subject. We end up being ruled by the Single Issue Fanatics, as Bernard Levin used to put it.

It’s a standard analysis of the problem with trade tariffs. Those who gain from the protection they provide are a concentrated interest- those few who produce whatever the tariff is placed upon. Those losers are the dispersed interest of everyone else. We don’t care very much, and therefore make very little noise about, tuppence on every toothbrush. Toothbrush manufacturers are very interested indeed, and will be most vocal, about 2 p on every brush they sell. And will thus be insistent about the vital interest of protecting British teeth from the horrors of Chinese competition.

So it is with our technocrats. Those who take a sufficient interest in how much other people drink are going to be those who are very interested in being able to control how much other people drink. The Temperance Lobby in short. Those who wish to control how much people smoke are going to be those against smoking itself. Those who work to regulate e-ciggies will be those who really don’t think they should exist at all. “Proper” salt levels will be determined by those with a bugbear about salt for whatever reason.

It is that concentrated and dispersed interest again. As soon as there is some small part of government which determines such details that small part will be colonised by the fanatics.

[see: Elbert County Planning]

Which is the basic problem with technocracy. It doesn’t end up with those who know what they’re doing running matters, it ends up with the fanatics as they’re the only people who care enough to regulate the rest of us. And if we’re honest about it rule by fanatics doesn’t have quite the same ring to it as rule by experts.

All of which is rather why we are fanatics ourselves. Fanatics for there being fewer rules and rather more of that dispersed interest making itself known by what people get on and do themselves rather than the imposition of absurdities by those with the power to do so.

Independence Development

By

Brooks Imperial

Looking at the big picture, Independence Development in its current state is an anomaly compared to everything around it.

Those allied to prevent its development claim that houses on it would not fit the style of the county. Really, where? Not around Independence Development – there are no large ranch operations anywhere near it.

The property seems to represent a myth of country life that people who live near it hoped to find by moving to Elbert County. They can see this myth out their windows and from the roads as they drive around it without, apparently, realizing it’s a symbol of a lifestyle from a bygone time that no longer exists around there.

Stopping the progress of the Independence Development won’t bring that lifestyle back.

The pseudo-science of planning and zoning affords innumerable mechanisms to exploit by third parties wishing to reach out from their own property domains to invent claims for properties they have no natural right to control. Water, roads, schools, style, the list of intervention justifications is virtually endless and completely malleable. The statutes exist and they will be used.

It’s a dirty business and the phenomenon of large numbers of people so engaged does not cleanse the activity of its unjust nature. Might is, in fact, not right. Or at least it didn’t used to be.

The bottom line is the folks allied against this development seek to protect their own property values by keeping livable real estate in their vicinity more scarce. They use planning and zoning – collective coercive tactics – to impose an artificial market condition to prevent a natural equilibrium in a sustainable property market from arising.

But scarcity never solved anything. If America stands for anything, its legal foundation was intended to give citizens the tools to overcome economic scarcity – not induce it! The statutes that exist to artificially impose market scarcity to unjustly enrich some citizens at the expense of others are completely repugnant to our whole way of life.

On those grounds, I hope they don’t succeed.

By

The Unintended Consequences of “Smart Growth” from Mackinac Center on Vimeo.

Shut Out: How Land-Use Regulations Hurt the Poor
Economics paints a damning picture of zoning and smart growth
FEBRUARY 05, 2015 by SANDY IKEDA

People sometimes support regulations, often with the best of intentions, but these wind up creating outcomes they don’t like. Land-use regulations are a prime example.

My colleague Emily Washington and I are reviewing the literature on how land-use regulations disproportionately raise the cost of real estate for the poor. I’d like to share a few of our findings with you.

Zoning

One kind of regulation that was actually intended to harm the poor, and especially poor minorities, was zoning. The ostensible reason for zoning was to address unhealthy conditions in cities by functionally separating land uses, which is called “exclusionary zoning.” But prior to passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1968, some municipalities had race-based exclusionary land-use regulations. Early in the 20th century, several California cities masked their racist intent by specifically excluding laundry businesses, predominantly Chinese owned, from certain areas of the cities.

Today, of course, explicitly race-based, exclusionary zoning policies are illegal. But some zoning regulations nevertheless price certain demographics out of particular neighborhoods by forbidding multifamily dwellings, which are more affordable to low- or middle-income individuals. When the government artificially separates land uses and forbids building certain kinds of residences in entire districts, it restricts the supply of housing and increases the cost of the land, and the price of housing reflects those restrictions.

Moreover, when cities implement zoning rules that make it difficult to secure permits to build new housing, land that is already developed becomes more valuable because you no longer need a permit. The demand for such developed land is therefore artificially higher, and that again raises its price.

Minimum lot sizes

Other things equal, the larger the lot, the more you’ll pay for it. Regulations that specify minimum lot sizes — that say you can’t build on land smaller than that minimum — increase prices. Regulations that forbid building more units on a given-size lot have the same effect: they restrict supply and make housing more expensive.

People who already live there may only want to preserve their lifestyle. But whether they intend to or not (and many certainly do so intend) the effect of these regulations is to exclude lower-income families. Where do they go? Where they aren’t excluded — usually poorer neighborhoods. But that increases the demand for housing in poorer neighborhoods, where prices will tend to be higher than they would have been.

And it’s not just middle-class families that do this. Very wealthy residents of exclusive neighborhoods and districts also have an incentive to support limits on construction in order to maintain their preferred lifestyle and to keep out the upper-middle-class hoi polloi. Again, the latter then go elsewhere, very often to lower-income neighborhoods — Williamsburg in Brooklyn is a recent example — where they buy more-affordable housing and drive up prices. Those who complain about well-off people moving into poor neighborhoods — a phenomenon known as “gentrification” — may very well have minimum-lot-size and maximum-density regulations to thank.

When government has the authority to restrict building and development, established residents of all income levels will use that power to protect their wealth.

Parking requirements

Another land-use regulation that makes space more expensive is municipal requirements that establish a minimum number of parking spaces per housing unit.

According to Donald Shoup’s analysis, parking requirements add significantly to the cost of housing, particularly in areas with high land values. For example, in Los Angeles, parking requirements can add $104,000 to the cost of each apartment. Parking requirements limit consumers’ choices and increase the cost of housing even for those who prefer not to pay for parking.

Developers typically build only the minimum amount of parking required by law, which indicates that those requirements are binding. That is, in a less-regulated environment, developers would devote less land to parking and more land to living space. A greater supply of living space will, other things equal, lower the cost of housing.

Smart-growth regulations

In the 1970s, municipalities enacted new rules that were designed to protect farmland and to preserve green space surrounding rapidly growing cities by forbidding private development in those areas. By the late 1990s, this practice evolved into a land-use strategy called “smart growth.” (Here’s a video I did about smart growth.) While some of these initiatives may have preserved green space that can be seen, what is harder to see is the resulting supply restriction and higher cost of housing.

Again, the lower the supply of housing, other things equal, the higher real-estate prices will be. Those who now can’t afford to buy will often rent smaller apartments in less-desirable areas, which typically have less influence on the political process. Locally elected officials tend to be more responsive to the interests of current residents who own property, vote, and pay taxes, and less responsive to renters, who are more likely to be transients and nonvoters. That, in turn, makes it easier to implement policies that use regulation to discriminate against people living on low incomes.

Conclusion

Zoning, minimum lot sizes, minimum parking requirements, and smart-growth regulations demonstrably and significantly increase the cost of housing for everyone by raising construction costs and restricting the supply of housing.

The average household in the United States today, rich or poor, spends about a third of its income on housing. But higher home prices hit lower-income households disproportionately hard because a dollar increase in housing expenditure represents a larger percentage of a poorer household’s budget. Indeed, the bottom 20 percent of households spends around 40 percent of income on housing.

In other words, these land-use regulations are unfairly regressive. Relaxing or even removing them would be a step toward achieving greater equity.

SANDY IKEDA

Sandy Ikeda is a professor of economics at Purchase College, SUNY, and the author of The Dynamics of the Mixed Economy: Toward a Theory of Interventionism.

https://elbertcounty.net/blog/2015/02/6296/

repeal planning, forego bureaucracy, end fear

By

“News programming uses a hierarchy if it bleeds, it leads. Fear-based news programming has two aims. The first is to grab the viewer’s attention. In the news media, this is called the teaser. The second aim is to persuade the viewer that the solution for reducing the identified fear will be in the news story. If a teaser asks, “What’s in your tap water that YOU need to know about?” a viewer will likely tune in to get the up-to-date information to ensure safety. The success of fear-based news relies on presenting dramatic anecdotes in place of scientific evidence, promoting isolated events as trends, depicting categories of people as dangerous and replacing optimism with fatalistic thinking. News conglomerates who want to achieve this use media logic, by tweaking the rhythm, grammar, and presentation format of news stories to elicit the greatest impact. Did you know that some news stations work with consultants who offer fear-based topics that are pre-scripted, outlined with point-of-view shots, and have experts at-the-ready? This practice is known as stunting or just-add-water reporting. Often, these practices present misleading information and promote anxiety in the viewer.

. . . What occurs psychologically for the viewer is a fragmented sense of knowing what’s real, which sets off feelings of hopelessness and helplessness – experiences known to worsen depression.”

Psychology Today, https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/two-takes-depression/201106/if-it-bleeds-it-leads-understanding-fear-based-media

Fear mongering is a successful strategy for acquiring and holding power. Peel back the top layer of this onion to look at the underlying human dynamic.

The fear mongerer controls the subject, the solution, the delivery means, and the debate, while the audience experiences heightened anxiety, worsening depression, hopelessness and helplessness. The exchange between mongerer and audience disempowers the audience and empowers the mongerer.

It is an inherently political transaction with a winner and losers, and its application infects public policy and politics at every level of government. Statesmanship died long ago, probably sometime before the modern progressive [aggressive] era. Selling emotional fears to control people proved far more effective than upholding arcane constitutional constructs.

Currently in Elbert County, lobbyists for increased and prolonged planning and zoning rely heavily on the fear tactic, as reported in various local news sources.

But these same people – Democrats and Republicans – who planned Elbert County’s economic stagnation, are now clamoring for more planning and zoning. Ironically, after more than a decade of their dead Elbert County economy, it would be far more rational to fear them and the government planning they promote, than the fears they traffic in.

But that recognition destroys the illusion the Thayers, Shippers, Browns, Crisans, Rosses, etc., must maintain to keep themselves relevant and in power.

So, embrace the fears they sell to you, forget the consequences of their past leadership we already live with, give up hope of ever finding a job in Elbert County, and let this place continue its slide into a stagnant retirement community.

– Or –

Disavow their false god of planning, get government out of our local economy, repeal their oppressive zoning laws, invite the charlatans to return to the planned disaster zones from which they escaped, and let the free market transform Elbert County into a sustainable economy where people have jobs and raise families.

“Saying anything to push their agenda”

By

The glaring misrepresentation that the evidently buzzed hive-mind of Elbert County leftists who will “say anything to push their agenda,” used to justify their latest assault on Elbert County conservative voters, is that BOCC officials represent a “very small minority of Elbert County voters.”

In the left’s Merlinesque reverse reality, the winners of BOCC elections don’t actually represent the majority of voters. Enter the appointed leftist leaders of Elbert County – career bureaucrats who insinuate themselves into citizen advisory committees to represent “grass roots involvement” without harmful [non-leftist] “ideologies.” And the more of these “imminently qualified” self-serving public-servants we have to control the free citizens of Elbert County, the better.

But how come these obviously qualified leftist individuals never win an election? That’s easy. We, the voters, are all stupid – so stupid we don’t even understand basic words like hypocrisy.

Thank goodness local leftists exist to abjectly demonstrate how hypocrisy works – how election losers are really winners, how a minority of leftists really represent a majority of grass roots voters, and how self-anointed government-obsessed totalitarians are really the voice of Elbert County people.

Perhaps leftist “grass” roots hypocrites should lay off the grass before presuming to dictate more truth to Colorado.

polls_looney_left1_1_3221_360665_answer_5_xlarge

the utopia of panacea

By

Let 2015 be the year the Elbert County Left get over their groundless expectation that Elbert County government exists to perfect their utopian dream.

“The government having stepped into the place of Divine Providence in France, it was but natural that everyone, when in difficulties, invoked its aid. We find a vast number of petitions which, though the writers professed to be speaking on behalf of the public, were in reality intended to further their small private interests. The files in which they figure are perhaps the only places in which all the various classes of prerevolutionary France rub shoulders, so to speak. They make depressing reading. We find peasants applying for compensation for the loss of their cattle or their homes; wealthy landowners asking for financial aid for the improvement of their estates; manufacturers petitioning the Intendant for monopolies protecting them from competition. Often, too, businessmen report to the Intendant confidentially that their affairs are in a bad way and request him to approach the Controller-General for a loan to tide them over this emergency. (It would seem, in fact, that special funds were earmarked for such eventualities.) Sometimes even members of the nobility did not disdain to play the part of suppliants, the only difference being that their letters were more grandiloquently phrased than those of the common herd.

. . .

In times of dearth-and these were frequent in the eighteenth century-everyone expected the Intendant to come to the rescue as a matter of course. For the government was held responsible for all the misfortunes befalling the community; even when these were “acts of God,” such as floods or droughts, the powers·that·be were blamed for them.”

Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, 1858. Stuart Gilbert translation, 1978, pp. 70-71.

Panacea-3

Reduce number of planning commissioners

By

The Elbert County Planning Commission [ECPC] has been a tool for Leftists to dominate growth and development in Elbert County for too long. The fiascoes over oil & gas development, planned unit development, zoning subdivision, density bonus, water rights, special use districts, and the country-in-county feel of Elbert County, have all been public stages for the Left to impose un-voted-for control over citizens of Elbert County.

static.squarespace.com

The ECPC has hosted mouthy liberal majorities for as long as I can remember. But these folks never win an actual election in Elbert County. Every time one of them steps out on to an electoral stage, they lose big time. Voters obviously don’t want them dictating the future of the county.

Yet they haunt the county administration building like ghosts, unable to leave the place, moaning about until they get themselves appointed to another volunteer bureaucratic position – on the apparent qualification that they just won’t stay home.

Alexis de Tocqueville described [at least] one of the main problems 156 years ago as follows:

‘Long before the [French] Revolution, Ministers of State had made a point of keeping a watchful eye on everything that was happening in the country and of issuing orders from Paris on every conceivable subject. […like modern zoning…] As time went on and with the increasing efficiency of administrative technique, this habit of surveillance became almost an obsession with the central government. […like modern planning…] Towards the close of the eighteenth century it was impossible to arrange for poor-relief work in the humblest village of a province hundreds of miles from the capital without the Controller-General’s insisting on having his say about the exact sum to be expended, the site of the workhouse, and the way it was to be managed. When an almshouse was established, he insisted on being supplied with the names of the paupers using it, the dates of their arrival and departure. In 1733 M. d’Argenson observed that “the amount of office work imposed on our heads of departments is quite appalling. […like modern bureaucracy…] Everything passes through their hands, they alone decide what is to be done, and when their knowledge is not as wide as their authority, they have to leave things to subordinate members of their staffs, with the result that the latter have become the true rulers of the country.”‘

Alexis de Tocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution, 1858. Stuart Gilbert translation, 1978, p. 61.

Think about it. Do we go through all of the time and expense to elect Board of County Commissioner [BOCC] members only to have unelected bureaucrats govern us? The question answers itself.

Electing BOCC members is the only means voters have to control Elbert County government. Additional layers of governors underneath the BOCC should be limited only to non-discretionary functions.

Reducing the number of unelected planning commissioners is, without question, a step in the right direction.

Look around at the absence of economic opportunity in Elbert County. The Left have done enough damage here.

Zoned Out

By

Why and how we should seek to restore a free market in land

MARCH 18, 2014 by NATHAN SMITH

I once knew a man who was finishing his basement so that his daughter and son-in-law could live there. I spent a lot of hours down there with a nail gun before the city planners nixed the project. My in-laws in Modesto, California, had to move out of their house into a mobile home on their own farm, because their kids needed a place to live. The law, for some reason, allowed them to put a mobile home there if seniors would be living in it, but not to accommodate a young family.

In run-ins with zoning laws, ordinary people encounter the perversity of government firsthand in ways that should make them receptive to the message of freedom and property. [Read more…]

Elbert County endorses “fractivist” lawyer

By

From: The Campaign Goes On: ‘Ban Fracking’ Groups Target New Colorado Task Force

“An activist lawyer

For 12 years – from 1996 to 2008 – Boulder attorney Matt Sura worked for the WCC as a community organizer and, ultimately, the group’s executive director. Now in private practice, Sura has applied for a seat on the new oil and gas task force, and says he’s no longer an anti-energy activist. In March, Sura told The Colorado Observer: “[F]ar from being a fracktivist, I actually work on oil and gas development.”

Sura’s work came under close scrutiny when he was hired by local officials in Brighton, Colo., to help update the city’s oil and gas regulations. He then advised the city to impose a temporary drilling ban. The ban was overturned less than a month later after Brighton residents – many of whom work in the oil and gas industry – learned of Sura’s background in anti-energy activism.

Besides working for the WCC for more than a decade, Sura collaborated with activist groups during last year’s local “ban fracking” campaigns in Northern Colorado. He helped organize an event titled “Tools for Activism on Oil and Gas Development,” which was co-hosted by Frack Free Colorado, Food & Water Watch and several other anti-energy groups. And in November 2013, National Journal reported that Sura was working with activists in Greeley who wanted to impose a moratorium on drilling projects inside the city limits.”

EC activist lawyer Matt Sura

http://www.elbertcounty-co.gov/current_county_permit_applications.php#.VAIu1GP4RzU

http://www.oilandgasbmps.org/landowners-guide/

Could Elbert County’s inability to get Agave to perform thus far on all of the elements specified in the standard MOU + Schedule A have something to do with this? Has Elbert County’s CDS  gone down another primrose path of over zealous regulation that effectively precludes – or interminably delays – O&G development?

“No change is permitted”

By

“It takes people putting their thoughts and ideas together to actually accomplish something. These ideas must take into consideration the reality of the situations and the means to correct the problems.” Jerry Bishop, 6-11-14, The Prairie Times

Jerry wrote these words in a lead editorial where he also took exception to being labeled a leftist. Well if the shoe fits Jerry, you may as well put it on and lace it up. Look at the rest of the authors Jerry printed in this same Viewpoint edition of his fishwrap:

Paul Crisan, notorious planner, eco-green anti-business zoner, and leftist.
Robert Thomason, Democrat Party official, notorious leftist.
Jill Duvall, Democrat Party official, notorious leftist. (2 articles)
Anne Johnson, advises Republicans to “vote outside the party.”
Susan Shick, Democrat Party official, notorious leftist. (2 articles)
Name Withheld, advocates for totalitarian planning control.
Kelly Dore, “government’s role is to work with people to make their lives better.”
John Dorman, “commissioners have to manage the business of the county.”

Non-leftist viewpoints: None.

Not an individualist in the bunch, including Jerry. Not a hint of recognition in the whole lot of them that it’s the private sector who create wealth, provide jobs, and solve problems. These people share an obsession with all things collective and governmental.

Now let’s face it, government is the 900 lb. gorilla in the living room of Elbert County. There is no substantial private sector here so there’s little else to talk about in a local newspaper besides government. Government is the largest employer by far with the largest payroll in Elbert County.

It doesn’t matter which party controls here, government’s been used by all parties to keep Elbert County’s economy stuck in the 19th century from as far back as anyone remembers; and this will remain the case for the foreseeable future.

It would be so much more honest if all of these collectivists could just hang a sign out at the county border saying that Elbert County is a preservation zone where there will be no economic growth, no enabling of the private sector, no new jobs, and no changes. Perhaps they could purchase the right to name the county Pleasantville.

Just get rid of all the legal mumbo jumbo in county zoning, dump all the expensive lawyerly jargon that pays lip service to the illusion of property rights and constitutional liberties, and replace it with a simple sentence; “No change is permitted.” Put that on the sign at the county border.

Then all the leftists could go off to other battleground locals to community-organize and inflict their advocacy, and people would know before ever considering putting down roots here just what they’re in for.

Think of all the time and money this would save. All of the public meetings we now have with foregone conclusions – gone. All of the empty rhetoric from government officials and would-be government officials – gone. All of the legal work around the regulatory edges – gone. People in the private sector would still drive to town for work. The number of government employees could be cut way back. And Jerry would have to find something else to publish and write about.

Let’s stop kidding ourselves. The myth of American freedom in Elbert County is an expensive joke. Freedom, as an ideal, deserves better than this. If we’re not going to serve it, then we should at least stop sullying it.

the times they are a changin’

By

Republican/Independent/Democrat — Distinctions without a difference

Kelly Dore – “I will work hard to make sure that growth preserves our county rural lifestyles…”
John Dorman – will “…work very hard to improve our land and protect our lifestyle…“

Scooter's Report

It appears the Elbert County BOCC majority will soon shift back to country-in-county – rurally impoverished – economics.

Commissioner Rowland and Commissioner Schlegel should do everything they can to swing the pendulum in Elbert County toward freedom and liberty.

Repeal zoning. Repeal the master plan. Repeal planning regulations. Repeal all regulations.

NOW! Before the lifestyle Nazi’s get control.

Green Light Elbert County’s Private Sector! Free Elbert County Citizens from the planning Leviathan.

“Most of the rules and regulations that affect the rights of ordinary Americans are not laws written by elected lawmakers but regulations imposed by unelected administrative agencies that wield broad authority to interpret their own commissions, write their own regulations, and enforce their own rules in hearings overseen by their own agents. These bureaus are not accountable to the voting public in any realistic sense; they are generally beyond the control even of an affected citizen’s elected representatives. Yet courts review their actions with a lenient, deferential attitude, under the doctrine of Chevron, U. S. A. Inc. v. Natural Resources Defense Council, a precedent that gives agencies power to interpret their mandates as expansively as they want except in the most extreme cases. In short, the modem administrative state has outstripped the quaint model of conscientious legislators deliberating about the public good, which might have justified a court in leaving citizens to the political process for protection. The idea that the people can “vote the bums out” if they dislike government policy is simply unrealistic.”

“Americans are realizing the dangers of expanding the scope of government and are protesting the continued calls for bailouts, handouts, entitlement programs, and restrictions on freedom, privacy, property rights, and other aspects of liberty. The time has come for the legal community to pay heed. The time has come to reject the notion that people have the right to control each other’s lives and to take the fruits of their labor. The time has come to secure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.”

Timothy Sandefur, The Conscience of the Constitution

apply precautionary principle to planners first

By

The precautionary principle–an underlying justification often espoused by planners in Elbert County to excuse repressive zoning–has a number of systemic problems, according to Goklany.

Can the Precautionary Principle Manage Risks Effectively? by Indur M. Goklany

  • “[T]he precautionary principle .  .  .  based on concentrating on its environmental costs while downplaying its public health benefits, fuels suspicions that the principle can be used (or abused) to cherry pick which risks one may focus on during regulatory inquiry and regulation.”
  • “[C]ompanies. . .protect themselves from liability and lawsuits by seeking some level of governmental approval, bolstered by the desire to avoid unfavorable publicity. . . “
  • “[L]arger companies, in particular, actively court regulation since that would lead to higher barriers to entry into the market for smaller, possibly more innovative upstarts.”
  • “[L]egislative bodies, government agencies and their officers often seek to expand their power, and future employment possibilities, by filling regulatory vacuums.”
  • “[N]on-specialists rely on error-prone “mental shortcuts” such as assigning higher probabilities to types of hazards they can readily recall, .  .  .  an emotionally-driven tendency toward adopting the more alarming of competing narratives regarding a hazard (“alarmist bias” ). Moreover, today’s technology frequently detects chemicals to levels at which health impacts cannot be reliably replicated, .  .  . but since absence of future harm is unprovable, they resort to their mental shortcuts to interpret the significance of such low.  .  .levels.”
  • “[A]n examination of all relevant risks and options might itself lead to “paralysis by analysis.”
  • “[A]ny policy, regulation or action (or “policy”, for brevity) predicated on the [precautionary] principle should not increase overall environmental and public health risks. In fact, the principle should favor those policies that would reduce overall risks the most.”

All of the above systemic problems with the precautionary principle must be actively mitigated to prevent unsound public policy and unjustified regulation. But in Elbert County — ignoring public health benefits from development and improved standards of living, regulators advancing their careers, the use of regulations for anti-competitive outcomes, amateur citizen planners reacting to alarmist political positions — the only safeguard we have to inhibit planners from practicing some or all of the above corruptions is the Board of County Commissioners itself.

“I am most concerned about demonstrating how a wrongly conceived precautionary principle applied to the dangers arising from the use of coal or nuclear fuel–that is, without a consistent, detailed, and thorough cost-benefit analysis–leads to solutions that are utterly ineffective and will put a disproportionate burden on our future. In real life, there is always a trade-off–even for caution. That trade-off tends to be most expensive. To argue the contrary would be irresponsible populism.” Vaclav Klaus

Tools

By

The enviro-Left allow themselves to be led around by the nose by legal-minded activists attempting to impose their policies through clever language.

Those who’ve gone to law school know the mechanics of persuasive writing and how the English language with its vast arsenal of hyperbolic and descriptive devices, can be applied to any position about any subject whatsoever. There are no limits and few rules. The Constitution guarantees defendants receive a zealous defense, even going so far as to appoint public defenders free of charge. So lawyers train to defend the impossible in order to convince juries and get their clients off.

Environmental activists use those same techniques out of the courtroom to sway public opinion to side with the environmental belief system. Like defense lawyers, they don’t have to coordinate their arguments with objective truth. All they have to do is win because there’s huge money on the table and they aim to take a share of it.

Even if they get a policy wrong, disruptive matters will simply fall to numerous venues populated by self-anointed planning and regulatory bureaucrats to sort out – people who write book-loads of rules to tell us exactly how the great unwashed population was specifically meant to be controlled – for our health, safety and welfare of course.

Carving through these thickets of commands to open a path back to constitutional governmental limitations and our civil rights can be a daunting task, often requiring advanced educations that most voters don’t possess, just to get a word in edgewise.

I wouldn’t propose any speech limitations to change this system, for such powers would only lead to worse corruptions. But at the same time, one has to wonder whether the great majority of environmental activists, untrained to tell the difference between slick propaganda and founded language, have any clue how they get used.

Post by Brooks Imperial.

No to Knowcialism

By

Post by Brooks Imperial.

The Progressive Roots of Zoning

By

MARCH 28, 2012 by SAMUEL R. STALEY

Before the twentieth century land-use and housing disputes were largely dealt with through courts using the common-law principle of nuisance. In essence if your neighbor put a building, factory, or house on his property in a way that created a measurable and tangible harm, courts could intervene on behalf of a complainant to force compensation or stop the action. This pro-property rights approach maximized liberty and minimized the ability of citizens and elected officials to politicize the development process.

This changed with the Progressive movement. Beginning in the late nineteenth century, Progressives argued that government should become more professional. Rather than being limited, government should use its resources to pursue the “public interest,” loosely defined as whatever the general public decided through democratic processes was the proper scope of government. Legislatures and, by extension, city commissions made up of elected citizens would set policy and goals while a cadre of trained professionals would use the techniques of scientific management to implement policies. One of the leading Progressives of the day, Woodrow Wilson, was skeptical of the value of elected bodies such as Congress because they interfered with scientific management of government.

While many in the twenty-first century might be tempted to dismiss this public-interest view of government—indeed an entire academic subdiscipline, Public Choice, has emerged to demonstrate the foibles of governments and explore “government failure”—Progressive ideas held a lot of appeal at the turn of the twentieth century. In addition to national concerns over industries such as oil, steel, and railroads, local governments were rife with corruption, waste, and inefficiency. Reforms, such as the city-manager form of government, civil-service exams, and in some cases even municipal ownership of utilities, were thought to provide more transparency and accountability than the patronage-laden times of political bosses. (Today municipal ownership is associated with higher costs, less transparency, and little accountability.)

The Progressive movement, however, had another, darker side that would end up being much more important to understanding the widespread acceptance and persistence of government land-use regulation: social control. [Read more…]

Zoned Out

By

Why and how we should seek to restore a free market in land

MARCH 18, 2014 by NATHAN SMITH

I once knew a man who was finishing his basement so that his daughter and son-in-law could live there. I spent a lot of hours down there with a nail gun before the city planners nixed the project. My in-laws in Modesto, California, had to move out of their house into a mobile home on their own farm, because their kids needed a place to live. The law, for some reason, allowed them to put a mobile home there if seniors would be living in it, but not to accommodate a young family.

In run-ins with zoning laws, ordinary people encounter the perversity of government firsthand in ways that should make them receptive to the message of freedom and property.

You see, modern American society does not have a free market in land. Government interference with land use causes many of society’s problems. [Read more…]

A Not-So-Smart Growth Plan

By

Jamming People Into Tight Housing Won’t Cut Carbon Dioxide Levels

Thomas Jefferson

"It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself."

Aristotle

"Only an armed people can be truly free. Only an unarmed people can ever be enslaved."

Karl Popper

“A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is nonscientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.”