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Texas Supreme Court Sanctions the Rule of Whim
Last year, I wrote about the case of Hinga Mbogo, a Dallas auto shop owner whose property was retroactively rezoned to make way for restaurants and other businesses more to the liking of the Dallas city council. In late August, the Texas Supreme Court refused to hear his case, thereby forcing Mbogo to abandon the…
Common Errors in Defending Property Rights, Part 2
In Part 1 of this series, we examined why the claim that a proposal will violate property rights often falls on deaf ears. In this post, we will examine a similar error in defending property rights. Often, when a proposal is made that will violate property rights, the victims state that they support the general…
Rent Control is a Taking
A group of New York City landlords is challenging the city’s rent control laws. They contend that such laws constitute an unconstitutional taking of private property. In an OpEd piece, two legal scholars argue that rent control does not physically take the landlord’s property, and therefore, rent control is not a taking. The authors go…
Sacrifice vs. Delayed Gratification
Many people believe that sacrifice is a necessary part of life. They believe that if they give up something today in order to have something better tomorrow, that is a sacrifice. But that isn’t a sacrifice. It’s delayed gratification, and that is a very different thing. To sacrifice means to give up a value for…
The False Alternative of Dictatorship or Dictatorship
In opinion piece Andrew P. Napolitano presents us with the false alternative of dictatorship or dictatorship: One is not truly free if one cannot leave the government. This applies to people as well as to political subdivisions. The forced retention of people or geographical units under the government’s monopolistic jurisdiction is totalitarian. Without the threat…