Please, Take My House

This Supreme Court ruling seems, to me, absolutely outrageous. According to this ruling a local government can seize people's homes to use the land for economic development. So, as is happening in New London, Connecticut, the city can tell you they're going to destroy your home to build a strip mall. And if you don't like it, too bad. Its best for the majority. Communism, anyone? Not only is it incredibly offensive, unfair, and seemingly immoral, but it will certainly only serve the rich and hurt the poor. As Justice O'Connor states in her dissent, "Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random, the beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms." Wonderful. I can't wait until the city of Waco decides that my house is a nice spot to build a new grocery store. The article, at least, does not say whether the ruling specifies what kind of, if any, compensation has to be given to the people whose houses are seized. I assume its payment for the house, but somehow I doubt that, with this ruling behind them, many companies are going to pay the same for the houses as the owners could get by selling them on the market. Its one thing to destroy condemned houses for new development, even against the owners' will. But to make such a wide-sweeping ruling that makes no indication, as far as I can tell, about any conditions that must be met except that the city decides its best for the economy and the new development is done privately, is unbelievable. Talk about a whole new avenue for corruption. Now if your building process is blocked by a family unwilling to move from their ancestral residence in the hills of whatevercity, just slip some money to a city official and have him say that its best for the economic development of the city. I don't like this idea of sacrificing the rights -- the right to own property, basically -- of individuals for the supposed economic best of the majority. I don't understand how this ruling can be allowed in any light. The reasoning is, "the local government knows what's best so you should do what they say." Our treatment of prisoners is not on the scale of Nazis' or Soviets', but this ruling sure sounds like something from one of those societies.