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Eminent
domain: A big-box bonanza?
[A friend called me this morning
with a gem about this story:
"Eminent domain and other
government takings are philosophically
communist tools," he said.
"Taking private property for the
public good is a basic tenet of
communism. The fact that the public good
has been defined in this case in terms
of maximizing private profit is just
completely disgusting."
The idea that the
mega-stores provide public benefits is
as intensely false as the idea that the
Spaniards brought "salvation"
to the Aztecs - which they constantly
claimed to be doing. With this week's
Supreme Court decision, the public
interest doesn't just lose; it
disappears completely. The contest was
between the private interest of the
giant corporate retailers and the
private interest of everybody else. And
we've brought that upon ourselves by
shopping at those businesses in the
first place. Now that our communities
are homogenized, anti-social,
interchangeable wastelands, what do I
care if they take your house? I don't
know you anyway.
As James Howard Kunstler and
others have made all-too-clear, big-box
stores have been a blight on American
life, destroying small businesses,
locking-in the car culture, tearing the
social fabric by atomizing people into a
vast field of anonymous strangers, and
generally rendering localization
impossible by importing a flood of goods
from across the world at high volume and
low cost. The big-box stores are the
largest employers in America, and they
produce nothing, and they pay shit
wages. And the cheap petroleum that
makes it all possible is going to be out
of reach soon. The more we invest in
them now, the less chance we will have
to grow a viable alternative while we
still can. -JAH]
BACKGROUND
BOOKS AND LINKS:
©2005 The
Wilderness Publications
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/062405_world_stories.shtml#0
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