An Object Lesson in the Right to Private Property: The Pink House - Granite Grok

An Object Lesson in the Right to Private Property: The Pink House

There is an old Victorian house in the next town over – it and the plot of land on which it sits was purchased by a Dunkin Donuts franchisee a few years ago.  They really didn’t want the building, just the land located in what I call “Fast Food Alley” where a number of restaurants are located.  They couldn’t sell it and couldn’t lease it either. So now they want to just tear it down – and I can’t say that I don’t blame them.  After all, who wants the liability of a vacant building anymore?

So two object lessons here:

  • The hoops that Government makes us all jump through for what should be easy.
  • Another proof that “stakeholders” should be a dirty word

This goes back to an argument on expanding Medicaid here in NH (go figure).  I explained it this way:

The reason why Democrats want to expand Medicaid, so they say, is because Society has failed them.  Thus, Society must take care of them.  I say that it isn’t Society that has failed them but Government has.  Saying that Society has conflates Government with Society, that one is simply another name “that we use” – well, it is a falsehood.  I posited this: if the economy was robust (if it was) , if it were growing at a fast rate 9which it isn’t), many of those that Democrats would have dependent upon Government would actually be self-sufficient and be able to provide for themselves.  However, even as politicians say that “they will fix the economy” – they can’t.  What they can do is to recognize that Government itself has become a stumbling block.

Here’s a company that wanted a location – but not the building already there – in order to expand their company (and incrementally expand the local economy and provide new jobs), they were forced to keep a large expensive “something” to achieve their actual goal.  Here’s the current slice from the local paper:

Hathaway House

Notice how many ‘governmental agencies” a landowner needs permission from in order just to tear something down:

  • Department of Public Works
  • Water Department
  • Fire Department
  • Planning Department
  • Code Enforcement Officer

Five bites at the apple – or as one organization’s members might say, “wet my beak”.  Oh, I am quite sure that each has its own reason – maybe even good ones.  But start adding up each one incrementally and summarize, it starts to add quite the burden of time (and time is money).

The reverse is true as well.  In New York City, there are “Expediters”; people who fill a vacuum in the knowledge base in the private sector who know how to navigate the turnstiles, the walls, the paper waterfalls, the personalities, and the politics of starting up a new business in the City.  Imagine that – paying someone thousands of dollars to someone who then knows how and where to spend thousands more simply because they wish to do business.  Stossel had a good expose on it and compared how much easier it is to open a business in other places and countries.

Instead of putting on more regulations and ‘micro-brakes’ on those entrepreneurs who are taking the risks (and the stats are saying fewer and fewer of us are willing to take that risk – cause and effect?) should we be demanding a well overdue pruning of the regulations that have sidelined many of our fellow citizens?  Instead of making it harder, time to relent with the thought of “have we gone overboard too far”?

Oh, there was one other Governmental agency in that piece – the Heritage Commission.  In fact, members (and “friends”) are trying to protest this action – folks like this are called “stakeholders” – not someone who is directly involved but involve themselves into “the process” as “interested and involved” citizens.  At the national and international level, they are generally known as NGOs – Non-Governmental Organizations.  Think the EPA, its royal decrees (void of legislation) – and all of the environmental groups that are called “stakeholders” even though they do not have any ownership in any of the properties that will come under more and more regulation.

DD ProtestSame thing here.  The Heritage Commission decided that this was a building that has to be saved ‘for posterity” and for “historical purposes” – but puts the entire financial burden upon the property owner.  Even, as we see in this instance, when the property owner doesn’t want it.

Similar kind of thing with an old time theater in the same town: Colonial Theater.  Big hubbub every few years about “saving this gem” yet no one seems to want to take their OWN money and put it where their mouths are.  Lots of gum flapping but everyone looks at everyone else “to do something” but no one gets out of their seats to actually accomplish anything.

And in this case, as you can see by the ad to your left, wish to financially hurt the property owner simply because they won’t do what these “stakeholders” want done.

Yet, a coupla / few years ago, there was a lot of sturm and drang about replacing their High School as it was deemed ‘facility insufficient” for the current educational practices and student population.

That is, until it came out that a lot of maintenance hadn’t been done for years so that “stakeholders” could point out “this doesn’t work and that is falling down and…..” on and on.  Didn’t hear much from the current crop of whiners then – “New School!  New School!”

But as you’ve guessed, that was for a government building and this a a private sector capitalism one.

And an issue of proper Property Rights.  But they they won’t ever, ever acknowledge that.

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