“Voluntary” Takings by Force

No clearer expression of the corporate-state hostility to the private property principle than this. A reader, Mike, sent me a news story a while back in which the TransCanada Corp., a participant in the Keystone XL pipeline project, sent new proposals for the purchase of easements to numerous landowners who have refused to grant the company rights-of-way across their lands. Keystone’s land manager was quoted as saying: “This really is an effort to reach voluntary agreements rather than going through the eminent domain process. We always prefer to go through negotiation.” Of course, should efforts to persuade property owners to “voluntarily” grant such easements, the company announced its intentions to undertake eminent domain (i.e., legalized plunder) to get such rights.

This news story illustrates the fundamental distinction between the “big business” system and the “free market.” It reminded me of my blog of a few days back, recounting the history of U.S. government efforts to purchase the Black Hills through negotiations with the Indian tribe that owned them. Once the 7th Cavalry had been sent in to resolve the problem through bloody slaughter, further “negotiations” resulted in the sale of such lands to the government!

How “voluntary” can state-backed takings of property be? Perhaps some will remind me that public opposition to the Keystone project is but another example of “America’s persecuted minority: big business.”

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12:31 pm on June 14, 2015