Hacker News Reader

Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

In defending their power to do that the state has made an argument which seems convincing that they maybe ought to be permitted to hold-back legitimate and reasonable costs associated with the sale, but I don’t think has made a convincing case that they can just keep whatever excess value there is without there being a takings clause violation. I expect them to lose hard on this.

View on HN

>In defending their power to do that the state has made an argument which seems convincing that they maybe ought to be permitted to hold-back legitimate and reasonable costs associated with the sale, but I don’t think has made a convincing case that they can just keep whatever excess value there is without there being a takings clause violation.

If the government can self-fund by targeted asset seizure, rather than allocation from the legislature, you create an incentive for abuse. Want to grow your team? Find another home to possess, have them work on it. I'm very skeptical of this idea. We've seen it go wrong with other forms of asset seizures, with traffic enforcement, etc. Sadly you are probably right that it's legal.

If private capital is no longer safe from unreasonable seizures in the course of simple settlements against debt that requires a strait forward liquidation… the system is getting pretty close to permanently fucked. Not as in slippery slope… as in “fucked”.

This isn’t woke this isn’t neocon, this isn’t even a left or right… this is “capitalism as a system is built upon the respect for the value of a person’s capital” sort of stuff. If the court doesn’t rule either extremely narrowly in favour, or outright against… the precedent set by this could be devastating to … basically everyone. “Oh sorry that mobile phone contract worth a couple of grand means we a private company now have the power to force you to sell your house and keep the profits of doing it ourselves and paying lawyers to sue you to force you if you refuse”… nothing here feels like this is unique to the state, I don’t see why they should have this power and no one else by following their arguments… this would set a dangerous precedent and I really hope they get told to pound sand, with prejudice.

Edit: Also I want to clarify. I understand that lawyers are going to do their job and argue for their clients. This is about the system as a whole. It makes sense that the government would try to do this, and makes sense to try and pay lawyers to argue the case.. it does not make sense to undermine the fundamentals of capitalism to treat debtors as an underclass like criminals who deserve nothing and can be legally robbed by anyone they owe a debt to.

I'd argue we passed that point once civil forfeiture became common. Your property can already be seized even without a debt that needs settling.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_forfeiture_in_the_United...

Look… I agree… but I can also understand the logic behind the fundamental concept of civil asset forfeiture. When you have a trunk full of drugs or cash and no one to point the finger at… it makes a twisted kind of sense to empower the state to simply sue the objects in question and allow the system to move forward efficiently.

What civil asset forfeiture had become is a god damn evil monstrosity… but the seed it grew from isn’t inherently damned… it’s the precedent and case law that has turned it into a twisted monster that is perpetuating abuse of the citizens of the United States of America.

Its mostly the incentives spurred by the Drug War federal decision to let individual LE agencies keep a share of proceeds of federal-law seizures they execute (most state forfeiture laws direct the proceeds to state general funds, so LE agencies don’t directlt profit from them) which created the problem, because it turned civil forfeiture into a funding stream detached from local government priorities for the agencies who participated.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com