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Comment by nickpp | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting that the government can't convince owners to sell. I mean - we're talking about politicians. They manage to negotiate everything and compromise even in the middle of wars. See prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine right now. Or Israel and Hamas. Worst enemies and they can still find a compromise.

It can't be just about money - governments successfully negotiate with unions that hold the whole country over a barrel with strikes of essential services.

But eminent domain to build vital infrastructure? No - forced confiscation is the only solution. Strange.

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The problem is that there are only so many viable paths between cities. Rails is worse than roads in this case because turns can't be as sharp and grades can't be as steep.

When there are potentially tens of thousands of property owners along that path, each property owner can derail the whole thing or add enormous costs, so they have an insanely strong negotiating position. If you were just to attempt to negotiate with each property owner, the cost would make building new rail in a populated area impossible.

There has never been any real length of railroad built through a populated area with many landowners without some kind of government intervention akin to eminent domain.

It's a tragedy of the commons situation - you might be able to buy 90% of the land for a "reasonable price" (which is hard to define - depending on the type of land use, the value of the owner's entire plot would change significantly by having a train going by every day, sometimes greater sometimes lesser), but if the remaining 10% don't play ball you can't have the train.

So the government is in a position of "we'll give you X for this, but if you don't agree we'll just take it from you", which is a... non-Texan position for government to be in, to say the least.

> So the government is in a position of "we'll give you X for this, but if you don't agree we'll just take it from you", which is a... non-Texan position for government to be in, to say the least.

Texas government doesn't seem to have that reservation when it comes to highway expansions within cities, that's for sure.

Good point. But highway expansions have localized benefits in ways trains don't. Everyone "knows" that another lane would fix everything on their daily commute, so amassing the political capital to make it happen isn't too hard. But a train to connect distant region X to distant region Y, by taking land from folks who hardly ever make that trip anyways? Harder sell.

Imagine that you had to negotiate with a homeowner. You could find a price where you could buy their property.

Now imagine that you had to negotiate with 10,000 homeowners. At least one of them is going to insist that their place is worth one billion dollars and count on you caving because they can hold up the entire project.

That's why forced confiscation - because people try to hold the project hostage for ransom.

> because people try to hold the project hostage for ransom

Unions hold countries hostage by closing down rail or airports. Still, a solution that doesn't cost 1 billion dollars per person is always found.

> imagine that you had to negotiate with 10,000 homeowners

Imagine you offer them 2-10x market value. With a confidentiality clause. And the threat of confiscation or project abandonment. I believe an amiable solution would be found in most cases.

> Unions hold countries hostage by closing down rail or airports. Still, a solution that doesn't cost 1 billion dollars per person is always found.

Sure. It's often found in the form of a court decision.

> Imagine you offer them 2-10x market value. With a confidentiality clause. And the threat of confiscation or project abandonment. I believe an amiable solution would be found in most cases.

Sure - in most cases. And for the ones that won't? You're going to have to either abandon the project, wait for them to die, or confiscate.

> And for the ones that won't?

Then you confiscate, sure. And show publicly that you offered 10x and were refused. But not confiscation by default, in all cases.

I guess my argument is that if you really want something, you better pay up. Like for anything else, from cars and boats to 10x developers. What if the government could come to you whenever they want and say: I forcefully require your work and talent and I will not pay more than market price for it.

They can and have. It’s called conscription.

> But not confiscation by default, in all cases.

They don't (at least, I don't think they do).

I don't know if I said something that you interpreted as "confiscate first", but that was not what I meant.

I went through such a expropriation a couple years back. All I got was a notification letter and a check for corresponding amount (arguably under market value).

The problem is who gets to determine the value of that land. If the government wants you to write software for them for a year, you can protest that you’re a 10x developer deserving millions of dollars all you want, all they need to do is look at your tax return for the last year and pay you double or whatever.

On the other hand, if your family has been living on that ranch and tending that land for hundreds of years, and every generation has contributed to building out and maintaining the homestead, the government can’t properly say “well that derelict lot down the way sold for 100k, we’ll give you 1M and call it fair”.

You just described eminent domain. What, you thought the government took land with no compensation? Saying it should be 2-10x market value is quibbling over execution, not ideology.

Maybe I am quibbling about execution, but as someone who went through a (tiny) expropriation I find it's huge difference between: "here's just market value (in a depressed market too) for the land you really cared about" and vs "here's a nice generous profit on something the big guys really really need.

I mean if you're gonna f_ck me in the end anyway, at least have the decency to buy me dinner first.

> Unions hold countries hostage by closing down rail or airports. Still, a solution that doesn't cost 1 billion dollars per person is always found.

Completely different situation. You only need the majority of the workers in the union. No single person or small group of people can hold up the process.

For this situation to be at all similar to a union negation, you’d need to group all affected property owners together, offer them some multiple of property value each and ask for a group vote as a binding decision.

That’s still eminent domain, just potentially with a higher payout, which equates to a higher cost to the taxpayers.

> equates to a higher cost to the taxpayers

Considering the astonishing inefficiency of government works I really doubt confiscation compensations is a significant expenditure.

The government almost never does the work on an infrastructure project, but the high price of infrastructure have much less to with the fact that the government is paying the bill than with the regulations that any project public or private has to work within.

If we stopped eminent domain though, property purchase prices probably would become a significant portion of the total expense.

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