Oh, you may think you own your home or your farm, but if the government decides that it wants to kick you out, it will. And that reason still can be "because we like this other entity more than we like you."
In this case, it is Columbia University, which has gotten the State of New York to throw people out of their businesses.
Private ownership of real estate is a legal fiction. You "own" real estate because the governments (local, state and federal) permit you to use the land that they regard as theirs, and they will take it back from you if it damn well suits them.
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3 comments:
Gotta love the fallout from Kelo v. New London.
You're exactly right, Miss Fit. We don't own land. The only authority we have over the land is what the state is willing to enforce for us.
I don't think it's correct to call ownership a "legal fiction", though. Judges and lawyers know the deal precisely. I'd call it a naïve dream.
Yep, you don't own land, you lease it from the government.
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