Eminent Domain Is Inhumane

The Honolulu Star-Advertiser Published My Letter to the Editor 

Stuart K. Hayashi

Back in the year 2006, Pablo Wegesend, Reid Ginoza, and I issued a warning to Hawaiʻi in the letters-to-the-editor sections of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin and Honolulu Advertiser, before the latter newspaper purchased the former. The warning had to do with the construction of the government-controlled rail system being shoved down everyone’s throat. We warned of the threat of eminent domain being exercised to seize private land for the rail system. My focus was on the chances of citizens being expropriated of their private residences.

For the most part, we find that our warning has come true. The one difference here is that it is not a private residence being taken but instead the site of the Takaras’ family business, Service Printers Hawaii. The specific agency confiscating the land is the one directly in charge of the rail system, HART (the Honolulu Authority on Rapid Transportation). The Friday, November 17, 2023, Honolulu Star-Advertiser ran this news as its front-page story. It prompted me to write yet another letter to the editor, which was published on Tuesday, November 21, 2023.

The official Twitter account of the Honolulu Star-Advertiser even sent out a tweet quoting from my letter and linking to the Web version of it.

 

OPINION: "(HART) invoked eminent domain to dispossess the Takara family of land on which their family business has stood for 59 years. ... That downplays the real issue: freedom and consent versus coercion." ⤵️ https://t.co/okRconMw9a

— Star-Advertiser (@StarAdvertiser) November 22, 2023

In the letter, two words I regret are “59 years.” The business was started in 1964 but, upon rereading the Friday article, Mr. Takara said the business was a tenant of the land for “43 years.” Instead of “for 59 years,” I should have said “for decades.”

 

 
The Newest Letter
This is what I had sent to the paper:

November 17’s front-page story, “HART Board Approves,” shows HART has no heart.

HART invokes eminent domain to dispossess the Takaras of land on which their family business has stood for 59 years. Rationalizations for eminent domain always mention payment to the victims. That downplays the real issue: freedom and consent versus coercion. Eminent domain is ultimately backed by armed force. Enforcing it in L.A. in 1959 had armed officers literally drag a widow, Aurora Arechiga, from her home.

People assume cities need eminent domain. In January I e-mailed development officials of Carson City, Nevada, about this. They informed me that although the city can enact it, at the time they knew of no instance of Carson City actually exercising eminent domain in its history.

During these holidays, ponder whether slogans about “the greater good” are justification enough, and if passively condoning eminent domain’s brutality is what we truly want.

Stuart K. Hayashi
Mililani

This is the letter as it was printed:

HART’s Eminent Domain Is Brutal Use of Authority

The front-page story, “HART Board Approves Eminent Domain Filing for Kalihi Property” (Star-Advertiser, Nov. 17), shows HART has no heart.

The Honolulu Authority for Rapid Transportation (HART) invoked eminent domain to dispossess the Takara family of land on which their family business has stood for 59 years. Rationalizations for eminent domain always mention payment to the victims. That downplays the real issue: freedom and consent versus coercion. Eminent domain is ultimately backed by armed force. Enforcing it in Los Angeles in 1959 had armed officers literally drag a widow, Aurora Arechiga, from her home.

People assume cities need eminent domain. In January, I emailed development officials of Carson City, Nev., about this. They informed me that although the city can enact it, at the time they knew of no instance of Carson City actually exercising eminent domain in its history.

During these holidays, ponder whether slogans about “the greater good” are justification enough, and if passively condoning eminent domain’s brutality is what we truly want.

Stuart K. Hayashi
Mililani

With sixteen reader comments underneath the online version, this letter of mine was the second-most-commented-upon letter to the editor of the day. First-place was the one about the Second Amendment, at thirty Web comments.

The next day, the Star-Advertiser published yet another letter denouncing HART’s callous violation of the Takaras’ rights. This one came from Charlene Aoki.

The Letter From 2006
Below is my letter of warning back in 2006. There are two different versions of it.

From the Honolulu Star-Bulletin, March 2, 2006:

Will Homes Be Torn Out to Make Room for Rail?

Pablo Wegesend raised an important concern in his Jan. 28 letter to the editor, but we have yet to see anyone address it.

Wegesend said, “With all the talk about light rail, there is one question that needs to be answered: Who’s going to be forced out of the way to make room for light rail infrastructure?”

Good point. What assurance do we have that the City [and] County of Honolulu won’t exercise eminent domain after selecting a route for the fixed-rail system? I find the very idea that the city might have to resort to condemning people’s houses far more unsettling than any increase in the general excise tax.

We shouldn’t rest easy until the City [and] County publicly promises us, in this newspaper’s op-ed pages for everyone to read, that it won’t forcibly confiscate anyone’s private land when the time comes to construct the rail.

Stuart K. Hayashi
Mililani

From the Honolulu Advertiser, March 6, 2006:

Eminent Domain
Don’t Seize People’s Homes for Transit

What assurance do we have that the City [and] County of Honolulu won’t exercise eminent domain after selecting a route for the fixed-rail system? I find the very idea that the city may have to resort to condemning people’s houses over this far more unsettling than any increase in the general excise tax.

We shouldn’t rest easy until the city publicly promises us, in this newspaper’s op-ed pages for everyone to read, that it won’t forcibly confiscate anyone’s private land when the time comes to construct the rail.

If this project requires the seizure of people’s homes, then perhaps it wasn’t such a terrific idea after all.

Stuart K. Hayashi
Mililani

As a follow-up to my own, Reid Ginoza had his own March 17, 2006, letter to the editor published over here.

Yes, in 2006, I said, “We shouldn’t rest easy until the City [and] County publicly promises us, in this newspaper’s op-ed pages for everyone to read, that it won’t forcibly confiscate anyone’s private land when the time comes to construct the rail.”

We know what has happened since then. With the rail project, the city government is on the very unscrupulous path of which we had warned. It should reverse course before it hurts innocent people even more than it already has.

'Tax Burden Justifies Immigration Restriction': Argument the Right Stole from Nanny-State Left

Stuart K. Hayashi

Screen shot from the motion picture "Born in East L.A.,"
prod. Peter Macgregor-Scott, dir. Cheech Marin (Universal Pictures, 1987).

I point out that a free republic allows for anything that is peaceful. If I want to lodge Mexicans on my land, and they want to lodge on my land, then there's no reason for the State to initiate the use of force upon us; this shouldn't even require a license from the government (visa). To this, the right-wing anti-immigrationists reply that it is their business, because we have a welfare state, and therefore, to reduce the tax burden, immigrants should be kept out. Then I say that anyone genuinely concerned about reducing the tax burden would demand cutting back government spending per se, having everyone -- native-born and foreign-born alike -- pay their own way. Then the right-wing anti-immigrationists say, "But the welfare state is never going away. Just accept it. The best we can do to reduce the tax burden is to restrict immigration." That's actually an argument they stole from left-wingers: specifically, the left-winger advocates of the Nanny State.

Attorney John Banzhaf, former Obama adviser Cass Sunstein, and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg lead the left-wing health police, saying the government should police your health. They want to protect you from your own lifestyle choices, such as imposing taxes on soda and other sugary beverages. To this, right-wing people generally point out that this is none of Cass Sunstein's business; if a right-wing man wants to drink lots of Coca-Cola, that is none of the government's business. To this, the left-wing health police reply, "But it is my business! Taxpayer funds now pay for everyone's health care, and, everything else being equal, healthcare spending on the obese is higher than it is for the non-obese. Therefore, to reduce the tax burden, we are justified in policing choices that contribute to obesity." To that, right-wing people properly respond that the solution is to cut government spending on healthcare across-the-board and let everyone pay their own way.

Now, how would those right-wing people like it if the left-wing health police said this?: "But taxpayer-funded healthcare is never going away. Just accept it. The best we can do to reduce the tax burden is to police people's health-related lifestyle choices."

Don't you think that right-wing people would properly rejoin?: "No, it's still none of your business. What I do with my own body peaceably is none of your business, and your citation of taxpayer funding doesn't justify policing what I may or may not peaceably consume."

If that's the case, then when it comes to immigration, the legitimate rejoinder to these right-wing anti-immigratoinists is, "No, it's still none of your business. The national origins of whom I invite peaceably onto my own land is none of your business, and your citation of taxpayer funding doesn't justify policing whom I may or may not peaceably invite onto my land."

Yet many of the same right-wing people who accept, as valid, that final rebuttal against the health police are the same people who arbitrarily reject that very same rebuttal when applied to the issue of immigration control.

When someone point outs that the real way to reduce the tax burden is to de-socialize medicine and let everyone pay their own way, the Nanny-State health police refuse to relent on their need to police your health. From that, I conclude that their claim to care about rolling back the tax burden is disingenuous; the real priority is to micromanage other people's lifestyle choices.

Likewise, when someone points out that the real way to reduce the tax burden is to shrink the welfare state for everyone and let everyone pay their own way and to have private charity, the anti-immigrationists refuse to relent on the supposed need to restrict immigration. From that, I conclude that their claim to care about rolling back the tax burden is disingenuous; the real priority is to block immigrants from poor countries in general.

There Is No Freedom to Be Rational and Wise Without the Commensurate Freedom to Be Peaceably Stupid

Stuart K. Hayashi

September 2 was the date on which Ayn Rand began writing Atlas Shrugged.  Therefore, Happy Atlas Shrugged Day to youuuuuuuuuu!  ^_^

This is quite an exciting time.  Yesterday, a tremendous crowd of people marched in the streets of Caracas, Venezuela, to protest dictator Nicolas Maduro.  Karl Marx was wrong -- the masses revolt against socialism.

Now I want to address something else.  Back in August, I noticed an exchange on Facebook concerning Libertarian Party presidential candidate Gary Johnson's advocacy of legalizing marijuana.  One man, who claims to support free markets and deregulation, huffed that he looks down upon those who spend so much time espousing the need for marijuana legalization.  This man said that smoking pot is self-destructive and therefore only flaky people engage in this sort of activism.  He wrote, "My greatest concern is that if this is one of the important things for some people, the liberty to do stupid stuff, then it's pretty much over."

The implication there is that your priorities are misguided at best if you are fighting for someone's right to do something unwise, even if that unwise behavior results in physical damage only to the person who chooses to partake in that behavior. The idea is that instead of fighting for someone's right to be stupid, we should be fighting for someone's right to exercise wisdom and be productive. But the truth is that there is no freedom to be wise unless there is a freedom to be peaceably unwise.

By Denying Them Ownership of Their Deaths, the Soviets Denied Them Ownership of Their Lives

The degree to which you have legal control of your own life can be gauged by the degree to which you have legal control over your death. In the gulags, some prisoners were so horrified by how they were treated that, as a last act of autonomy, they tried to starve themselves to death. Thus, the Soviet guards force-fed them. The Soviets would not even let these prisoners own their own deaths. The Soviets knew exactly what message they were sending: if you own your own death, it implies you own your life. Bey depriving you of the right to die, they deny you the full right to your own life.

To Ban Religious Belief Is to Deny Your Right to Come to Know If You’re Atheist

Likewise -- as I have stated earlier on this blog -- if you do not have the freedom to be religious, then the truth is that you actually do not have the full freedom to be an atheist. If you live in a society where you can be any religion or have no religion, then you have the ability to weigh your options. You can study Hinduism and judge whether or not you believe in it. But let's suppose that the government outlawed any belief in Hinduism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity, etc. -- you could not even talk about religious beliefs and weigh them. If that was the case, how would you truly know you are an atheist?

If the State forbade you from believing in Buddhism or studying it, you would not know for certain that you disagree with Buddhism. By contrast, if you are free to practice any religion you want peaceably, and free to study all the religions, and then you judge that you disbelieve all religions, then you know your atheism is genuine. Most people who proclaim, as adults, to be atheist, reached such a point because they lived their lives for years under a specific religion and, reflecting upon their experiences, ascertained that continuing to believe in religion was not really doing it for them. You are fully free to be come to grips with your atheism no more than to the extent that you are fully free to believe in a deity.




If the State Banned Peaceable Choices It Deemed Unhealthy and Unwise, How Would We Ascertain for Ourselves What Is Unhealthy and Unwise? 

 Now let's consider rationality and wisdom. If you follow me on Twitter, you have probably seen me rail very disapprovingly against what I judge to be quack medical treatments. I think that people who partake in these quack medical treatments are doing something unwise. I think that when you pay money for acupuncture or chiropracty on yourself, you are, at best, wasting your money. 

 But it does not follow from this that a government based on a rational philosophy would outlaw a consenting adult from receiving an acupuncture treatment. I have seen many scientists in pro-GMO and Skeptic groups on Facebook proclaim that, in the name of reason, people should be protected from wasting their money on foolish medical treatments.

I say that these supposed advocates of reason do not actually understand reason; they definitely do not understand the learning process whereby humans exercise the rational faculty. Few of these Skeptics would deny the truth in Benjamin Franklin's observation, "Without Freedom of Thought, there can be no such Thing as Wisdom...", but that is because those Skeptics have not adequately considered what that principle entails. Freedom of thought includes the freedom to think unwise thoughts, and even to act on them peaceably. Wisdom entails freedom of thought, and the freedom of thought results in some people thinking and acting wisely . . . and also results in many people doing the reverse. Moreover, there are many cases where someone growing wise is the direct result of his having thought and behaved unwisely.

 Rationality starts off as an inductive process. That is, we first learn from observation and experience. Those are our most powerful teachers. I was not lactose intolerant as a child, but, upon becoming an adult, I became lactose intolerant (that is actually common for Asians). Therefore, it would be unwise of me to drink milk without taking a lactase pill. How did I learn that that would be unwise? It was because I drank a lot of milk and had bad reactions, and eventually I had to contemplate the possibility that while I was not lactose intolerant as a child, I had become intolerant as an adult. Sometimes you learn indirectly what choices are unwise. I observed the bad consequences of alcoholism from other people and therefore chose to conduct myself differently.



Those Who Ask for the State to Compel Rationality in Citizens, Show That They Don’t Know What Rationality Is

Some supposed advocates of reason seem to say, "Well, now we know what is healthy and unhealthy. At this point in the history of science, we already know what we need to know. Therefore, we should have the State ban what we know to be unhealthy. We know what types of foods and beverages and ingredients are unhealthy. By denying anyone the opportunity to make an unwise and unhealthy choice, we make everyone rational by default. By compelling the rational choice, we have made everyone rational." 

 That is foolish. It is not rational but rationalistic. Notice that the conventional wisdom among doctors about what sort of food choices are healthy or unhealthy has changed greatly over the past fifteen years alone. And fifteen years ago, health officials issued their same dubious pronouncements with the same level of confidence as those who presently ask the State to legislate our health. 

 The principle holds: it is only by allowing people the freedom to make peaceful-but-unwise choices that we learn, from observation and experience, which peaceful choices are unwise. It is through the freedom of making choices -- wise, peaceful-but-unwise, and sometimes a combination of those -- that we learn which choices are wise. And it is through that process that we exercise rationality and learn to be wise. Thus, any attempt to "compel reason" -- by using the force of law to deny people the freedom to make allegedly unwise and unhealthy choices -- amounts to such a perverse caricature of reason that it becomes the worst attack on reason. I hate quack medicine and consider it irrational. But to outlaw an adult from choosing quack medicine for himself is a greater irrationality, for it assaults the very methodology by which we learn what is wise versus unwise.



The Initiation of the Use of Force As the One Form of Stupidity That Must Be Banned By Law
There is but one type of irrationality that the law must prevent:  the initiation of the use of force.  I believe that if a man tries to rob or rape others, that is irrational and ultimately self-harming.  Should a man try that, it is not merely that others will rightfully retaliate.  There are other reasons why this is irrational and self-harming.  First, a man who makes his living through preying off of others will be left helpless when he runs out of victims.  Also, a man who lives off of preying on other people is ultimately dependent on the victims, rendering him ultimately weaker than his victims.  Psychologically, that is untenable, and that is why a man who starts off dabbling in just "small" violations of the rights of others will usually become more psychologically unhinged as this process of corruption continues.

For people to exercise their rationality to satiate themselves, they have to be free from the initiation of the use of force.  If a man points a gun at me and says, "Give me your wallet! Comply or die!", I am not left free to exercise my own judgment; I am placed in a lose-lose situation where either I lose my life instantly or I lose the wealth I earned and need to sustain my life.  Thus, the violation of the rights of others is violently stupid, not peaceably stupid, and is the one form of stupidity that must be verboten by the State.

Conclusion 

 For the State to deny you your right to death is for the State to impinge on your right to live. For the State to deny you the freedom to have faith in religion is for the State to deny you the full freedom to learn for yourself if, deep down, you are an atheist. And for the State to deny you the freedom to exercise peaceful-but-unwise choices is for the State to deny you the freedom to exercise the rational process in ascertaining what is wise. 

 Therefore, it is not petty or shallow for someone to fight for the legal liberty to exercise choices that are peaceful-but-unwise. By fighting for the right of others to be peaceably unwise and unproductive, you fight for the right to be to be wise and productive. And those who would denigrate our crusade to establish the freedom of others to be peaceably unwise and lazy as crusading for something that is shallow and petty, are those who do not understand the very means by which human beings rationally learn to be wise and productive.




On Thursday, July 11, 2019, I added the quotation from Benjamin Franklin about the freedom of thought.