Yesterday, one of the Antiplanner’s loyal opponents left a comment comparing land-use regulation with the abolition of slavery, implying that it would just as absurd to compensate landowners for such regulation as it would be to compensate slaveowners for ending slavery. The comparison is apt. Those who make it in favor of land-use regulation apparently think the solution to land-use debates is to have a civil war and kill hundreds of thousands of people.
I’ve heard this comparison before with regard to endangered species. Slavery was immoral, so we didn’t compensate slaveowners. Making a species go extinct is equally immoral, so we shouldn’t compensate owners of habitat when we regulate away their right to use it.
This attitude betrays a profound misunderstanding of both history and economics.
