Oct
17
2007
Measure 49 Open Fourm
By Charles TurnerOK, I’ll bite but here are the rules. I am not going to particpate in the discussion. I said my part in the previous post. If it gets nasty, I’ll shut it down. The Secretary of State website states:
Measure 49: MODIFIES MEASURE 37; CLARIFIES RIGHT TO BUILD HOMES; LIMITS LARGE DEVELOPMENTS; PROTECTS FARMS, FORESTS, GROUNDWATER.
The complete text of Measurre 49 is here.
The Yes on Measure 49 campaign is here.
The No on Measure 49 camaign is here.
Regardless of your view, VOTE!!!
Voting to me is like getting into a snowball fight with a avalanche.
One day while protesting the war in Iraq a guy pulled up next to me and said “You know, Saddam was behind September 11th”. That was the day I stopped voting.
I was hoping to see more for/against. I’ve yet, despite some looking, to find forum discussions on this measure (perhaps I’m not familiar with the right local sites). From what I’ve read, I’m for 49. Oregon is special, because it disallows the sprawl that has infested the rest of the nation.
That’s the strangest reason to not vote I’ve ever heard, Ralph.
What a beautiful new suit The Emperor wears!
Many people in Oregon seem to think that all of Oregon belongs to all Oregonians. But the fact is, it does not. Private property rights are fundamental and essential to freedom. Property owners have a right to do whatever they darn well feel like with their own property.
The greater good is more important than your f-ing property rights. How bout we let your neighbors build a Taco Bell in their front yard? How about I get to make crack in my bathtub? It’s my property after all. How about we let prostitutes do what they want with their bodies? That’s about as close to private property as one can get.
Greedy republicans. Then you’ll suck money from the urban core to build your roads and infrastructure. Funny how you property rights people become socialists when it’s convenient.
Property rights are essential to freedom, but it does not logically follow that property rights should therefore be completely unrestricted. This line of reasoning is fundamentally flawed.
Every freedom is restricted by its potential or actual impact on other people. You have freedom of movement, but you do not have the right to drive in a reckless manner that is harmful to the safety of others. You have the right to free speech, but you do not have the right to harass people in a threatening manner. You have the right to defend your personal safety, but most people would agree that killing someone because they accidentally bumped into you on the street should be illegal.
Property rights are similar. You should have the right to do whatever you want with your property, as long as it does not harm other people. Allowing the suburban sprawl common to the rest of this country harms other people in the same way that air and water pollution does. Suburban sprawl results in a fundamentally wasteful use of natural resources. The profit from sprawl is privatized by developers, while the true cost is offloaded unto the general public. Such costs include easily measurable expenses, such as roads and other infrastructure provided at public cost which are “needed” only to provide access to housing developments far away from places where the infrastructure is already available. The costs also include less easily quantified impacts, such as artificially lengthy commutes and the concomitant increased use of gasoline.
In addition, these damages are not reversible and therefore warrant a conservative approach. We should err on the side of caution. If the restriction of property rights goes too far, then the restrictions can be loosened again within the time period of a few years. Conversely, once you’ve razed a forest to build houses, you cannot reverse the process over the course of a human lifetime.
From a fundmental rights perspective, I would legalize drug use and prostitution before I would support completely unrestricted property rights. Legalized drug use and prostitution have a far smaller capacity to hurt innocent bystanders.
Anyone who talks about allowing neighbors to do whatever they want with their land has no idea what it is like to dwell near a pig farm, a homeless shelter, or any of a hundred other constructs where the effects cannot possibly stay on the ground they started from.
Well said Leo.
I thought M37 was supposed to allow little old ladies to build a couple houses on land they owned since 1940.
Instead, it allows timber companies to build massive subdivisions without any of the infrastructure in place, taking irrigation water away from their farmer neighbors.
M49 does what I thought M37 would do – I’m all for it.
No use talking to socialists/commies. Perhaps many of you are living in the wrong country? Maybe you would be happier in a land where the government dictates everything you and your children can and cannot do. I think you guys call it utopia, if I’m not mistaken.
What? You say you don’t want to? I wonder why. Perhaps because capitalism, combined with true private property rights and individual self-interest has produced the best country in the history of the world. And you are reaping the benefits. Too bad you do not want the same thing for your posterity.
Can we (actually you, because I said I wouldn’t get involved) debate the issue of Measure 49 and not idealogies? If political issues were Democrat or Republican (assuming two parties for simplicity) we’d just have a straight ticket method of voting and be done with it. Thankfully you get to choose a side of an issue whether or not your party agrees to it.
Measure 49 is about ideologies, Charles. Oregonians overwhelmingly passed 37, so we know where most people stand on private property rights. This is a fight over whether Oregonians are going to concede their private property rights to the state. It’s not about pig farms or homeless shelters.
I think most Oregonians just don’t have the guts to really think about what they should do with their own land so they want big brother to do it for them. They seem to forget that their home is most likely the largest and sentimental investment they will make in our short lives. I say let them hire big brother to hold their hand, but for me, I believe in freedom and that includes being responsible for that investment and to have control over all decisions made about it.
ALl this talk of Mother, God and country kind of makes me sick in relation to Measure 49. Most of those opposed to land use controls are opposed out of greed and self-interest. These are the same people who would sell their citizenship for the right amount of $$$.
There’s rules on ALL property one owns, from land to your car. What? I can’t drive 100 mph? It’s MY CAR! You say I can’t build a Taco Bell next to my house? Why not, it’s MY PROPERTY!
No one is stopping you greedbags from building your dream home on your land. We’re just going to let you change the society the rest of us have to live in.
Property rights people are the ones who flunked citizenship in grade school.
Naysayer, it is not greed, but you’re right about the self-interest. Self-interest is not inherently bad, and has brought about nearly all of societal progress. Perhaps it is you who needs a review of constitutional principles of freedom.
I would guess that those against measure 49 do not believe in ABSOLUTE property rights, they realize that some governmental regulation is not necessarily a bad thing. Your examples of driving 100 and building a Taco Bell have no relationship to reality.
Property owners in Oregon have a right to pursue the monetary value of their land. They also have a right to pass that on to their children. That was the beauty of 37. If government had a legitimate interest in restricting someone’s property use then it was right to pay the land owners the fair market value of their property. Oregonians overwhelmingly passed 37 because it was a just law that kept government in check.
I am not a property owner in Oregon and I have no stake in the outcome, other than wanting the private property rights heritage that we have enjoyed in this country sustained.
I drove around in Beaverton a few hours today and yesterday for my job. It’s ugly. Ass ugly. And it’s depressing. Measure 49 would stop some of this rampant cookie cutter strip mall phony ass suburban crap. If you want a good example of a town with lots of building restrictions, look at Cannon Beach. You can’t remove a tree without permission. Is that bad? No! It’s by far the nicest coast town I’ve been to in Oregon, and it’s because of building restrictions. If everyone were committed to a beautiful healthy world, then we could all have unrestricted freedom. That is not our world. Some people would let dandelions grow crazy, park their cars in their front lawns, let their pit bulls run the streets, hang their laundry on their front porches, and even worse, sell their land to a developer who wants to build an ugly subdivision or strip mall. If Portland is to see positive growth, it should be up, not out. A dense urban core is what makes a great city; not endless sprawl. New York or LA? Real or phony? Down with Beavertonization!!!
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