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How State Land Use Planning Programs Coupled with Big Government Regulations Are Making Serfdom Inevitable

On the Direct Road to Serfdom in America How State Land Use Planning Programs Coupled with Big Government Regulations Are Making Serfdom Inevitable (formerly from Lex Loeb, Yahoo Contributor Network now defunct) a State land use regulations are the direct road to serfdom in America. One only has to go and visit Oregon to see the glowing examples of successful state controlled land use initiatives. Serfdom is something already developing in Oregon as a supposedly green trade off for cherished American Liberties. One has to come to Oregon to see the actual result and not just look at the government's propaganda on the subject to see that although slavery might be illegal in Oregon the government has not trouble with promoting serfdom. Land use planning in Oregon always starts with the notion that the state has goals to reach. The results may or many not actually promote any stated goals because the idea of preserving farm land by requiring a minimum of 80 acres to build a farm house for persons to live on the property simply results in either exceptions to the rule by government fiat, changing the arbitrary zoning lines as the old lines prove to be too close to urban centers that need land to grow. An other result of liming build-able lots to larger acreage also ends up promoting the building of larger estate homes for the wealthy who can afford excess acreage and that has nothing to do with farming necessarily. Farm land preservation is just one example of the absurdity of the land use control laws permitted by the land use control freaks of Oregon. The program ends up promoting marginal land of little or no value for agriculture and then it becomes necessary for the bureaucrats to start calling for a need for "Open space" as a result of no longer having any justification for their original plan. The net result for people with neither the power nor the friends in high places with influence is the ability to own private property and not be able to use if for anything of any productive value. That may or may not support any of the stated goals of state land use planning which might be high density urban areas or low density agricultural areas or historic memory lands and open space. What happens is that people who used to have true liberty suddenly find out that they are responsible for high property taxes and not possible economic use of their property. If not that they might be prevented from subdividing property that has long been in their family . When this happens a lot of rural people find that they cannot afford to retain ownership because the property might be owned jointly by siblings and without any means of subdividing there may be no way to pay off estate tax debts and other debt. The state of Oregon couples state land use planning with zoning and then tops it off with more regulations such as recent attempts to just take existing water rights from property owners without paying any compensation what so ever. The state goons actually proposed and may soon be implementing putting water meters on private rural property owner's private wells. That is how onerous and anti -liberty the type of people promoting state wide land use have in mind. The real goal is to totally diminish fee simple private property ownership on every possible level that they can starting with zoning and then cross zoning and spot zoning properties to exclude every possible use that ultimately allows owners to pay property taxes and get little or no economic use from their property without any compensation. The funny thing is that the state of Oregon has an even stronger article in it's constitution requiring just compensation for the taking of private property for public use than the US Constitution has. That does not mater because the real goals of land use planning are practical serfdom and perhaps some kind of artificial monarchy of law making. Presently the people living in towns and cities, not suburbs are less affected by the state wide land use policies and this is because the urban voters are the basic way of facilitating these types of laws and later on it creeps into the urban areas with the kind of loss of personal liberty intended to be applied later to those areas by making zoning ever more complex and coupling it with regulations supported by taxes , levies and bonds that ultimately remake the urban area into planned control centers. In urban areas Oregonians start to see that they pay sewer taxes to pay for million dollar a mile bicycle paths which are painted lanes on the sides of streets in the streets and not up on the sidewalks. It is a huge scam because the sewer bills are skillfully included as surcharges in the urban water utility bills. Many Oregonians are finding they pay more in a combination of state taxes than they do in federal taxes but few have woken up to their loss of liberty as a result yet. Eventually there will be a tidal wave of discontent if Oregonians have not already been converted to serfs. What was serfdom in ancient Europe? Well it was being a sort of chattel property that came with the land. You might be born on your family farmstead in Europe but the nobles or king owned the land you farmed and naturally took a very large share as possible of your net production or earning each tax period or year to pay for royal and Noble extravagance. That is exactly what has been happening in Oregon. All the goals and progressive ideas promoted seem to be doing nothing more important than making some new class of people rich at the expense of everyone else. That would seem to be a rather stupid thing to give up one's private liberties for wouldn't it? The government spends a fortune in advertising to keep the propaganda rolling out to justify spending too much and failing to get any reasonable result based on the goals laid out. It is funny having watched the nonsense of the need for excessively expensive public transportation year after year with a huge propaganda budget morphing from one stated goal to the next. The stated propaganda goal is never to save people money by providing cheap rides. The propaganda is for saving energy and preventing smog one year and then later it morphs into being green with no evidence to support the notion that they really are greener than private automobiles . Some of us used to stand down on the side walk on the bus malls see the clouds of black diesel grit and taste it in the air while constantly being told that that was better than the exhaust from cars with catalytic converters in them. It is the same with land use planning where most of the economic growth is in the suburbs where the big high tech factories were allowed to be built unlike in the urban centers. In Portland Oregon this top down economic urban planning proved catastrophic because the suburbs grew up with all the best high paying jobs for common people often times twice or more what similar industrial jobs paid in the city if any and the suburbs got all the growth and all the farmland they fussed about as far as the eye could see got paved over with the need for urban expansion lines to follow the growth and the new suburban demographic helping to give the needed votes to push the boundaries out where they never should have been limited in the first place. The city of Portland increasingly becomes a financial, entertainment and bedroom community center with the jobs in the burbs and the rush hour traffic is growing ever faster than any ridership on the savior public transportation system that cost way too much money. Every time a new light rail or trolley replaces a diesel bus line the passengers from the bus are just moved on to a new more expensive system to give them a ride at a subsidized cost and the old buses get trashed as if money means nothing at all to the public planning gurus. The whole idea of the planning process at least in the urban areas is to make as many people dependent in every way possible on the government. It is one big trade off for personal liberty and that only gives more power to government at the expense of people who may or many not want their independence form government planing. Can urban people become serfs? They certainly did in the old soviet union. Serfdom may start in rural areas but the same big top down control freak government that wants to control the landscape to prevent urban sprawl or say it does and then does the opposite is really just interested in power and control by any means possible with any excuse they can think of that will get the wheels of propaganda rolling in the minds of the population. After more than 40 years of state wide land use planning to prevent urban and suburban sprawl it really is just as bad as it always was and is in other states including California. California is what they always said they were out to prevent happening in Oregon. The only difference between urban suburban sprawl in California and Oregon now is how the propaganda promotes what they say is an alternative. It is a fantasy alternative not an actual one but it has been a great success at helping to promote serfdom where by people work to support big government that always has some cause to promote of little or no economic value to anyone except for the people who either get the goodies government has to offer with higher than average paying jobs or kick backs by supplying it. Serfdom is having no cake and none to eat for the serfs while helping the nobility have their cake and eat it too. More simple ways exist to prevent urban sprawl that really do work and that starts with government not allowing developers to cede to the city roads they build nor governments that maintain roads out into the hinterlands. In Portland Oregon the hypocrisy is amazing . The city participated in building the interstate 205 by pass just for one reason only to spur major development out in that area east of the city central areas. They built 205 as wide as possible to accommodate tremendous growth in sprawl and it was a great success and that kind of thing never happened the development out in that area would still be a lower growth rate. Now the city is discovering suburban commuter rail lines as if they are geniuses having never seen one before on the east coast. The results are predictable high suburban growth as a result with cars parked near by the suburban terminals for more suburban expansion. So why all the lies about preserving farm land with sate wide land use planing? most of the sprawl happens just around the larger towns and cities and it has never stopped as the result of the planning and its promotion. That is because the conspiracy is to promote serfdom for all practical purposes. It has worked in many cases with rural people forced to relocate to urban areas and farming operations becoming less and less family oriented or soon to become obsolete just because the cost of all the regulations and zoning issues is far too high. The predictable result is larger land holdings by well to do promoters of all the land use planning nonsense with the ultimate result being the land being leased to serfdom farmers. It has been a total disaster in Oregon save the propaganda that always says that everything private land owners actually saved over the years in the same manner that Ted Turner preserves his much larger property and raises buffalo herds, the state takes credit for having saved what was saved by stealing it. The road to serfdom already leads to Oregon. Come live here but don't expect to have any rights in the future to own property here expect that you can get a job as a property custodian or some kind of state of Oregon company store apartment or condo in the cities with the only reason for condos is to farm taxes from them. It is what the state officials refer to their all important tax base and that is to promote their pseudo progressive goals that include serfdom.. .

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